Domino
2007 · 2m · Belgium
Directed by Sandy Claes
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
A hand-drawn domino game unfolds as a noisy cascade of random shapes — dominoes, a man, a balloon, a tree — in a flip-book-style meditation on the mechanics of animation itself.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Claes takes the flip-book form—already a cliché of indie animation—and somehow makes it feel genuinely anarchic; the dominoes don't topple in order, they just *explode*, which should be boring but somehow isn't.
A precise meditation on the grammar of animation itself, where Claes's formal constraint—the domino as both metaphor and method—achieves the kind of crystalline self-awareness that places it squarely in conversation with structuralist cinema and Len Lye's kinetic experiments.
The genius move is surrendering to randomness within such a controlled form; by letting the cascade become genuinely unpredictable rather than choreographed, Claes unlocks a visual rhythm that feels alive in a way most animated shorts never touch.
Reviews
« Domino » se présente moins comme un véritable film que comme une expérience technique utilisant à son avantage les limitations du matériel pour faire un modeste retour aux origines du cinéma. Son originalité et sa sobriété lui ont d'ailleurs permis de remporter le Grand Prix du jury au festival Cinépocket, cette année.