Sticky (2014) - A meditation on uniqueness and the persistence of life

The astonishing true story of the Lord Howe Island stick insects. 'Sticky' is a short animated documentary telling the astonishing true story of the stick insects from Lord Howe Island. Why these particular insects? Because their story is quite simply amazing. They evolved on Lord Howe Island, a tiny speck in the sea between Australia and New Zealand, and exist nowhere else. They're strikingly different to other stick insects - they are robust, fast, jet black and huge - islanders used to call them tree lobsters. In 1918 rats were accidentally introduced to Lord Howe and quickly munched their way through the entire stick insect population. Within a few years the insects were extinct. Or were they? There were some tantalising clues to suggest that they may, against all the odds, have colonised the most remote, inhospitable place you can imagine. . . Ball's Pyramid is the tallest sea stack in the world, as high as a skyscraper, as thin as a blade, rising almost vertically from the sea 25km off Lord Howe Island. It looks exactly like a super-villain's .

SXSW Films for the Forest 2014: WINNER: Best Film Under 40 Minutes
St Kilda Film Festival 2014: WINNER: Best Documentary, NOMINATED: Best Film
San Francisco Green Film Festival 2014: WINNER: Best Short Film

Directed and animated by Jilli Rose.