The Nightmare
The Nightmare - 1976, 3:14 mins
Director, Producer + Animator: Jahmani Perry (a.k.a. John Perry III)
A collage animated short film that explores the roots of racial injustice in America from the massacres of the Native Americans to the Nuclear Age.
I spent three months inside a darkroom shooting and animating collage magazine cutouts for the making of this film. The film has been shown at numerous national and international film festivals such as the Milan International Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival and on PBS’s WNET /Thirteen. I met Madonna at the rehearsal for her world tour and got her to view this film. She loved the film so much that she came up with a wonderful idea to incorporate The Nightmare as a visual centerpiece during her Papa Don’t Preach song. The Nightmare became a part of Madonna's Who’s That Girl World Tour (1987). The Nightmare was also selected by film curators Richard Gaugert and James Snead, for their touring New American film series Recoding Blackness: The Visual Rhetoric of Black Independent Film, screened at The Whitney Museum of American Art, St. Louis Art Museum, Walker Art Center (1985) and The Kitchen, NYC.
REVIEWS
"Of the films I saw, Jahmani Perry's (a.k.a. John Perry III) THE NIGHTMARE was the best. Opening with a shot of a gas-masked figure prowling the rush-hour subway, the film erupts into four-minute of rhythmic, sometimes ultra rapid photographic collage animation. The understated by nonetheless horrific tone is created by the juxtaposition of witty editing with deadly serious subject matter - the history of genocide in America from the seventeenth century to the Nuclear Age." -Amy Taubin, film critic and editor.