This Is a Recorded Message
1973 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Jean-Thomas Bédard
Genres: animation, experimental, satire
Tones: absurdist, dark, provocative
An experimental animated short bombards viewers with thousands of cut-out advertisements in ever faster, more fragmented succession to expose how consumer advertising shapes desire and daily life.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Fifty years before TikTok algorithmically weaponized attention, Bédard was already nuking the format—stacking thousands of cut-outs into a visual avalanche that doesn't explain or moralize, just lets the machinery eat itself. The kind of film that gets called "dated" by people too comfortable with what they're being sold.
A direct descendant of Fluxus and structural film's interrogation of the image itself; the relentless acceleration and formal repetition recall both Brakhage's materialist experiments and Pop Art's deadpan citation of mass culture, positioning the work within a rigorous post-war avant-garde lineage.
The genius move isn't the concept—it's the decision to never cut away, never let the viewer's eye rest or orient: by removing montage's traditional breathing room and instead layering advertisements into an almost sculptural density, Bédard forces you to *feel* cognitive overload rather than just understand it intellectually.