Baby Listens
2015 · 1m · USA
Directed by Calvin Keyes
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: absurdist, provocative, surreal
Vintage children's-book imagery — birds, cats, baby animals — gets paired with audio sourced from an old educational sex-ed record. The collision is short, sharp, and lingers.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
72 seconds. Either it earns the runtime or it doesn't, and that kind of formal cliff-edge is more interesting than another 12-minute coming-of-age.
Found-footage juxtaposition of midcentury Little Golden Books with vintage sex-ed audio is a sharp, fast jab in the Lewis Klahr tradition, and 72 seconds is the right size for the gag. Compact, clever, unlikely to wear out its welcome.
Found audio from a vintage sex-ed record laid over Little Golden Books illustrations, 72 seconds. The collision is the whole gag, and as a found-footage juxtaposition it's a real one — short, sharp, lingers.