Sweet Salt

While taking a break from devouring the newly served up morsel, the Animate! book: Rethinking Animation, I thought I would take some time to see what animators I could snack on-line on. So there, lo and behold, Dek from No Fat Clips! has Katerina Athanasopoulou stuck between his teeth and I thought I would pick at the Sweet Salt taste of it. I mentioned this film awhile back when talking about Suzie Templeton, who was the set designer on this film. Now you can see this short film in it's entirety in various concession stands on the net and better still nibble on a podcast interview with Katerina here. I will go more into the Animate! scheme later on but I just wanted to point out this short film. Katerina studied painting in Greece and that is very evident in the sensual mood and other-worldliness in each frame that is created by the effects here but unfortunately I think the story as a whole suffers from it's sumptuousness. The narrative isn't hard to follow it is the empathy of the characters that is too sweet rather that salty. The ending needs to be more apparently bitter rather than subtle to my taste. Nevertheless, Sweet Salt is still a beautiful digression and it's experimentation in it's effects and themes reminds me of Lorelei Pepi's short film Grace. Take knife in hand and go and gorge yourself on the layered fillings of these two films.