Relentless Melt No. 47: Jilin Animation Institute

Relentless Melt No. 47 - Jilin Animation Institute, Changchun, China, 22 May 2026. Screening of a Relentless Melt programme of abstract and experimental animation films from Hong Kong, followed by an exchange session with students and staff.

Curatorial Statement by Max Hattler
Relentless Melt No. 47 presents a selection of new abstract and experimental animation works by students and recent graduates from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong, alongside one earlier film from my own time as a student at the Royal College of Art. The programme is organised around an interest in what happens when image and sound stop illustrating one another and begin to become one another: when rhythm, texture, pulse and timbre take precedence over narrative structure, and animation approaches the condition of visual music.

Relentless Melt is a Hong Kong–based society dedicated to the production, dissemination and appreciation of abstract and experimental moving image. Since its founding in 2017 it has grown into a travelling screening series, with numbered programmes presented in Berlin, London, Tehran, Reykjavík, Taipei and elsewhere, at universities, festivals and cinemas. The “melt” in the name signals the practice of dissolving boundaries: between figuration and abstraction, between cinema and music, between optical sound and image, between author and audience. “Relentless” speaks to the persistence of this work – frame by frame, year after year, often outside commercial contexts but with conviction.

The films in No. 47 are not designed to tell stories in a conventional sense. There are no protagonists or three act arcs. Instead, they invite a mode of engagement closer to listening than to reading: attending to how shapes evolve, how temporal structures emerge, how sound sculpts the image and how the image, in turn, shapes what is heard. Many of the works come from students who only recently discovered that animation could be abstract at all. Their rapid movement from technical proficiency to exploratory, research driven practice is central to the pedagogical project behind this programme.

Hong Kong’s dense, fast, noisy environment is an underlying presence in much of the work – as rhythm, as flicker, as pressure on the frame. Relentless Melt No. 47 thus operates both as a snapshot of emerging practices in abstract animation and optical sound at CityUHK, and as a contribution to ongoing conversations about how animation can think through perception, materiality and urban experience beyond narrative.

FILMS IN RUNNING ORDER
Tram — 2025 | 1:00 | MFA — Jonathan CHAN Pok Him, WU Zeyang
Totem — 2026 | 4:15 | MFA Thesis — Jonathan CHAN
Great Day Today — 2026 | 1:00 | MFA — BIAN Ning, WANG Yuchen, XING Xiangyi, ZHOU Xuanfu
Ctrl c+v+? — 2026 | 2:58 | BA — CAO Yifei, CHEN Yibing, DENG Qi
Temple Pulse — 2026 | 1:02 | BA — CHEN Yibing, CAO Yifei, DENG Qi
Squint Your Eyes To Get A Better Picture — 2025 | 4:24 | MFA Thesis — Jonathan KAN
Refraction — 2026 | 3:16 | BA — AN Sabrina, NG Kiu Tung Natalie, YU Ching Yu Jennifer
Elements — 2026 | 3:17 | BA — Wing Yi Quinn WONG
Unfold — 2026 | 2:47 | MFA Thesis — Shengtao HONG
See It Through — 2026 | 2:23 | MFA — Youran ZHANG
Collision — 2005 | 2:23 | RCA MA Thesis — Max HATTLER
Faces — 2026 | 1:02 | BA — Sabrina AN, NG Kiu Tung Natalie, WONG Wing Yi Quinn, YU Ching Yu Jennifer
Enigma — 2026 | 4:05 | BA — Pak Long LO
Estrella Distante — 2026 | 3:11 | MFA — TANG Jingcheng, XING Xiangyi, ZHOU Xuanfu
Street Street Street — 2026 | 1:05 | BA — HUNG Wan Yin, LAU Sum Yee, YU Ching Yin
Wanderers — 2025 | 3:46 | BA — Muhammad Mustefa BUKHARI
The Interval Between — 2026 | 1:00 | BA — CHEN Wai Lam, NG Kwan Yi, WANG Lok Sze, WONG Sui Kei
Time Was Wasted — 2026 | 3:04 | MFA — BIAN Ning, WANG Yuchen