© Reisinger Studio (via Vimeo)
‘Arcadia’ is a narrated short film that journeys through our collective twenty-first-century existential crisis. It is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary collaboration between artist Andrés Reisinger, musician RAC, and poet Arch Hades.
Arcadia is a prime example of how interdisciplinary collaboration in the creative field can produce truly astonishing audio-visual computer generated art. I strongly recommend watching the ten-minute film in fullscreen on a big enough display and with a good sound system –or capable headphones– plugged in to enjoy this poetic piece in all its glory.
© Sean Sevestre (via Vimeo)
Journey is a short animated film that I unintentionally started making in July 2020 as I moved back to Scotland in the midst of pandemic happenings.
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Taking me on my own meta-journey of combining 3d and animation with my paintings in new ways in an effort to unlock new potential to bring my work to life. The culmination of this organic play being Journey.
— Scottish artist Sean Sevestre about his artistic short animated film Journey
© Jonathan Djob Nkondo / It’s Nice That (via Vimeo)
The mentality behind all my work is to tell a story in a unique way. Simple stories, few elements, with a smart way to add narrative
You can definitely see this mindset of Jonathan Djob Nkondo shaping all of his beautiful short films, but I’m especially intrigued by this one from 2018 called Comfort Zone.
The weekly series ‘Kurzschluss‘ (short circuit) by Franco-German TV network ‘ARTE’ offers short films a unusual platform for the medium in the main program of linear television. Yesterday’s episode paid tribute to its broadcasting date, focusing on shorts influenced by “9/ 11 and its aftermath” as well as the Charlie Hebdo shooting of 2015 in France.
One of the three selected stories was the incredibly tense and absolutely superbly produced un état d’urgence | state of emergency. The short kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish and still echoes through my mind a day later.
A movie about a society in fear. It is the story of two soldiers in the everyday life of Paris guarding an official building. […] The lines between normality and real danger disappear.
© Above&Below and Einar Fehrholz (via Vimeo)
Aquateque is a short film and multimedia installation exploring the river Ruhr through a variety of new media technologies. The diverse ecosystem of the surrounding is captured through audio, visual and 3d modelling tools and transformed into a generative augmented space. The project explores themes such as digital material ecology and neural networks as artistic tools to dream about alternative and fantastical worlds in which nature, machines and humans collide.
❤️☠️🤖
The second season of the unique animated Netflix series Love Death + Robots is available since last weekend and once again David Fincher and Tim Miller have put together an impressive collection of science fiction short films by animation studios from around the world, as well as Miller’s very own visual effects studio Blur.
As a result the eight new episodes, produced by different casts and crews, vary widely in tone, length and style again, whereby the series as a whole still clearly targets an adult audience.
After the first run my favourite new episode is “The Drowned Giant” by Tim Miller himself, which closes this season and offers an unusual, poetic and gentle narrative based on a short story by J. G. Ballard from 1964. It stands out against the rather action-filled, more traditional Sci-Fi topics presented in most of the other new pieces of the anthology.
It can’t quite keep up with the wonderful, Zen-like “Zima Blue” from season one, though, which I must have watched a dozen times. To me the second season overall is not as strong as the first one, albeit beeing extremly impressive and diverse on the technical side yet again. Perhaps the concept isn’t as fresh anymore as it was when launched initially back in 2019 –so thematic overlaps are predetermined to happen–, or perhaps the fewer episodes –eight instead of eighteen– naturally leave less room for variation and new ideas. Either way, I somewhat missed the impact the first eigtheen episodes had on me.
With that beeing said, if you are into (mature) animation, the art of moving-images and science fiction stories, there’s nothing like this series –at least since Heavy Metal (1981) and Animatrix (2003)– and season two is well worth watching for sure. I’m very happy the gutsy, artistic project is continued, an eight-episode third season is scheduled for a release in 2022.