Short Pick Of The Day: ‘June Night’ by Mike Maryniuk
“Working in sublime self-isolation during the strange pandemic spring of 2020, avant-garde filmmaker Mike Maryniuk composes a surreal ode to rebirth and reinvention. Juxtaposing archival imagery with handcrafted animation, he conjures up a shimmering utopian dreamscape, a post-COVID world shaped by the primordial forces of nature — haunted by the genial spectre of Buster Keaton.”
Film by Mike Maryniuk, Canada, 2020.
Notes on the film:
Filmed entirely in a 100-square-foot one-man stop-motion atelier during the pandemic summer, Mike Mary Maryniuk dug into public and NFB archives to bring silent film legend Buster Keaton back to life, 125 years after the comedian’s birth. Maryniuk printed and manually cut out over 16,000 film frames, cultivated 45 plants in his own home and shot their growth spurts with a time-lapse camera. He also re-imagined existing film scores to evoke a hybrid world some label as “Prairie Surrealism. June Night was produced by Jon Montes at the NFB’s North West Studio in Winnipeg.
Behind the scenes photos:
