Chairmen
1978 · 13m · Canada
Directed by Jean-Thomas Bédard
Genres: animation, experimental, satire
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Men chase chairs as symbols of success in an animated allegory of power, privilege and lost autonomy.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1978 allegory about men chasing chairs should be heavy-handed garbage, but Bédard somehow makes the absurdity *work*—there's genuine melancholy under the satire, which feels like a betrayal of how obvious the metaphor wants to be, and I respect that contradiction.
Bédard positions this squarely in the lineage of Tati and Eastern European animation satire, where formal restraint and geometric composition do the ideological work; the contemplative pacing and surreal logic announce a filmmaker conversant in his medium's traditions and unafraid to move slowly.
The decision to animate this in such sparse, deliberate style—where each movement of a body toward a chair carries weight—transforms what could have been a one-liner into something genuinely haunting; the restraint is everything.