Silent
2014 · 3m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Brandon Oldenburg
Genres: adventure, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
It is the story of two street artists who discover an old artefact inside a theatre, and embark on a cinematographic adventure of images and sounds.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Two street artists finding a mystic artifact and spiraling into surreal montage—it's the kind of premise that could've been mawkish, but Oldenburg's refusal to explain anything or land on narrative closure keeps it genuinely unsettling.
Oldenburg situates this within the experimental essay tradition, where image and sound become equal partners in meaning-making; the formal restraint—three minutes, minimal dialogue—recalls the structural rigor of the avant-garde lineage.
The decision to let the artifact itself remain visually ambiguous, never clarifying what 'it' is, means the entire film pivots on the viewer's discomfort with not-knowing—a single choice of restraint that justifies every surreal image that follows.