Trashy Humour: A Comedy in Fragments (2016)

30 seconds; prod. Acme Filmworks / Greg Holfield

This very short film is based on the contents of P. Oxy 5189, a fragment of a 6th c. CE Greek mime that was preserved on papyrus and discovered in the town of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt.

This animation was conceived of and produced as part of a project entitled “Broken Scenes: Resurrecting Ancient Fragmented Voices Through Animation” that was sponsored by the University of Oxford Department of Papyrology. The aim was to explore animation as medium that can help scholars “reconstruct ancient popular performances, as a way of re-inventing the text for further study or teaching.” A fuller account of the project’s origins and aims can be found here: http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/trashyhumour/