the point.
the point. is a joyful excursion in the history of animated film, a journey through an era when newspaper images were still rasterized and composed of picture points rather than pixels. The title is the theme here, and the point takes center stage in all colors and sizes, twelve times, for example, on the edges of a clock face, where it first shows the hours, but rolls away, as though rolling off a roulette table to then mark the fleeting here and now in the next image. At the same time, this film by Andrea Maurer and Thomas Brandstätter alias Studio 5 is very precisely worked out technically, in part laid out image for image on the analogue animation table and photographed, then surprisingly combined with shots filmed in the green box. Here, stop-motion meets after effects, but the generations mesh with one another well, at times the results recall Terry Gilliam’s early works for Monty Python, at times Dadaist collages.
At the beginning of the film, one sees two academics engraved in copper debating with one another: Gerhard Mercator and Jodocus Hondius, who in the sixteenth century were the first to suggest the separation of the globe into degrees of longitude and latitude. The globes that they hold in their hands are mankind’s arduous attempts to represent larger connections: the world measurable by compass, debatable. In the end, the earth, as well as the sun and the stars in the solar system remain vague points in our minds. Why not stir up some fantastical mischief with this presented approach to something that we don’t fully understand anyway. the point. does precisely that and in doing so, is truly a lot of fun.
(Maya McKechneay)
Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt
der springende punkt.
2013
Austria
4 min 27 sec