"I was disconnected from reality, enslaved by virtuality".

January 8, 2011 2:58 PM

Samuel, a 24 year old Parisian student, led a quiet life with his girlfriend. A little bit out of step with his time, Samuel refuses to use modern technology. However a meeting will change their lives. -'Dependence', A short film by Yann Kibongui

Yann Kibongui makes films, also check out his custom mechanical projects “chrome-35”, a DOF (Depth of Focus) adjuster, and diy focus follow remote
He recently made a music video for Philippe Gounel, and did some really neat colour grading, this is a behind the scenes look at the process.
Besides his creative work, he has also made a wide range of tutorials (mostly in French).

In other beautiful and amazing DSLR work, have you heard of Twixtor? Doesn’t matter, let us go ride glorious bikes in the rain and mud! (note the clouds while he is frozen in the air at 2000 [flowing-rendered]fps), courtesy of Oton Bačar.

Twixtor turns 60 fps into 1000… Some have found a way of getting this done without custom software, using a feature in Apple final cut pro.
Go for true anamorphic (that nice widescreen 'movie' shaped image) Dslr conversion to upgrade the look.

posted by infinite intimation (28 comments total)

Here’s hoping Yann applies his unique vision and considerable talent to filming some Mountain Boarding. (His photographic set of Mountain Boarding)
posted by infinite intimation at 2:59 PM on January 8, 2011 [2 favorites]

I watched the film. I cried. Live is so so sad.
posted by Postroad at 3:16 PM on January 8, 2011

That's exactly what my mom said would happen...
posted by melissam at 3:26 PM on January 8, 2011

That was very good indeed. Quite a twist.
posted by mykescipark at 3:38 PM on January 8, 2011

Love the Philippe Gounel music video. Has it even been used in a motion picture?
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:40 PM on January 8, 2011

The video technique, that is.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:42 PM on January 8, 2011

Ha, what a twist.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 3:57 PM on January 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

I feel like there's a lesson in here somewhere, but I'm not quite sure what it is.
posted by zeek321 at 4:04 PM on January 8, 2011

Technology bad. Love good.
posted by kozad at 4:10 PM on January 8, 2011

Was I the only one thinking how incredibly stupid it is to throw big giant heavy equipment right out the window? I mean.. before the ending?
posted by leviathan3k at 4:17 PM on January 8, 2011 [4 favorites]

Was I the only one knowing that of course it would come down on her?
posted by emhutchinson at 4:26 PM on January 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Was I the only one knowing that of course it would come down on her?


It's a trap!
posted by Mike Mongo at 4:36 PM on January 8, 2011

That was a terrible movie. So many cliches: A sportsman who clearly can't be hired for very much benefit met a woman by chance and runs after her for smiling at his spontaneous hand movement toward a favored product. He is so behind the times and his girlfriend. For the script, I am glad the character said, "We had been living together three months." because it made it more urgent. She is trying to smile with him but is not giving him the attention he needs to come up to speed. She is not particularly taken with him as a person but he keeps her satiated and thin. He is ridiculously dumb: he will run after a woman for the smile on her face alone. Maybe it was hand movement: they are both incredibly greedy people and this foreshadows the encounter. He is so dumb that he feels he must control the actions of this more intelligent greedy woman who takes his cakes from him even though he is unable to ever say "No." until the final scene and his no would have been so violent it could have included unintentional homocide. I could suggest it was a subtle plot line that I would have developed into a movie. She slowly breaks his bonds enough to buy him a computer which he clearly will never be able to use if left with it alone and sees it as more of a challenge than his girlfriend - because he is clearly implied to have sex with the woman on a very regular basis even though she still needs to woo him because they are both clearly greedy of his time. There are so many faces that would have made this a real thriller. You would think French film makers would have access to more realistic fake blood. It looked like a died paste.

This is a great lesson to the Afro-American film makers about the market conditions that are the reality in Europe and some entryways to the market. I am heartened that France is continuing support for short films while Britain is totally closing the market.
posted by parmanparman at 4:38 PM on January 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Good videographer. Deeply unsatisfying short film. I've read O'Henry too, dude. People in those stories weren't established in the opening shots to be pretentious and unlikable, though.
posted by cmoj at 4:44 PM on January 8, 2011 [3 favorites]

Why oh why is it always the French?
posted by litleozy at 5:28 PM on January 8, 2011

Was I the only one thinking how incredibly stupid it is to throw big giant heavy equipment right out the window?

Indeed. I am aware of a death in real life involving a cinderblock being thrown out a second story window. Sad and pretty avoidable. But people are impulsive and stupid.
posted by zeek321 at 6:13 PM on January 8, 2011

Ah this is very French. I like the remote follow focus, that is very simple and very smart.
What is impressive here is his range as a filmmaker - Dependence is quite different to the rest of his demo reel.
posted by niccolo at 6:43 PM on January 8, 2011

parmanparman, is my humour-filter broken? Care to explain?
posted by djgh at 7:19 PM on January 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Great filmmaker perhaps, but I found this particular film insufferable. A one-dimensional unlikeable character with only two modes of behaviour - both extreme to the point of ridiculousness - and a cheap ending.
posted by twirlypen at 7:53 PM on January 8, 2011

The technical skills on display are impressive but the storytelling is not. Dependence's plot was dumb (to put it mildly) even for a short film.
posted by clockworkjoe at 8:12 PM on January 8, 2011 [2 favorites]

I liked the tone of the setup, but that's about it. And the poor quality of the equipment and lighting really showed. Ironically, this filmmaker's mistaken way of adapting to new technology killed his movie.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:54 PM on January 8, 2011

Am I the only one that read the first sentence in this post, "Samuel, a 24 year old Parisian student, led a quiet life with his girlfriend" and immediately thought this was going to be about some horrific violent incident, like some random shooting?

You know, the stereotypical quote, something along the lines of, "He was so quiet, always paid the rent on time, who could have suspected?"


I can't be the only one. Really?
posted by mingo_clambake at 11:04 PM on January 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Was I the only one thinking how incredibly stupid it is to throw big giant heavy equipment right out the window? I mean.. before the ending?

It happens often enough here. The vast majority of the time, it's stuff like vegetable peels, water, used condoms (been there, had them thrown onto my ground-floor patio several times). But sometimes you get clothes, potted plants... refrigerators... A couple used to own the apartment I have now. The one with a ground-floor patio. One evening, they were outside smoking, and a refrigerator fell onto it, just barely missing the woman. Neighbors witnessed it; no one knows how or why a refrigerator, of all things, came to fall out a courtyard window. The people responsible told many changing stories.

Samuel is depicted as a narcissist from the very start ("I'm funny", laughing at himself while everyone else looks on, blasé, one a bit disgusted with his obvious self-importance.) Technology only gives his narcissism another outlet. His throwing a heavy monitor out the window is typically narcissistic: he doesn't even bother to think about people on the sidewalk below. His emotions are the only ones that matter.

I thought it was rather poignant as a short film on narcissism. Don't know if that was intended, but it's what I saw. The whole thing turns on Samuel; his view; his words; his emotions. We never hear anyone else speak. Only images of them, with Samuel's interpretation. Characters in the movie of his life, not separate individuals with their own lives. (Paging TheLastPsychiatrist...)
posted by fraula at 4:03 AM on January 9, 2011

I really like the idea of a form a generational luddism where you view what existed while growing up as not being technology and anything that comes in your late teens onward is technology.

For me Bakelite, Formica and Linoleum are natural materials. They have always existed. Nobody invented them.
posted by srboisvert at 4:50 AM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

I thought it was a great example of technical expertise (very nicely shot, good editing), but not so hot with the storytelling. Voiceover as the only source of plot revelation gets tiresome, and I wonder how much more effective the film could have been if the writer ditched that device and gave us something closer to a silent film.

Still, the "twist" ending was trite and predictable, so that might not have saved it anyway.
posted by xingcat at 5:27 AM on January 9, 2011

srboisvert: that's basically a technological version of Einstein's claim that "common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen".
posted by madcaptenor at 8:22 AM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

If only she'd given him a MacBook Air.
posted by drdanger at 10:28 AM on January 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Is it a cheap ending? What Would Herzog Say. The man who has been trapped by cold soulless technology can not escape from an existential crises when it kills the only thing he loves, forcing him to abandon hope he is forever set adrift in a heartless world of chance and fate.
posted by stbalbach at 10:38 PM on January 10, 2011