Magda (2004)

Directed by

Chel White

Genre

animation

Country

United States

Runtime

6 min

Rating

6.1 of 10 from 7 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A man remembers his first love affair with a circus contortionist. The story is told through stop motion animation using wooden manikins.

touchingdreamlikemelancholicslow-burnvisually lushintimatenostalgicpoignant

What happens

Magda is a 2004 stop motion animated short film by independent filmmaker Chel White, from a story written and read by monologist Joe Frank. A first love is corrupted as a man recalls his affair with a beautiful circus contortionist in this stop-motion animation of wooden manikins. Short of the Week's Serafima Serafimova describes Magda as "A love story so beautiful and incredibly touching in its simplicity… it's a real gem of untarnished beauty." Visually, the film explores the use of extreme telephoto lenses, creating enigmatic scenes that reveal themselves over time, and ghostly figures drifting in-and-out of focus. Animation World Network describes the aesthetic as "swimming in the rack-focus sea of a telephoto lens with an extremely shallow depth of field. This can feel like the equivalent of driving through a thick fog, but it is also a very efficient means of directing the eye to the relevant action in some very busy sets." The characters in the film are derived from basic, pose-able wooden manikins found in any art supply store, but extensively redesigned and rigged to be usable as stop motion puppets. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
• Memory of Red (2004)
• Imprints (2004)
• Blood Tea and Red String (2006)
• Freaks (1932)
• Love Letter (2009)
• Before Sunset (2004)
• The Machinist (2004)