Rectangle & Rectangles
1984 · 8m · Canada
Directed by René Jodoin
Genres: animation, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
Vivid geometric forms surge across the frame in tightly timed patterns set against pounding drums. Created through computer-controlled light, filters, and camerawork, the wordless abstraction reflects on cinematic motion and how viewers perceive duration.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Computer-light abstraction with military precision—sounds like design-school homework until you realize Jodoin's deliberately *refusing* narrative, figuration, anything that makes watching easy. The drums pummel you into submission while rectangles do nothing, and somehow that refusal is the whole point.
A vital lineage-marker: Jodoin takes the structuralist rigor of '70s expanded cinema and marries it to early computer aesthetics, creating a film that argues *about* duration and perception through its formal choices rather than illustrating them. The tightly controlled editing and rhythm reflect decades of avant-garde film thinking crystallized into eight perfect minutes.
The decision to lock the pacing to the drum track—not as soundtrack but as skeletal structure—is what makes this work; it transforms geometric abstraction from visual exercise into something that *feels* like it's breathing, or suffocating, depending on where you're sitting.