Rob Munday
Narratives centred on death and grief are hardly uncommon in filmmaking. After all, mortality – and the many ways we respond to it – is one of the few experiences that ultimately unites us all. Apologies if that’s a rather heavy way to begin this article, but thankfully S/W regular Stephen Irwin’s latest short, A Round of Applause for Death, approaches the subject with a typically playful spirit. Despite its dark aesthetic, the film is laced with a mischievous sense of humour. With such familiar themes at its core, you might be forgiven for thinking you know where Irwin’s film is heading. But after following his work for well over a decade – we first featured one of his shorts (The Black Dog’s Progress) back in 2009 – I’ve learnt to always expect the unexpected.
“No idea where it came from, but it appears in the film almost exactly as he said it”
While the logline for Irwin’s latest film speaks of death taking centre stage and faceless spectators applauding the inevitable, it could just as easily read: kids say the strangest things. The film’s repetitive dialogue was inspired by the spontaneous and unexpected words of the filmmaker’s young son. “No idea where it came from, but it appears in the film almost exactly as he said it,” Irwin reveals. Admitting the moment “freaked [him] out” while also “amus[ing him] in equal measure”, he decided to build the entire film around this wonderfully strange sequence of just 11 words.
After spending “a long time” making his previous short, World to Roam, Irwin admits he didn’t want to “dive straight into another narrative film” for his next project. So for A Round of Applause for Death, he embraced a more playful, experimental approach – something you might not expect from a film exploring such heavy themes. By repeating the same phrases throughout the film, he found the freedom to experiment without being constrained by plot, drawing inspiration from the “repetitive, almost meditative structure” of Suicide and Bob Dylan songs.
“I’d often come up with a shot and animate it the same day. All I had to do was keep within the general theme of death.” – Irwin on his production process.
However, A Round of Applause for Death builds directly on that previous film, with its visual world emerging from a series of animation tests made immediately after that project. Both films share a dark, fairy tale aesthetic, existing in a liminal space between reality and fantasy – perhaps echoing the “dreams” repeatedly referenced in the short itself. The result is a macabre but strangely meditative experience, where looping language takes on the rhythm of a mantra, blending with unsettling imagery to create something quietly contemplative.
With that long-standing connection to Irwin’s work, it doesn’t feel like hyperbole to say he’s one of my favourite filmmakers we’ve featured during my nearly 20 years at Short of the Week. That’s no small claim. It’s incredibly difficult for any filmmaker to remain so unapologetically inventive and distinctive across a body of work spanning decades, yet Irwin continues to do exactly that. Constantly innovative and consistently surprising, each new film feels like an event. I approach every release with genuine excitement – and, so far, he has yet to disappoint. If anything, he just keeps getting better!