When a film follows no recognizable story pattern with no character, conflict or resolution, it is often labeled by scholars as an “experimental” film. A label typically placed on films with spinning shapes and jarring noises to be appreciated by small “in” crowds. Having painfully sat through many of these, I admit there are few I have enjoyed.

Then, a film comes along and reminds me that “experimental” can be more than an exploration of form. The experimentation in Far West explores film’s purest intention—the suspension of disbelief—the moment where we fall into the story and drop reason at the doorstep. Nieto cleverly blurs that seam—where does reality end and the story begin?

Far West is less a film and more of a live performance. Nieto stands at the front of a crowd with an artist’s table and a camera looking over his shoulder projecting an image of the table for the crowd. He takes the crowd through the typical construction of an animated scene using cut shapes of cacti and a phony sunset. Then, something unexpected happens. You feel it coming, but it’s a surprise nonetheless. The gasps of the crowd reflect back to the stories we’ve been told of film’s infancy where crowds ran screaming from images of oncoming trains. Moments later you find that seam—that break—and return to reality. But you can’t help but believe it, if even for just a split second, your reason will hang suspended.

I’m surprised by how little has been published about Far West or Nieto for he truly is one of the most refreshing filmmakers to storm the experimental scene. Another equally-inspiring film of his, Carlitopolis, involves a box and a lab mouse (also on YouTube).

Nieto is a young Columbian filmmaker working in Paris who, on his personal website, calls himself a “perversionist artist… persecuted by animals defensors and Hare Krischna.” Capucine, Nieto’s next experiment involving the capucine monkey’s ability to communicate with humans, is scheduled for release in 2008. On this and others, Neito has teamed up with the production crew at Autour de Minuit, the same group behind another Short of the Week selection, Collision.