- In a future-past world crumbling and wracked by perpetual war, frantic preparations for a music recital are underway in a disintegrating theatre building. With the aftershocks of the bombing becoming more frequent, only one thing holds the structure together - the unwavering determination of a forgotten old man in the cellar beneath the janitor's apartment. With the inhabitants oblivious to the imminent danger, the future is left in the hands of the desperate performers. Will this be enough to protect them all from catastrophe?—Anonymous
- Found objects: a six minute short that hails back to the director's earlier work Darkly Machiever. The desire to break out of the randomly interconnected structure making up society , and thereby affect some major catastrophe, but in the destruction a return to natural simplicity is achieved.
Break the machine to rediscover the nature from which it came. Show the human condition in the midst of calamitous breakdown.
Birnbaum's imagery is always lush and slightly lurid, bodily fluids not emphasized but interacting with aging wallpaper, leaky floorboards, the science always primitive and barely functioning on the edge of apocalypse or is it already long past?
The connection to music, a nod to classicism, points to the absence of meaning in the performance except for the upset it causes the young person. The assignment of instruments denies some their choice while assigning the largest instrument to the smallest person is the type of incongruity rampant in Birnbaum's perspective. The old man, barely kept alive by a responsible woman, drives the turbine that runs the building(everything?), and then the song of a young girl--haunting and lovely explodes the reality with a knowing look between the old man and an ominous youngster with his hand on the button.
He takes us through an alternate existence where the human relationships are poignant and inexplicable. The familiar presence of authority figures dictates misery for no other purpose, facades of tradition are of a similar weight to mowing the grass(which we cannot imagine still existing)...until a tipping point. A moment of beauty, inspiration breaches the background of mundane decay and releases someone, anyone into a novel backdrop of pure nature. Darkly Machiever used the forest ocean-side, Found Objects uses the water. Primal and unsettling. A desire for continuance and disruption. A return to pre-industrial existence. Callbacks to Darkly include sound effects, cables and the seemingly understood but bizarre connection between one person and another, bringing each other to life, if only for a moment.
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