His transformation (The Meeting ) - Review

---

TIMELESS, directed by Susan Mey Lee Lim, Samudra Kajal Saikia, and Christina Teenz Tan, is a super short video music of 3 minutes and a half.

The video is animated, and it follows the adventure of a little girl and her stuffed lion around the world.

Their journey goes from a sunset in a forest to a snowy landscape, from a beautiful fading of one of Dalí’s most famous paintings to faraway cities. After a close-up with the characters in the space, they dissolve into small paintings made of memories.

Memory is the main topic of the song and the video. And characters live within it and above time. As Susan May Lee Lim states in her director’s note, connections beyond reality are the key to her research. She is not only a director but a surgeon and creative director of a project about companionship between humans and inanimate creatures, empowered by “the new sciences of synthetic DNA, the technologies of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Physics,  to address the global challenge of loneliness and the need for new approaches to companionship in a future world.”

This project makes even more sense in a world that has to fight a global pandemic and has already been challenged by the over-use of social networks that connect us throughout the globe. But do they keep us together?

The music (by Ron J Danziger, lyrics by Christina Teenz Tan, arranged by Matthieu Eymard) is charming and reminds of the sounds of the Country genre. It starts with only voice and guitar and then adds bass, drums, and keyboard.

Timeless is surely a lovely project, a mirror of our current times, and a reason for hope. 

Everything about Edsta's short film TAKE THE VAX is great.

From the plot to the photography, from the flawless editing to the protagonist (played by the talented Fesal Jaber).

From the first images, we realize that we are in front of a quality product, packaged by someone who has been dealing with a camera for quite some time, both behind it and in front of it.

The idea, current but gutted in a very original way, is implemented through a genre that could be considered horror, which also certainly winks at comedy, mainly thanks to how they have chosen to represent the antagonist.

However, what makes this short film perfect is the free interpretation subtext that embodies the script: governments invite everyone to get vaccinated with pounding advertising messages, and relatives and friends (and in this case also strangers passers-by) perceive as enemies those who have decided not to get vaccinated and vice-versa.

But is there someone right and someone wrong about it?

The author does not respond directly but shows a character who defeats the enemy and transforms him into an ally simply by accepting his fate, although literally persecuted and violently pushed in the direction desired by the government and the people around him.

And from there on, his life improves.

However, as the audience, we are left with a question that everyone can answer according to their opinions. And isn't this the primary purpose of a successful story?

Congratulations to the director and author Edsta and to the producer and protagonist Fesal Jaber (a face that we will surely soon get used to recognizing in the industry) for this ambitious project. It's not easy to succeed in telling a story about something that it's still occurring without either overreacting or ending up being trivial. 

But TAKE THE VAX made it, and we enjoyed it.

 Fantasy Of Companionship Between Human and Inanimate is a  14-minute animated short film written by Susan Lim, Christina Teenz Tan and Thomas Z.  Shepard.

 It's the story of a small lion whose soul, once flown from his  body, finds a home in the body of a small stuffed lion, which will  become the little girl Chistina's best friend. Christina will take care  of him, she will call him Alan, and she will not abandon him even when,  now grown up, has to leave home to go to college to become a scientist.  And it is precisely here that Alan decides to entrust his body and soul  to a scientific project to acquire a synthetic DNA that will allow him  to transport himself and have artificial intelligence.

The  illustrations chosen by the directors (Susan Lim herself, Samudra Kajal  Saikia, and Christina Teenz Tan) are realistic but at the same time  retain a fairytale atmosphere, also enhanced by the narration of the  voice over by Adrian Peacock who, together with the perfect soundtrack  (created by Manu Martin,  Joi Barua, Ron J  Danziger, and Matthieu Eymard with the super well known and awarded  Stefano Civetta and Greg Calibi as sound engineers) offers 14 minutes of  story in which the audience can dream with the characters through the  numerous settings, ranging from the jungle of Tanzania to California,  from exteriors to interiors, from days to nights. 

 This short movie is also a tribute to science, an  additional attribute to be considered precious, especially in this  historical period in which science is considered fundamental (it is no  wonder that Susan Lim, writer and director of the short movie, is also a  scientist herself). 

And it is precisely the combination of dream and  science that makes this work extremely original and necessary. 

Science  has always embodied rationality but we rarely focus on the most  important characteristic that unites all scientists: imagination. 

And imagination is the main ingredient that dreamers are made of.