a.o.k
2021 | HD | Stereo | 14m
a.o.k is a hybrid video documentary about the experience of making pop videos and pop music. Using only behind the scenes and B-roll footage altered with animations, it is a painting of the emotional experience behind and in front of the camera. It is as much about the content as it is about the making of it.
The project revolves around a series of music videos created to original tracks but the end results are neither seen nor heard; what remains visible, however, are the sensations of the contributors during the production. It is a journey that cramps with discomfort at the beginning but opens up, softens and releases into something tender and compassionate. The result is relentless and unforgiving but it is an ode to the loving images we create of ourselves.
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Pop-culture is more than entertainment, it shapes our reality; it constructs and deconstructs stereotypes, it catalyses real-world violence but also collective transcendence. a.o.k began with some urgent questions: Can this framework be broken and put back together on our terms? What do we lose or gain when we play pretend?
a.o.k took a year and half to edit. It was a fluid and sculptural process that required listening not just to the material but also to the moods, sensations and emotions during the making of the film. The film uses high resolution cameras, low resolution iPhone footage shared on whatsapp and is all interwoven with hand drawn and digital animations to convey a sense of the confusion, energy and melancholy. The result of a.o.k is the space between pretending and becoming, a loving gesture to the images we create of ourselves, no matter what.
Collaborators -
Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski
Bess Barkholt
Nadja Voorham
Victoria Kaldan
Ofelia Jarl Ortega
Sheroy Katila
Masayuki Watanabe
Guido Tarricone, Joshua Leon
Elisa Grasso
Ryan Kalkman
Jazbo Gross
Conway Ellis
Direction, Editing, Animation - christopher tym
Additional Animation - Daniel Swan, Andrea Zavala Folache
Sound Design, Additional Music - christopher tym
Mixing, Additional Structuring - Joris Benjamins
Original Tracks - BESS
Click here to listen to the original soundtrack on soundcloud
Click here to listen to the original source tracks by BESS
© christopher tym 2021
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Premiered at Rencontres Internationales, Paris 2022
Further Screenings
V2 Lab for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam
Intersección, A Coruña
Festival Ecrã, Rio
Rencontres Internationales, Berlin
Light Matter Film Festival, NY