Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Warning: this film features rapidly flashing images that can be distressing to photosensitive viewers.
A wizard of the video essay form, the Dutch filmmaker, photographer and artist Michiel de Boer (aka Posy) specialises in using macro photography and digital effects to mine incredible visuals from mundane objects and images. In doing so, his work illuminates the hidden aesthetics and inner workings of the everyday world. In this short, Posy fixes his formidable lens on the world of electronic paper – used in e-readers and digital clocks, for example – in a quest to uncover why it tends to be, quite literally, a pale imitation of the real thing. Using extreme close-ups to explore various types of electronic paper display, Posy reveals the exquisite patterns and fascinating technology that underpins them, as well as why they have thus far failed to measure up to good old-fashioned ink and paper.
Video by Posy
video
Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
video
Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
video
Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
video
History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
video
Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
video
Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
video
Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes