All I Want For Christmas-Mariah Carey (Directed by Stan Brakhage)
2015 · 4m · USA
Directed by Conor Williams
Genres: experimental, musical
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, humorous
A playful conceptual film by queer writer-filmmaker Conor Williams asking: what if experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage had directed Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' music video? The result applies Brakhage's avant-garde visual language to an extremely mainstream pop artifact.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The premise is the title is the joke is the whole film: what if the most avant-garde experimental filmmaker in American history directed Mariah Carey. The answer is four minutes long and entirely correct. I want this played at every film theory class forever.
Conor Williams's conceptual mashup runs on a single witty premise and survives it; Brakhagean abstraction laid over pop confection turns out to be a real argument about how we see, not just how we joke.
The premise is the joke and the joke fully lands — Brakhagean hand-painted abstraction colliding with Mariah's pop carol at under four minutes. Conceptual mashup as merry vandalism.