Freeze Frame
2020 · 5m · Belgium
Directed by Soetkin Verstegen
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
Identical figures perform the futile labor of harvesting and preserving blocks of ice in which animals are frozen — a meditative stop-motion work about preservation and decay.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Stop-motion using ice as the actual medium — decay is the co-animator and the animals come back to life inside their melting prisons. That's the brief, that's the whole brief.
Verstegen's collaboration with ice as both subject and medium is precisely the kind of material entropy I find programmatically irresistible; the lineage runs straight to Svankmajer. Short of the Week's spotlight feels almost beside the point.
Short of the Week's writeup confirms what the unusual_element claims — actual ice as sculptural medium, century-old preserved negatives as inspiration — and at 5 minutes that's a tight, conceptually airtight stop-motion idea. Verstegen letting material entropy do half the dramaturgy is exactly the kind of formal honesty I want to champion.
Festivals
- Clermont-Ferrand 2020, Special Jury Prize
- Annecy 2020, Jury Distinction