Fast-forward through a history of human artefacts, from arrowheads to plastic toys

For his short film The Five-Minute Museum (2015), the UK director Paul Bush was given access to objects in some of the premier historical museums of Europe, including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Bern Historical Museum in Switzerland. The resulting short video provides a whirlwind survey of human history, from arrowheads to plastic toys. Flipping through objects at a rate of 24 images per second, Bush builds a series of stop-motion animations spanning from the Bronze Age to the Information Age, and touching on such timeless and intertwined human endeavours as religion, recreation, food, currency and war. Meticulously crafted with impressive sound design to match, the resulting film forms an arc that perhaps mirrors the character of humanity itself – brimming with contradictions, and cascading ever forward.