The film description, which has obviously been written by Khavn himself, states that “history is a dead cow in a funnel pretending to be a detuned bassoon serenading the moon halved by expectations not so great that new emperors bow their decapitated heads but 3 cakes are always better than 3 cents in this madly turning world peeking pecking ducktards for a midnight snack on the run.”
The actual short is by no means less crazy, since Khavn pays tribute to the silent films of the past by mocking them in essence, through a number of segments that feature cinematic techniques used in the age those movies were produced. The film begins with a man dressed like Charlie Chaplin walking in the middle of the street. The second segment shows a woman giving birth on the floor while a band is playing a kind of marching song above her. Eventually she gives birth to a watermelon. The third one shows a naked baby inside a cradle holding a gun in its hand, before it transforms into a kind of a duck. The fourth one, which features a very captivating music score, shows a primitive man in the woods holding a spear, seemingly hunting. Eventually, he comes across a man dressed in a tiger costume, and the two of him start talking until another man, dressed as some kind of bird, appears.
The fifth one shows a girl wearing a kind of a straw bag as a mask on her head, while holding an identical one in her hand. Two soldiers holding guns soon appear, with the one carrying the other one on his shoulders. They start interrogating the woman and eventually take her with them. The sixth one has a group of people wearing hats, masks or whatnot playing table tennis simultaneously on one table. After a brief sequence that shows fish in an aquarium in a close up, the seventh shows a man holding a sword over another man lying on the ground. The eighth one shows a soldier working a car part while another man is fixing a car behind him. Eventually, a nuber of women and some kids in tribal wear appear. The ninth one returns to the initial man, who soon changes attire.
Khavn uses a much slower frame per second ratio in order to give to the various segments a silent film feel, and in that regard, he succeeds to the fullest. The two exceptions to this aspect are the fish segment and the last one, with the former being completely out of place and the last one probably functioning as a connection to the modern era of cinema.
The segments are all very brief, but Khavn’s “blasphemous” sense of humor is here once again, with a number of them being hilarious in their absurdity. Khavn seems to “pay tribute” to the limitations the people who shot film at the time faced, mostly using humor. The use of music is also very interesting, with the track in the jungle segment being the most memorable.
