365 - One Year, One Film, One Second a Day
2013 · 7m · United Kingdom
Directed by The Brothers McLeod
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
Animator Greg McLeod created one second of hand-drawn animation every day across the 365 days of 2013, with no script or storyboard, each day's snippet sparked by something he read, saw, or experienced. The result is a rapid-fire visual diary of peculiar, disjointed narratives charting the year both real and imagined.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A year of no plan is exactly the kind of constraint-as-liberation move that makes most festival programmers nervous, which means it's probably brilliant—though the Tennant 'plebiscite' bit feels like a wink at its own whimsy rather than a genuine gut-punch.
The McLeods situate themselves in a lineage of diary cinema and durational practice, but without the conceptual rigor of comparable work—it's charming accumulation rather than formally argued meditation on time and image.
1,000+ hours distilled into six minutes: the genius move isn't the year-long commitment, it's trusting that one improvised second per day, edited tight with no narrative safety net, would somehow cohere into something that *feels* alive and specific rather than scattered.
Reviews
A series of peculiar, disjointed narratives which chart the comings and goings of the year, real and imagined.
A visual self portrait of my year — to overwhelm, to delight in, to laugh at and to baffle in equal measure.
Festivals
- Anchorage International Film Festival 2014, Best Animation