Animatiefilm door Emma Claire Sardoni

(Muziek door Sten Wouters en Pieter Van Dijk

Geluid door Vadim Bakker

Stemmen door Maryam Sserwamukoko, Casper Schoolmesters, Pieter Van Dijk)

Bergen zingen, bloemen hebben lief, paarden huilen.

Als de mens zou uitsterven, zou er dan nog muziek op aarde zijn?

En wat zou er gebeuren met alle menselijke dromen en fantasieën die we over de natuur hadden?

Billy en Pot leven in een grijs wereldje, de natuur is een vaag begrip, bijna alleen nog een herinnering uit Disneyfilms, Windows-screensavers en zinloos geklets. Alleen hun fantasieën leven in kleur.

Deze film is een absurde maar kritische ode aan onze menselijke manier om de natuur weer te geven.

Terwijl we rouwen om de verloren natuur en de verloren menselijkheid, rouwen we dan ook om de schoonheid van landschapsschilderijen en de gekkigheid van tekenfilms met dansende dieren?

Trees and Other Birds

2D animation on paper, frame by frame

Billy and Pot live in a grayscale, desolate world, all of nature seems to have gone esxtinct in their eyes. As they walk through the landscapes,  chatting about memories of nature, we are introduced to progressively sillier nature-characters, flowers, trees, birds, mountains. The film climaxes with a musical style song with a singing horse.

The film is structured on these two opposite realities, the desolate, black and wite, dystopic world of the humans,  and the silly, colorful, naive, lively world of nature.

The conceptual subtext of the film is a reflection on how Western society  hardly ever attributes consciousness to nature, yet in an animated film it’s such a classic to anthropomorphize it. Is the only way we can relate to nature, a delusional human-centric fantasy take on it? In the brinks of imaging human extinction, having destroyed our ecosystem, where do we grieve for the imagination that we once had of it?

There is music in the dirt

That keeps the flowers growing

It’s something deep in the earth

That keeps me fa sol la ti doing

And that little patch of grass

On which the shiny sun is cast

and the trees the winds are calling

All fill the air with songs and pollen

Won’t you escape with me

To landscapes made of green

Something you have never seen

It is the place to be

Sit down, enjoy the show

Come watch the pintrees grow

See how the river flows

But now the curtains close

Oh what a lovely sight

The end is burning bright

I try with all my might

To make it through to t’morrow night.