Description
Shot entirely from the artist’s apartment on the 36th floor of a high-rise building, the images in this experimental stereoscopic animation survey large parts of Hong Kong’s cityscape. Using an extreme distance of up to two meters between two synchronized cameras capturing the stereoscopic scenes, the recipient’s interocular distance is widened, making the viewer a giant and the city a miniature of cardboard cut-outs and dollhouses. The expanded stereoscopic approach employed in 二〇二〇 (“2020” in Chinese) creates a strong sense of defamiliarisation, through which the city is reconfigured for the viewer to draw attention to the collectively sequestered lives hidden inside its buildings. The film attempts to encapsulate the darkness, confinement, and uncertainty of 2020 – the year of the global pandemic and the introduction of Hong Kong’s national security law.
About the director:
Max Hattler
Experimental animator and audiovisual artist, he is interested in the space between abstraction and representation, where storytelling is freed from the constraints of traditional narrative. His work contemplates microcosms, moments, and atmospheres: close-ups as reflections on the big picture, and aesthetics as reflections on politics. While his films are devoid of dialogue, they explore the relationships between sound, music and the moving image. After studying at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art in London and at Escuela de Cine de Madrid he completed a doctorate in fine art at the University of East London. Max Hattler is a tenured Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. His work has been shown worldwide and has received prizes from Annecy Animation Festival, Prix Ars Electronica, Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Punto y Raya Festival, Cannes Lions and London International Animation Festival, among many others.