Insectar
2016 · 2m · Romania
Directed by Andreea Dobre
Genres: experimental
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, darkly comic
A man undertakes the obsessive project of cataloguing every single emotion he experiences, treating his inner life as a specimen collection to be pinned and labeled. The film renders this impossible bureaucratic intimacy as a 2-minute experimental portrait.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A man tries to pin-collect his own feelings like dead butterflies — it's the most gloriously futile administrative project ever committed to film, and I am fully here for the breakdown.
Dobre treats emotions as entomological taxonomy in two relentless Romanian minutes — clinical detachment and interiority collapsed into a single conceit. Brief but conceptually precise.
Two minutes treating human emotion as entomological taxonomy is a hell of a thesis statement, but at that length it lives or dies on a single sustained tonal commitment. Dobre's experimental conceit is precise enough that I trust the brevity is doing exactly the right amount of work.
Festivals
- Bucharest ShortCut CineFest 2017, Best Experimental Film, Best Actor
- IbizaCineFest 2017, Best Experimental
- Gstaadfilm International Festival for Short Art Films 2017, Golden Cow of Gstaad Trophy
- Carnegie Museum of Art 2-Minute Film Festival 2017
- Experiments in Cinema 2017