(22) Short Film Sunday #9: Slow Derek (2011)

Slow Derek (2011).

Today is the last day of Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival, to mark that I am presenting to you the short that received the Grand Prix, Animated Encounters, in 2011: Slow Derek. However, that is not the only award that film has won. The stop motion animation Slow Derek is directed by Dan Ojari, who is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, with an MA in Animation, he has won several awards both as a director and as an animator.

Slow Derek is an epic and fascinating tale of an office worker Derek, who "struggles with the true speed of planet Earth". The short ties together Derek's slow and mundane life with the dizzying rotation of planet Earth. It is clever and, I would dare to say, a scientific short, which leaves you thinking, how we all still hold onto this world?

Ojari described the plot of Slow Derek to shortoftheweek.com as:

"very much about relativity and the contrast between the mundane and the colossal. The starting point was after I became particularly fascinated with how fast the earth is travelling, especially because we don’t feel this speed. We are literally hurtling through space at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour and yet don’t feel a thing. I felt this was, aside from being an amazing actual fact, also was an interesting metaphor for modern day life."

Hope you enjoyed this little spellbinding short that deals with such big issues, and stop by in couple of days to read my piece on the IdeasTap organised panel discussion that was a part of this years Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival: Film Industry Road Map.