Chrysalide
2005 · 21m · France
Directed by Yann Bertrand, Damien Serban
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, sensual, surreal
A 3D animation transcribing the carnal, visceral states of Butoh dance against cold digital architectures.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two French experimentalists weaponizing 3D animation to fight its own sterility—the premise wants to be transgressive but the execution is too formally composed, too aware of its own beauty to actually disturb anything.
Bertrand and Serban are in direct conversation with the digital sublime tradition, translating Butoh's corporeal language into polygon and shader with the kind of considered rigor that only emerges when you understand what you're refusing—this is craft speaking to craft across mediums.
The decision to render human viscera and bodily convulsion through pristine 3D geometry instead of live footage is the entire film, and it's a single-stroke masterstroke: that friction between the digital's coldness and Butoh's heat does everything the runtime needs it to do.