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This meticulously animated short by the Chinese new-media artist and educator Cao Shu traverses some five millennia of art in a single minute. As flickering images move chronologically, in flipbook fashion, through a parade of styles and artistic movements – from Ancient Egypt, to the Impressionist era, to the 20th century avant-garde – a gender-shifting character makes a series of simple movements, seemingly ambling through the history of art.
Director: Cao Shu
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Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
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Film and visual culture
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
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History of technology
Replicating Shakespearean-era printing brings its own dramas and comedy
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Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
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Beauty and aesthetics
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Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
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War and peace
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12 minutes
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Art
Why Diego Velázquez needed a lifetime to paint his enigmatic masterpiece
31 minutes