We Were Here Once – A Letter to the Ones Beyond the Stars

Voyager 1 and 2 each carried a Golden Record, a disc which carried sounds, images, music and greetings from our planet to anyone or anything that might come across the spacecraft as they travel through interstellar space.  Yet what would you write if you were to send your own missive to the ones beyond the stars?  This deeply thought-provoking short film by Véras Fawaz focuses on an elderly gentleman, approaching death with quiet dignity, who is about to send his final message. 

As well as being a beautiful piece of film-making, with the visual richness of a full-length movie, the message that the old man sends into space is something very special.  Shaped by the awareness of his own mortality, as well as that of those he loves and loved, the letter presents us as fragile, yet driven and very, very, well, human. It confronts issues that are very twenty-first century – how we fill our lives with stories and screens to cope with fear, even though that might make us feel more disconnected than ever.  The old man identifies love as the defining human force, on which is quiet, enduring and found in moments both ordinary and extraordinary.  It sends to the stars a simple message – that humans feel, fear and love.  And even as we edge towards death, we still hope to connect. 

Watch We Were Here Once below.

Man

Just in case you thought I had been a little too optimistic of late then here is something that put me back on track.  Man tells the story of, well, man – but through the somewhat jaded but nevertheless keen and penetrative gaze of London based animator and illustrator Steve Cutts.  We get to see half a million years of human history in just a few minutes and, one must admit – if you look at it this way then perhaps we deserve everything we get as a species.

Man certainly works as an antidote to all the faux Christmas bonhomie doing its yearly rounds in the media and if you are looking forward to a gloomy rather than a gleeful Christmas then this animated short may very well (without irony or maybe just a little) make you feel a little better about life, the universe and everything.  I realise that I am not selling Man very well here – but watch it for yourself.  It is very, very funny despite the fact that it paints you, me and everyone else in history as a despicable species with only one redeeming feature – the capacity to be treated the same way in which we have treated the planet and its environment for the last half a million years….

If this has piqued your interest in Steve Cutts, then visit his website and/or his Facebook page.

Pale Blue Dot

This is lovely.  Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot is one of the most resonant pieces in English of the late twentieth century so it is great to see it put to such wonderful effect in this short animation by ORDER.  Flawlessly animated, it is obviously a highly personal project and is created with a lot of affection both for Sagan and his wise, wise words.

ORDER is a video and animation from a studio in East London.  They produce promos, virals, documentary, adverts, stop-motion animation, interview profiles, short films, titles and motion graphics and have worked in the past for clients such as Creative Review, Tate, the V&A and The GLA.  Pale Blue Dot is both very cool and technically immaculate, so even as a personal project is possibly the best advert an agency could have!

The Neanderthal in You

Have you ever wondered what it means to be human? Well if you haven’t then many scientists, theologians and philosophers have given it quite a lot of thought over the last six thousand years or so. For that amount of time we have thought we were pretty much unique – a one of a kind.

However, new evidence shows that we are more related to our closes ancestors, the Neanderthals, than anyone had previously guessed. Here Stephen Nash, a Denver Museum of Nature and Science scientist explains this link to the Neanderthal, with the aid of some excellent visuals.