Welcome friends and fiends alike to Web Shorts, a new alcove of BRWC.

This is to be a news and reviews section of the kind of filmmaking which doesn’t get a theatrical release, but whose creativity  thrives like a precious orchid amongst a rich internet fertiliser of pornography, bigoted message-board trolls and ten million ‘sneezing-panda’ GIFs.

i.e, it’ll be mostly music videos and the occasional short.

 

PEGASVS, ‘La melodia del afilador’, Dir. by CANADA

PEGASVS ‘La melodía del afilador’ from CANADA on Vimeo.

The name CANADA may be new to you, but chances are you’ve seen and liked some of their work already. Their videos for Battles’ Gloss Drop single and more recently New Lands by Justice managed to stand out thanks to stellar production values married to a irreverent sense of fun.

It’s worth saying that neither video is anything like the other in tone. This is because CANADA are not a single director, but a collective, and rather than a ‘too-many-cooks’ clusterfuck, this has resulted in a singular freshness. Each production team is free to follow their own creative vision, and while CANADA has no house style, all their films share a charming Euro weirdness (even present in the 80’s-Hollywood influenced New Lands video, complete with Snake Plissken-alike)

On to ‘La melodia del afilador’.

The sparse onstage fixed-angle shot of the band is intercut with an epileptic flicker of burning celluloid and stills of knives and fish-netted legs. Definite echoes of Dario Argento, though the guys at CANADA are Catalan Spanish rather than Italian. The Argento influence chimes well with PEGASVS’ onstage use of a reel-to-reel player, and the production seems to tap into the same seam of european Seventies horror as the recent Berberian Sound Studio.

 

Flying Lotus, ‘Until the Quiet Comes’, Dir. by Kahlil Joseph

Flying Lotus – “Until The Quiet Comes” from WHAT MATTERS MOST on Vimeo.

Having not heard the track before seeing this video, it’s hard for me to imagine ‘Until the Quiet Comes’ without Kahlil Joseph’s stunning imagery. The stylised river of blood in the opening scene is reminiscent of Tarsem Singh’s The Fall. But this hyper-reality wrong-foots the viewer, and there is very little artifice about the rest of the film.

The bulk of its scenes aren’t constructed or stylised, and the value of the piece is that Joseph finds beauty in the twilight urban landscape and dignity in its residents, thus subverting the label of ‘ghetto neighbourhood’.

In the final reverse tracking shot, the fluorescent street lighting suggests an aquarium fish-tank, the harshness of the light allowing for no hidden detail, everything on display, with even death played out in public. There’s a Last Supper vibe to the way the neighbourhood residents stand mute witness, implying the shooting is an act against the community as well as the victim. All in all, pretty deep stuff for a music video.

Plus it makes interpretive dance look edgy and non-poncey, no mean feat.

 

See See Motorcycles, Dir. by Greg Schmitt

See See Motorcycles from see see motorcycles on Vimeo.

Ever thought of buying a motorcycle? No? Here, have a look at this online ad for Oregon bike workshop, See See Motorcycles. How about now? Yep, I thought so.

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