Interoculus
2010 · 1m · Canada
Directed by Marie Valade
Genres: animation, experimental, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
In an immense space, a woman, a man and a fish pose questions about perception, using pixillation and stop-motion to test how audiences see and interpret 3-D film.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A minute-long interrogation of 3-D perception wrapped in whimsy—Valade's doing the formal work other animators avoid, but the premise feels more like a gallery placard than a film that *does* something unexpected with the gimmick.
Valade positions herself in direct dialogue with experimental animation's lineage—Richter, McLaren, the structural avant-garde—but executes with a restraint and formal precision that feels genuinely generative; the pixillation-stop-motion hybrid becomes a meditation on how cinema constructs dimensionality itself.
The genius move is treating the fish as a third focal point rather than a prop—it forces the eye to negotiate depth across three planes simultaneously, and in a 60-second format where every frame counts, that compositional choice makes the perceptual argument *felt* instead of explained.