EMBRACED (Étreintes)
2018 · 5m · France
Directed by Justine Vuylsteker
Genres: animation, experimental, romance
Tones: melancholic, sensual, surreal, tender
A woman at a window is torn between the man who shares her present and the man from her past — rendered in near-extinct pinscreen animation.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Made on the last Alexeïeff/Parker pinscreen ever built in 1977 — the technique alone is a reason to watch, and Vuylsteker isn't slumming with it; NFB and OFFSHORE put real weight behind this. Six minutes of nearly-extinct image-making. Yes.
The Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen is one of cinema's near-extinct techniques, and Vuylsteker made this on the last machine the inventors themselves built in 1977 — that material fact alone is curatorially significant. Five minutes of irreplaceable formal heritage.
5:26, 38.1K views, 691 likes, made on the last pinscreen Alexeïeff and Parker built in 1977, OFFSHORE/NFB/PICTANOVO production with Pierre Caillet's original score — this is the rarest filmmaking technique on Earth, period. Anything made on that pinscreen is craft history.
Festivals
- Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2018