The Monolith
2017 · 10m · United States
Directed by Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr.
Genres: animation, documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
New York City artist Gwyneth Leech turns the construction of a high-rise that will block the skyline view from her midtown studio into an animated reflection on art, perspective, and one's place in life.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a film about an artist watching a building go up, which sounds like the most boring premise imaginable — and yet Guglielmo Jr. somehow weaponizes that constraint into something genuinely strange, turning real-estate obstruction into a meditation on erasure that refuses the easy metaphor.
The hybrid form — animation layered over documentary footage of construction — feels earned rather than novelty-seeking; it positions itself squarely in the essay-film tradition while making a formal argument about how perspective literally reshapes our visual world, the kind of structurally deliberate work that lingers in conversation.
The decision to animate Gwyneth's perspective *over* the real construction footage is the hinge: it's technically modest but conceptually perfect, letting the animation do the subjective work while the documentary grounds it, and that tonal negotiation between the two is where the film actually lives.
Reviews
Full disclosure: I’m tired of artist profile docs. That might seem unfair, but considering how many shorts I watch, you’d be surprised how many are about a painter…or a sculptor…or a custom guitar manufacturer.