HA'Aki
2008 · 4m · Canada
Directed by Iriz Pääbo
Genres: animation, experimental, sports
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
An abstract animated retelling renders a full hockey game through improvised image-and-music fragments inspired by former NHL player Eric Nesterenko.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A hockey game told through abstract fragments and improvisation instead of, you know, actual hockey—it's the kind of perverse premise that shouldn't work but somehow does, and the fact that it's tethered to a real NHL player's ghost makes it even weirder in the best way.
Pääbo's approach demonstrates sophisticated engagement with the avant-garde tradition of sports as formal abstraction, positioning itself within a lineage that stretches from Vertov to contemporary experimental animation, though the reliance on improvisation occasionally works against sustained compositional rigor.
The decision to build a full game narrative through fragmented image-and-music improvisation rather than linear storytelling creates this strange coherence where you feel the *shape* of hockey without seeing it—that structural inversion is what makes four minutes feel complete.