Chris Sullivan

History

Chris Sullivan is a director and actor.

Movies

The Orbit of Minor Satellites
Director
A dark story about love in a time of darkness that follows a psychiatric patient, the doctor who treats her, and the imagined inhabitants of a forgotten Cold War space station on a moon of Saturn.
Consuming Spirits
Victor Blue (voice)
Nearly 15 years in the making, Chris Sullivan's Consuming Spirits is a meticulously constructed tour de force of experimental animation. Shooting frame by frame in 16mm, Sullivan seamlessly blends together a range of techniques—cutout animation, pencil drawing, collage, and stop-motion animation—into a distinct, signature visual style. In the process, he constructs a hypnotic, layered narrative, a suspenseful gothic tale that tracks the intertwined lives of three kindred spirits working at a local newspaper in a Midwestern rust belt town. The accumulation of these images builds to a great atmospheric effect, achieved through an adroit combination of inventive set design, ever-shifting visual perspectives, fluid camera movements, a vivid color palette, and a haunting music track. Sullivan succeeds in creating, with great artistry, a hermetic, self-contained world emanating from his own unique and vivid imagination. (Jon Gartenberg, Tribeca Film Festival)
Consuming Spirits
Editor
Nearly 15 years in the making, Chris Sullivan's Consuming Spirits is a meticulously constructed tour de force of experimental animation. Shooting frame by frame in 16mm, Sullivan seamlessly blends together a range of techniques—cutout animation, pencil drawing, collage, and stop-motion animation—into a distinct, signature visual style. In the process, he constructs a hypnotic, layered narrative, a suspenseful gothic tale that tracks the intertwined lives of three kindred spirits working at a local newspaper in a Midwestern rust belt town. The accumulation of these images builds to a great atmospheric effect, achieved through an adroit combination of inventive set design, ever-shifting visual perspectives, fluid camera movements, a vivid color palette, and a haunting music track. Sullivan succeeds in creating, with great artistry, a hermetic, self-contained world emanating from his own unique and vivid imagination. (Jon Gartenberg, Tribeca Film Festival)
Consuming Spirits
Director of Photography
Nearly 15 years in the making, Chris Sullivan's Consuming Spirits is a meticulously constructed tour de force of experimental animation. Shooting frame by frame in 16mm, Sullivan seamlessly blends together a range of techniques—cutout animation, pencil drawing, collage, and stop-motion animation—into a distinct, signature visual style. In the process, he constructs a hypnotic, layered narrative, a suspenseful gothic tale that tracks the intertwined lives of three kindred spirits working at a local newspaper in a Midwestern rust belt town. The accumulation of these images builds to a great atmospheric effect, achieved through an adroit combination of inventive set design, ever-shifting visual perspectives, fluid camera movements, a vivid color palette, and a haunting music track. Sullivan succeeds in creating, with great artistry, a hermetic, self-contained world emanating from his own unique and vivid imagination. (Jon Gartenberg, Tribeca Film Festival)
Consuming Spirits
Producer
Nearly 15 years in the making, Chris Sullivan's Consuming Spirits is a meticulously constructed tour de force of experimental animation. Shooting frame by frame in 16mm, Sullivan seamlessly blends together a range of techniques—cutout animation, pencil drawing, collage, and stop-motion animation—into a distinct, signature visual style. In the process, he constructs a hypnotic, layered narrative, a suspenseful gothic tale that tracks the intertwined lives of three kindred spirits working at a local newspaper in a Midwestern rust belt town. The accumulation of these images builds to a great atmospheric effect, achieved through an adroit combination of inventive set design, ever-shifting visual perspectives, fluid camera movements, a vivid color palette, and a haunting music track. Sullivan succeeds in creating, with great artistry, a hermetic, self-contained world emanating from his own unique and vivid imagination. (Jon Gartenberg, Tribeca Film Festival)
Consuming Spirits
Director
Nearly 15 years in the making, Chris Sullivan's Consuming Spirits is a meticulously constructed tour de force of experimental animation. Shooting frame by frame in 16mm, Sullivan seamlessly blends together a range of techniques—cutout animation, pencil drawing, collage, and stop-motion animation—into a distinct, signature visual style. In the process, he constructs a hypnotic, layered narrative, a suspenseful gothic tale that tracks the intertwined lives of three kindred spirits working at a local newspaper in a Midwestern rust belt town. The accumulation of these images builds to a great atmospheric effect, achieved through an adroit combination of inventive set design, ever-shifting visual perspectives, fluid camera movements, a vivid color palette, and a haunting music track. Sullivan succeeds in creating, with great artistry, a hermetic, self-contained world emanating from his own unique and vivid imagination. (Jon Gartenberg, Tribeca Film Festival)
Shoals
A slow-burning prairie grotesque. On the grounds of a rural sanitarium, three young women search for wellness, as a cult leader seeks to control their bodies through labor and daily rituals.
Some Girls Never Learn
David Bike
A university has found the leg bone of Amelia Earhart. A high school science teacher travels to the underworld to bring back his girlfriend. Animals are organizing into concentric circles and helium has escaped into the luminiferous aether.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Director
In Pieter Bruegel's painting, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," the fall of the god, Icarus, passes unnoticed on earth. The farmers continue to work the land and the boats sail on. As William Carlos Williams later wrote in his poem of the same name, "a once mighty god becomes a little splash quite unnoticed." In Chris Sullivan's version, Icarus becomes Ray, an aging priest whose congregation is dwindling as fast as his sanity. As Ray's condition deteriorates, society fails to notice or care.
Master of Ceremonies
Director
A house burns to the ground and the occupants perish. As the fire rages through the house, the family's efforts to escape are futile. Doors, walls, objects stand in the way. As the dying transform into spirits, the voices of the house resonate. Before they head to wherever it is spirits go, death decides to put on a nice little vaudeville show to cheer up the recently dead. Only in death do we truly silence ourselves.
The Beholder
Director
On a city street, a man rants about god, the devil and repentance. Nearby, people sit in a crowded restaurant. Detached from those around them, they eat, mumble and fantasize without any passion or engagement. A waitress apathetic recites the specials. Two men literally pass through each other near the toilets. These people have shelter and food, but they aren't alive. The restaurant almost becomes a security blanket, a place to hide from their crazy, mundane and trapped existence. The mad street preacher is a lone voice of conviction and delusion.
Ain't Misbehavin'
Director
A solitary man's mind, becomes a battlefield of overlapping images and voices. As he spends the day in his house doing an assortment of domestic jobs: cooking, eating, reading, writing and bathing, images of war and death enter the man's mind. The anonymity of life can haunt you if you think on it too much.