By Patrick King.

Directed by NYU film student Lewie Kloster and animated by his younger brother Noah, Legal Smuggling is a neat short film that illustrates an improvised monologue by the filmmaker Christine Choy about an adventure she had while trying to buy herself cheap cigarettes at a New York duty free shop. The story is narrated by Choy and animated with sketches, cutouts, construction paper, and minimalist drawings that wonderfully illustrate Choy’s narration. The handmade feel of the illustrations seems as off-the-cuff as the story, but something like this was naturally meticulously planned ahead of time.

Choy teaches filmmaking at NYU, which is no doubt how Kloster met her. She’s quite a character, and packs a lot of information, overt and implied, into a four-minute story.

So, for the story: after some calculations, Choy comes to the somewhat amazing conclusion that it’s actually cheaper to buy her cigarettes from a duty free shop. And that includes a cheap round-trip ticket to Canada. She loads up with seven cartons of her favorite brand, but her adventure turns into misadventure when she’s forced to take the flight to Canada that she purchased. On her way back to the U.S., she learns that she can only bring one carton of cigarettes with her into the country. And so she comes up with a scheme to import the rest of her six cartons. It’s a gamble, and maybe a big one, but Choy says, “Being an artist, I always gamble.” Indeed.

I left this brief experience with an intense curiosity about Lewie Kloster and Christine Choy and I’m very interested in following their careers, as well as that of the young animator Noah Kloster.

Go to Vimeo to see the teaser trailer for Legal Smuggling with Christine Choy

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