23
Jan
This is one of my favorite stop-motion films. I was so taken with the medium after seeing this that I tried making my own stop motion film with a friend as our high school senior project. Our film was a mess, but this one is an example of really creative, beautiful filmmaking. The sound amplifies the textures of the “avocado”, the mortar and pestle, and conjures up in viewers’ ears the ingredients used in the actual guacamole recipe. I remember showing my two-year old cousin this video and finding her just as mesmerized as I was. When it was done she looked at me and said “Very nice…again.” It was nice to see that there is a universal appeal to a good piece of media. This is why the films of this artist, Pes, are so popular (you might know him from the short “Western Spaghetti”); they have universal appeal and need no translation or introduction. Pes taps in on the artistic tradition of artists like Rene Magritte and some aspects of surrealism by placing common objects in unorthodox places and assigning them new values. In a sense, this could be viewed as a commentary on American military and consumer culture, wherein mass-produced objects like grenades and baseballs are so common that they saturate our world and make us unable to see anything else, even during a task as simple as making a guacamole dip. Of course, my favorite bit is the last clip where the ‘chip’ is broken and the fingers dive in for that delectable bite of green gold. Makes me want some guacamole.