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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
It's Such a Beautiful Day
don hertzfeldt
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In this third and final chapter to Don Hertzfeldt’s _Everything will be OK_ trilogy, Bill finds himself struggling with memory loss.
Nearly two years in the making, the 23-minute _It’s Such a Beautiful Day_ is Don’s longest, and most ambitious film to date: blending traditional animation, experimental optical effects, trick photography and new digital hybrids printed out one frame at a time, the movie was captured entirely on an antique 35mm animation stand. Built in the 1940s, it is one of the last surviving cameras of its kind still operating in America.
“The film follows an anxiety-stricken stick man named Bill for whom the mundane tasks of everyday life prove Earth-shatteringly momentous. We join him on a bittersweet existential odyssey which takes in dead birds, big onions, lunchbox messages, trains, manatees, leaf-blowers and the eventual death and rebirth of the known universe. The film is a pocket-sized epic, incorporating the blistering deadpan of Buster Keaton, the narrative back-flipping of Charlie Kaufman, the blissful Zen contemplation of Yazujiro Ozu and the grand philosophical investigations of Terrence Malick.” (http://www.ica.org.uk/37391/Film/Its-Such-a-Beautiful-Day-The-Don-Hertzfeldt-Experience.html)
Links: http://www.bitterfilms.com
Nearly two years in the making, the 23-minute _It’s Such a Beautiful Day_ is Don’s longest, and most ambitious film to date: blending traditional animation, experimental optical effects, trick photography and new digital hybrids printed out one frame at a time, the movie was captured entirely on an antique 35mm animation stand. Built in the 1940s, it is one of the last surviving cameras of its kind still operating in America.
“The film follows an anxiety-stricken stick man named Bill for whom the mundane tasks of everyday life prove Earth-shatteringly momentous. We join him on a bittersweet existential odyssey which takes in dead birds, big onions, lunchbox messages, trains, manatees, leaf-blowers and the eventual death and rebirth of the known universe. The film is a pocket-sized epic, incorporating the blistering deadpan of Buster Keaton, the narrative back-flipping of Charlie Kaufman, the blissful Zen contemplation of Yazujiro Ozu and the grand philosophical investigations of Terrence Malick.” (http://www.ica.org.uk/37391/Film/Its-Such-a-Beautiful-Day-The-Don-Hertzfeldt-Experience.html)
Links: http://www.bitterfilms.com
Don Hertzfeldt (US) is an Academy Award nominee whose animated films have screened around the world. Some notable honors include a Short Film Palme d’Or nomination at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival (_Billy’s Balloon_), a 2001 Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short (_Rejected_), the Lawrence Kasdan Award for Best Narrative Film (_Everything will be OK_), and Best Picture & Best Screenplay from the Fargo Film Festival (_I Am So Proud of You_). In 2010, Don received the San Francisco International Film Festival's “Persistence of Vision” Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 33.