Watch Phantom Canyon

Stacy Steers' beautiful, surreal animated film is the autobiographical story of a woman trapped in an unhappy relationship and her eventual escape through the Grand Canyon. Steers meticulously crafted the film, using close to four thousand handmade collages, illustrations and drawings, each of which evokes a memory or emotion tied to her experience. This dream­-like tender fairytale in stop-motion employs eight unique images for every second of animation, incorporating figures from Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering work in photographic studies of motion "Human and Animal Locomotion," first published in 1887. Composer and sound artist Bruce Odlandan provides a haunting and modern score bathed in atmospheric sound design. PHANTOM CANYON was an official selection at Sundance in 2007 and won prizes at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the Black Maria Film Festival and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. - Stela Jelincic