For Grands Canons, the French artist Alain Biet made extraordinarily precise drawings of hundreds of ordinary things – pencils and pens, flyswatters and corkscrews, shampoos and spatulas – to build a ‘visual symphony of everyday objects’. Biet adds another level of artistry via his meticulous stop-motion animations, ordering and arranging these lifelike illustrations to build an oddly entrancing viewing experience, complete with a jazzy score by the duo YeP* that evokes the sound of the objects fluttering across the screen. The resulting short film forms something of a tribute to human ingenuity – or, at the very least, a testament to Biet’s knack for mining magic from the mundane.
Director: Alain Biet
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The ancient world
What wine vessels reveal about politics and luxury in ancient Athens and Persia
16 minutes
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Art
David Goldblatt captured the contradictions of apartheid in stark black and white
15 minutes
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Space exploration
In the search for life, might alien ocean worlds be a better bet than Earth-like planets?
5 minutes
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Love and friendship
When drawing your muse hundreds of times becomes an exercise in love
7 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Is simulation theory a way to shirk responsibility for the world we’ve created?
13 minutes
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Biology
A dazzling slice-by-slice exploration of wood exposes hidden patterns and hues
2 minutes
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Family life
In Rwanda, Sébastien finds traces of personal history in the wake of national tragedy
21 minutes
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Dance and theatre
Leaf through Shakespeare’s First Folio for a riveting journey into theatre history
13 minutes
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Architecture
Modern architecture should embrace – not ignore or repel – the nonhuman world
8 minutes