Festival allows students to see Henson, Hale’s best film work

Heather Henson presented “Handmade Puppet Dreams: Volume IV” on Thursday with special guest filmmaker Sam Hale in Stanley Russ Hall as part of the Handmade Puppet Dreams film festival last week.
Henson is the daughter of puppet legend and Muppet creator, Jim Henson.
Hale presented his short film “Yamasong,” about a journey to a “fantastic world,” which he created with the help of Henson and the band, On Ensemble.
He developed the idea for the short film after the band approached him, saying they had a new album coming out and wanted to do something with it.
“I listened to the music and I jotted down ideas for visuals that came to me,” he said.
He also showed some behind-the-scenes photos of the making of the film to give other filmmakers in the audience an idea of how the process went.
“Handmade Puppet Dreams: Volume IV” included 12 short films which depicted all the ways puppets can be incorporated into films, such as music videos or shorts, and all the different types of puppets that can be created.
It showcases different puppeteers whom Henson handpicks to appear in the series.
“[Henson] finds puppetry artists and really highlights their artistry,” Hale said.
Henson said this is the fifth year of the Puppet Dreams project and volume IV was finished last December.
“I love the art form of puppetry,” she said. “It has so many different manifestations.”
The audience favorites were “Omar’s Mother,” “Bottlestopper” and “Suck-A-Thumb,” all of which effectively used humor in creative ways.
The first film, “Omar’s Mother,” by Paul Andrejco, is about a mother who falls down into a well while searching for her son Omar.
Omar covers up the hole of the well and a priest comes by looking for Omar’s mother.
Omar begins to look guilty, but after the priest leaves, a “magical” worm comes out of the well and eats Omar.
Then, Omar’s mother comes out of the well and eats the worm and continues her search for Omar.
“Bottlestopper” by Martin P. Robinson is about a group of puppets having a good time in a bar and then things start to get weird.
By the end of the film, the audience realizes that the puppets are carved wooden bottlestoppers being messed with by the real people in the bar.
“Suck-A-Thumb” is about a boy named Konrad who sucks his thumb and is told much like a nursery rhyme.
It is a dark film, but had some humor to it. Konrad’s mother tells him if he doesn’t stop sucking his thumb, someone will come by and cut off his thumbs.
When his mother leaves, Konrad begins sucking his thumb again and his mother’s horror story comes true.
“Handmade Puppet Dreams” showed audiences that puppets can be used for fun, can be used for silent films and can be used for music videos.
For example, Norwegian band Malka and rock band mewithoutYou both used puppets in their music videos as part of the series.
Another way filmmakers who were included in volume IV used puppets in their films was to have only the puppet and background music to tell a story.
The films showed all of the ways puppets can be created as well. because not all puppets look the same. Some of the puppets in the films were extremely detailed and some didn’t even have faces.
There were those that were only wooden cutouts and those that had everything from fancy clothes to the lines in their faces.
One film used hand puppets to tell a story about a horse that rides a flying pink creature around a beach and could not  figure out if it was real or just a dream.
Henson and Hale said they wanted to give inspiration to filmmakers and those who may want to use puppets as a form of expression, so the Handmade Puppet Dreams film festival provided an opportunity to experience the art form of puppetry.