About the Liminal Soup Blog
Andre Silva Andre Silva

About the Liminal Soup Blog

I’ve decided to start a blog. But why a blog and why liminal and why soup?

I’ve spent the majority of the past 25 years working in experimental modes of filmmaking (including experimental animation and experimental documentary), so this blogging thing is new territory for me. But again, why blog and why now?

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On Perfection
Andre Silva Andre Silva

On Perfection

Something about the phrase, “nobody’s perfect” bothers me. The roteness with which people utter the phrase gets under my skin, yes, but what I think bugs me even more is that the phrase implies that there is a perfect out there - an ideal form, without flaw against which people can never measure up. But what does this even look like?

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Maybe Your Art is Not for This World
Andre Silva Andre Silva

Maybe Your Art is Not for This World

I’ve been making films for a while so I occasionally get the question, “what advice do you have for young filmmakers?”

I’m not young. I’m not old . . . but I’m definitely not young.

My first advice would be, “you shouldn’t take my advice,” but aside from that, if there are some wisdom nuggets the reader finds useful, great!

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Diana Walsh Pasulka Interview : Part II
Andre Silva Andre Silva

Diana Walsh Pasulka Interview : Part II

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka to discuss some fascinating developments around the topic of UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) within the cultural sphere. The concept of UAPs might be more familiar to most under a previous term, UFOs (though the UFO term doesn’t capture the full spectrum of the phenomena).

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Diana Walsh Pasulka Interview : Part I
Andre Silva Andre Silva

Diana Walsh Pasulka Interview : Part I

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka to discuss some fascinating developments around the topic of UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) within the cultural sphere. The concept of UAPs might be more familiar to most under a previous term, UFOs (though the UFO term doesn’t capture the full spectrum of the phenomena).

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Neither Believing nor Disbelieving: Impossible Futures, Conspiracy Theories, Aliens, and More: Part III
Andre Silva Andre Silva

Neither Believing nor Disbelieving: Impossible Futures, Conspiracy Theories, Aliens, and More: Part III

December 21, 2012 - the end date of the 5,126-year Mayan long count calendar. Planetary destruction of a cosmic new age? As modern, non-Mayans, with little to no understanding of the Mayan culture, cosmology, and concept of time, some of us scoffed, some of us were were perhaps disappointed, and I’ll venture to guess most of us paid little attention when this date passed and delivered neither of the above outcomes.

. . . Then again, the last ten years have been freakishly weird. I have playfully speculated to a few that the world as we knew it really did end and we’re in some surreal alternate timeline.

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Stories Beyond Perspective
Andre Silva Andre Silva

Stories Beyond Perspective

Just as I have been thinking about the limitations of materialist reductionist science, I have also started wondering about the limitations of perspective. Perspective plants one at a specific place and time. The viewer is a finite being with a limited view on the world.

In “Revelation to the Disembodied” I experiment with creating a story structure beyond perspective where the viewer is in multiple places with two different identities at once.

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On Hope in Speculative Fiction
Andre Silva Andre Silva

On Hope in Speculative Fiction

I was recently asked the question “Would you say that this is a hopeful film?” at a film festival q&a regarding my latest science fiction animation. I sensed from the person asking the question that they truly wished my answer to be “yes.”

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