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The US filmmaker Conner Griffith is known for experimental works that offer perspective-shifting explorations of everyday scenes and objects. For Still Life, he compiled and choreographed a dizzying dance of more than 1,000 engravings from the 19th century – from flowers to teapots to amphibians. The resulting short explores the philosophical notion that, as Griffith puts it, ‘we live in a world of objects and a world of objects lives within us’. Meticulously crafted in both sound and imagery, the resulting short forms an impressive and enigmatic meditation on consciousness.
Director: Conner Griffith
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Sports and games
Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play
5 minutes
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Spirituality
Through rituals of prayer, a monk cultivates a quietly radical concept of freedom
4 minutes
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Fairness and equality
‘To my old master’ – a freed slave answers the request to return to his old plantation
7 minutes
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Design and fashion
A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery
14 minutes
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Animals and humans
Villagers struggle to keep their beloved, endangered ape population afloat
19 minutes
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Art
Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement
15 minutes
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Language and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
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Ethics
Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?
5 minutes
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Information and communication
‘Astonished and somewhat terrified’ – Victorians’ reactions to the phonograph
36 minutes