Showing @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 09 Feb only @ 18:05

This short film serves to remind that animation can be just as effective a work of art as anything hanging in the National Gallery of Scotland – appropriate, given that Manipulate‘s last day focuses on home-grown Scottish talent. And so turning the tables on the traditional focus at the football pitch, Ross Hogg, a recent Glasgow School of Art graduate, looks instead to the viewers of the fans in his animation Spectators.

The pace is frenetic, as we zip along various stands in a riot of colour and movement. Different characters are introduced – the whispering duo mocking their fellow fans, the elderly gent just trying to enjoy his paper – before we’re off again to another corner, another stand, another patch. Outlines blur into each other seamlessly, forming a continuous black line that weaves through the story like a taut silk thread.

The after-show questions reveal that this work is in many ways more personal than Hogg’s first film, an adaptation of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. Such a tone adds an enormous amount of heart, and even for the determined non-sports fan, it captures the sheer joy and pulsating enjoyment of ‘the beautiful game’ – despite showing almost none of it.