A Few Activities
2019 · 10m · USA
Directed by Abigail Horton
Genres: comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, humorous
A drifting series of small absurd scenes — a dad reviewing herb scissors, an actress getting bad news during a credit-score commercial, a football team praying — stitched together with stray interstitials of bags in trees and unattended hoses. Misunderstanding as a way of life.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Watch this if you've ever paused on a plastic bag stuck in a tree and felt something. Horton clocks the same frequency without slipping into cute.
Abigail Horton stitches stray vignettes — herb-scissor reviews, mascot prayers, bags in trees — into a Roy Andersson catalog of accident. The interstitial images do as much work as the scenes.
Vignette structure threaded with interstitial mundane curiosities — a dad reviewing herb scissors, an actress getting bad news during a credit-score commercial. Abigail Horton's eye for the small absurd is the entire texture.
Reviews
It's a clever piece of experimental filmmaking, well-observed and idiosyncratic.