The Films of Michel Klofkorn

I’m new to the work of Michel Klofkorn, but he’s been creating music videos, commercials and experimental films in Germany since the 1990s. He’s a relentless experimenter whose animation techniques look familiar but foreign at the same time. Take, for example the first short after the jump, Fluid Paper. We’ve seen books used as the raw material for animation before, but Klofkorn charts exciting new territory with the concept.

I dug around a bit to learn more about Klöfkorn’s history, and composited this bio from a few different sources online:

Michel Klofkorn (b. 1967 in Germany, lives in Frankfurt) is an artist with a background in drawing, film history, aesthetics, analog film and digital video. He studied painting, drawing and film at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach from 1990 to 1997. Along with colleague Oliver Husain, he ran a music video production company from 1995 to 2003 that resulted in the production of more than 30 music videos for hit German bands at the time. Their videos include “alter ego: Betty Ford” (2002, Schnitt Award 03, Cologne); “sensorama, star escalator” (1998, Best German Music Video, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen) and “sensorama, echtzeit” (1996, Music Machine Award, Best Video). They also directed videos for Blaze, isolée, Bernadette La Hengst, Jan Delay and others. Between the years 2003 and 2006 Klofkorn worked as an illustrator and animator for the cultural channel arte in Paris. His productions have ranged from 35mm films with substantial crews, to hand-shot dv-films, to feature film-like projects to documentary and animated films.

Klofkorn has created an impressive looking body of work, though there’s not a whole lot to enjoy online. If the pieces below are any indication though, he’s an artist who isn’t afraid to take advantage of the spatial and temporal qualities of the animation medium. A personal favorite is I Ride to the Edge of the Atmosphere in a Half Hour on My Bicycle, which offers perhaps the most compelling evocation of riding a bicycle that I’ve seen in an animated film.