Figs in Motion
2010 · 8m · Canada
Directed by Trevor Anderson
Genres: comedy, experimental, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
Two bearded men in tutus and horse heads perform a wild improvised ballet, shown in a triptych of offset Super-8 frames that echoes Degas's dancers and Muybridge's motion studies.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Horse heads and tutus should be a lazy shock-value punchline, but Anderson somehow makes the absurdity *earn* its weight by treating it with the rigor of actual dance—which is, weirdly, the most subversive move here.
The triptych structure isn't decoration; it's a considered dialogue between Degas's compositional eye and Muybridge's scientific frame-sequencing, and the Super-8 degradation becomes a formal argument about how we preserve and fragment movement through time.
The decision to shoot Super-8 across three offset panels means every frame has to work in dialogue with itself—it's technically demanding and formally tight in a way that transforms what could've been a one-joke premise into something that sustains eight minutes through pure compositional control.
Reviews
Cette décomposition du mouvement rappelle le travail d'Eadweard Muybridge. Une parfaite jouissance de l'absurde.