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Short Film Review: Serial Parallels (2019) by Max Hattler

As a rule, 's films are successful in the (animation) film festival circuit and “” is no different. With it, he pays tribute to his new hometown, densely populated Hong Kong, where he moved from the, in comparison, almost flat and expansive London. It premiered at the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS) and has been shown at many other festivals such as Encounters Bristol and the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.

Serial Parallels” is screening at Vienna Shorts

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“Serial Parallels” highlights the architecture of Hong Kong, more precisely that of the hyper-crowded apartments. They visualize how Hong Kong, by building up towards the sky, tries to accommodate 7 million people on 1.104 km²of land. “Serial Parallels” looks at this from different angles. First, there is the life-circle of the buildings. It starts with buildings in different phases of construction, then moves on to inhabited ones and ends with buildings that give the impression of falling over, like those being torn down to be replaced by new, higher, ones. The ongoing projection of these concrete giants is at the same time mesmerizing and jaw dropping.

The film also gives a close-up view of the architecture of these public housing apartments, with their repetitive building blocks and structures. They are functional but, apart from their bright colors, are not very creative or imaginative. And even when the inhabitants move in and the outside view slightly changes with laundry and plants, most apartments are completely interchangeable.

Even though the theme of “Serial Parallels” is the density of Hong Kong's population, we don't see any people in the entire film. Instead, the buildings are a metaphor for them. Even if each apartment occupied only one person, the number of inhabitants would be hard to imagine and with each flat housing at least one family, it is beyond our imagination. The speed of the buildings moving up and down emphasizes that more and more of them are needed and that we need to build higher and higher to provide affordable living spaces for everyone in need. In this sense, the impression of the buildings falling over can be linked to the feeling one gets when looking really high up for a long time, that of feeling dizzy and overwhelmed. And at the same time the few glimpses of sky seem to imply that there is still space to build, but don't we need that to breath and live?

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An abstract way of working is typical for Max Hattler who calls himself a neo media artist. He works in abstract animation, video installation and audiovisual performance using different materials, techniques and a variety of styles. The technique used in “Serial Parallels” resembles stop-motion or pixilation, but it's neither of those. He starts from high-resolution photographs and from these, he create strips that recall of celluloid film where every floor stands for one frame of film. These static images are then animated by moving the strips up or down, one frame at a time, 24 frames per second. This approach gives him more freedom to select what he shows his audience and also can zoom in on every image which enhances the claustrophobic feeling of these housing complexes evoke. Also, it is a very economical approach as only 240 photographs were needed to make this 9 minute film.

With his background in audiovisual performances, it comes as no big surprise that sound is an important factor in his films. For “Serial Parallels” the sounds of Hong Kong that were used were distorted and changed to match the frame rate of the image. They resemble the whirring of a projector but also recall the sounds of drills and other machines used for building. At the same time, in the background we can hear snippets of music, voices and other sounds as if to say that although we don't see them, the inhabitants are definitely there, inside their houses.

In essence, “Serial Parallels” is a film is about the population of Hong Kong, about how to accommodate that many people in so little space, and as such, it makes the viewer think about the living conditions in these building and in the big cities of the world.

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