They say that “absence makes the heart grow stronger”, but the time one
awaits for the return of one’s beloved can be filled with agony. Hakhyun Kim’s first year film project
at Geidai’s graduate programme in animation is a short study of the agony of
waiting.
A man sits hunched in a small boat, seemingly adrift in a black sea of
misery. His suffering is expressed in a
series of overlapping mini-vignettes through his body language. He quivers curled forward in the fetal
position, he covers his eyes with his arm, and he holds a smaller even more
impatient version of himself in his hand, his body tumbles from the sky. He stands awkwardly in the boat, a forlorn
figure in a sparse landscape of barren trees.
In the distance, the sound of a ringing bell grows louder and the man’s
bleak face slowly transforms into one of shock.
He then closes his eyes, his tiny ears still moving as if reverberating
with the sound of the bell, and imagines the return of his love. His face broadens with a smile as he embraces
her, and the dark sky alights with the colours of a sunrise. It is a poetic, moving short-short that promises
great work to come from this young animator.
Hakhyun Kim (キム・ハケン, 1982) was born in Seoul, South Korea. He did
his BA in Animation at Tokyo Polytechnic University (2010) before coming to
Geidai for his MA in Animation (2013). You can follow him on vimeo.
Cathy Munroe Hotes 2015
