Automata 1978

Overview

The combination of insular wonderland with open cityscape is more tightly realized in Automata. For this film, Sokoloff challenged Grauer to make things from a bag of wind-up toy motors. He then spliced together a cycle of footage from his favorite city sites. Finally, he shot Grauer’s creations on the same film in a double exposure. The result is a day in the life of a shaman toy gang, set loose upon Manhattan. Automata recalled references ranging from Godzilla to the stop-motion Rudolph the Re