Pacific Vein
2024 · 12m · Germany
Directed by Ulu Braun
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, mythic, provocative, surreal
An endless tracking shot through a painterly panoramic collage of the American West, where Julian Assange appears as a soda salesman pondering digitalization while hippies, artists, and homeless people search for meaning under the gaze of surveillance cameras. Fictional scenes, documentary footage, and media imagery merge hypnotically as the American Dream dissolves into ghostly autosuggestion.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Unbroken slow tracking shot through a Bruegel-modeled digital panoramic collage of the American West, with Julian Assange as a soda salesman alongside Bezos and Musk cut-outs — first use of AI as a production tool, twelve minutes. The conceit is real and Braun has the chops. Yes.
Braun's unbroken slow tracking shot through a Bruegel-modeled collage panorama of the American West, with Assange as soda salesman among Bezos, Musk, John Wayne — that is genuine essay-film ambition in the Farocki tradition. Twelve minutes; intellectually rigorous.
11:58 unbroken slow tracking shot through a digitally assembled Bruegel-panorama collage of the American West, with Assange as a soda salesman, Bezos/Musk/John Wayne layered in — Ulu Braun's first declared AI tool use as part of a video-collage essay practice already a decade deep. The technical premise (one continuous painted-panorama tracking shot) is genuinely difficult and conceptually dense.
Reviews
Pacific Vein presents us with a panopticon of digital fragmentation, a slowly panning shot of aggressively garish Americana frittering away in the California desert... films like Pacific Vein are going some way to developing a genuine filmic language that integrates the digital world.
I display these media quotes on an equal footing with documentary scenes and merge them into 'reality in the 21st century.'
Festivals
- Berlinale Shorts 2024
- 25fps Festival 2024