Two Faces

An abstract poetic tale that tells both one and a thousand stories of love and loss, by a designer on The Beatles Yellow Submarine film

If you can read a face like a book, then here it is a book of poetry. Loose brushstrokes sketch a series of portraits of two faces, one male and one female, whilst the verse on the soundtrack tells the tale of both one and a thousand relationships. Alison de Vere was responsible for both the text and images, and the film was released in the same year she worked as a designer on the animated Beatles feature, Yellow Submarine (1968).

Though she had worked in the animation industry since the early 1950s, this was Alison’s first independent short. Almost a decade later her second, Café Bar (1975) brought here considerable festival attention, followed by Mr Pascal (1979) and her masterpiece The Black Dog (1987).