Short of the Week

Play
Fantasy Joaquin Baldwin

Papiroflexia

Spanish for "Origami", Papiroflexia is the tale of Fred, a skillful paper folder who could shape the world with his hands.

Play
Fantasy Joaquin Baldwin

Papiroflexia

Spanish for "Origami", Papiroflexia is the tale of Fred, a skillful paper folder who could shape the world with his hands.

Papiroflexia

Fantasy about Beauty in
Directed By Joaquin Baldwin
Produced By UCLA
Made In USA

I was catching up on some back catalog in the YouTube Screening Room this week when I stumbled upon this brief under-3 minute gem. The category of this post is ‘Filmmaker Update’, but in this case its more of a ‘Filmmaker Flashback’. Maybe that would make a good category too.

This short animation by Joaquin Baldwin is about a man with a passion for origami that sets out to change his his busy, urban environment. Baldwin of course wowed everyone last year with his followup to Papiroflexia, Sebastian’s Voodoo, the amazing 3-D short animation which won the NFB’s 2009 Cannes competition among a slew of other awards.

The style is worlds different from Sebastian’s Voodoo however, favoring a tactile, paper cut-out look. This kind of diversity is great to see in a young animator, and now I’m super-keen on a legitimate Filmmaker Update in the future. Speaking of the NFB Cannes contest, as I was poking around in the Screening Room, I noticed surprisingly that most of this year’s contestants, including the winner, Crash! Bang! Wallow? are still up. Maybe because they are in the Screening Room, they will stick around for the long haul this year. If you haven’t checked them out, do so- especially Love & Theft, Andreas Hykade’s surreal and awesome music animation that deserves a longer post to itself sometime in the future.