Friday, March 06, 2015

Baby-Box

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FI/CZ 2014. Animation. D+SC: Katariina Lillqvist. AN: Alfons Mensdorff. DP: Patricia Ortiz Martinez. S: Tero Malmberg. ED: Katariina Lillqvist, Patricia Ortiz Martinez. 9 min
    No dialogue.
Tampere Film Festival, Friday, 6 March 2015

TFF: "In an remote east European town, the evening bells can´t hide the cry of a hungry baby. Its father, a street-musician named Baro, is also having a bad day. The social curator is blaming him to be a miserable parent, and shivering the whole day on a square is not a healthy option for the child anyway. But Baro refuses to obey the advice of the curator: he definitely won´t put his little one into the BabyBox across the street, no way how poor they are. But the old grandfather disagrees, and finally the whole family ends up down into the mysterious labyrints of BabyBox where everything is on sale."

AA: A new masterful puppet animation by Katariina Lillqvist, Baby-Box is set in post-Wall Eastern Europe. The animation is magical, the visual quality is excellent. There is a dark sense about the dangers to humanity in our liberalistic world, yet also a sense of hope for mankind.
    My résumé: There is an accordeon player and his crying baby, and a Baby-Box for unwanted children for adoption. It looks like a furnace door. The accordeon player descends via the sewer to the underworld. There is a the desperate fisherman grandfather. The fisherman makes the decision to put the baby into the box. There is a sound of the baby falling into the abyss. The baby enters the infernal reception center. The baby is rejected for adoption. There are two other options: "trash" or "transplant". The accordeon player catches a luminous fish. The repentant accordeon player and fisherman rush into the the baby box. They find the transplant department with body parts. Finally they all land into the trash sewer. Meanwhile the fisherman has discovered and rescued the baby there. They give the baby box lady = "the social worker" the tar and feathers treatment. Finally the gypsies all play together in a Glowing Gypsies of the Universe band.

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