The Gift animation film, still, 2005 sand animation by Jessica Langford (Pomegranate Films).

Commissioned by Channel Four Television in association with Scottish Screen.  The Gift was inspired by a Japanese legend I heard from the children at Hiroshima Animation Workshop.  The film is animated in sand.  The sensitive and subtle qualities of the sand allowed me to animate transformations, perspectives, scene changes and camera angles directly under the camera, so  scenes flow into each other giving a sense of fragile transience.  A young girl rescues a seal and meets a sea prince in his underwater palace. When she decides to return to her family, the lonely prince gives her a beautiful mysterious shell. Back home, she discovers that she has been away for many years. The house is in ruins and her family gone. In desperation she opens the shell…

The Gift was selected for over forty international film festivals including Edinburgh, Berlin, Palm Springs, Zagreb, Hiroshima and has won several awards.