Phil Collins

Phil Collins
Delete Beach
2016
7 min

Written & Directed by: Phil Collins
Overall Animation Director/Character Design: Marisuke Eguchi
Original Soundtrack: Mica Levi
Produced by: Siniša Mitrović (Shady Lane Productions), Eiko Tanaka (STUDIO4°C), Trond Gullaksen, and Kaspar Synnevåg (North Sea Productions)
Animated by : STUDIO4°C
Character Animation Director: Rie Mitake
Effects Animation Director: Bora Lee
Art Director: Yushi Honjo
CGI / Composite Director : Akiko Saito
Animation Producer: Ryohei Fujihara
Voice Actors : Asami Yano, Kohei Aoyama (Japanese Version)
Mira Partecke, Robert Stadlober (English Version)
Translation: Nao Suzuki
Sound Design: Jochen Jezussek
Sound Effects: Katsuhiro Nahajima
Composite Studio: NAZ
Title Design: Yui Fujimoto
Interval Animation : C A T K (Colours And The Kids)
Digital Mastering: Concept AV

Commissioned by Bergen Assembly. Supported by Vestnorsk Filmsenter. Co–produced with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin through funding provided by the German Cultural Foundation.

Delete Beach is an anime set in the near future that tells the story of a schoolgirl who joins an anti-capitalist resistance group in a society in which carbon-based energy has been outlawed. The film proposes a scenario describing the decline of the oil economy, with the prosperity of the boom years expiring, and the necessity of infrastructural changes looming large. As an art form, anime has repeatedly addressed political themes, often through the lens of complex female characters. In Delete Beach a curious paradox is at work: society has reached an advanced state of independence from carbon fuels, yet it continues to toil as before under a regime of oppression, inequality and control. Following anime’s recognizable aesthetic and storytelling strategies, Collins’ collaboration with STUDIO4°C, one of Japan’s leading animation studios (Tekkonkinkreet), and the pop auteur and film composer Mica Levi (Under the Skin, Jackie) brings to life a world at once familiar and disquietingly corroded. Alternating between Japanese and English language versions divided by musical interludes, Delete Beach is conjured up as an apocalyptic, melancholy shoreline, crashing in from another dimension to play host to a dream-like animation environment.

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Since the late 1990s, Phil Collins’ (born 1970; lives and works in Berlin) diverse practice has explored the intersections of art, politics and popular culture. Over the years he has collaborated with, amongst others, disco-dancing Palestinians; Kosovan Albanian refugees; the youth of Baghdad; fans of The Smiths across three continents; teachers of Marxism-Leninism from the former German Democratic Republic; anti-fascist skinheads in Malaysia; men incarcerated at one of the United States’ largest prisons; and prisoners, pensioners, school kids, and a symphonic orchestra in Glasgow. Reflecting critical consciousness and disarming immediacy, Collins’ works pull into sharp focus the contradictions that shape human experience.