Review: Nook & Cranny (2008)

Director: Francien van Everdingen | 3 minutes | short movie

An unprepared viewer casually seeing the short film “Nook & Cranny” might get the impression that he is looking at a creatively constructed DVD main menu. After all, nothing happens with camera angles, actors, story development, or even an idea of ​​a story course or substantive meaning. At least not in the traditional sense. As abstract art there is quite possibly a few things to deduce from it, but the question is whether the viewer will feel called to do so when watching the video, in which he for a few minutes to a chair, a table with a vase , and watching a bunch of changing frames.

Now there are indeed different recorded images in the film – such as tree branches swaying in the wind – but all the time in a static frame, often as the structure or color of the objects present in the frame. Furthermore, the whole may be static, but within this framework there is constant movement and activity, which makes the video less boring than it initially appears to be. The film lives up to its name, because there is always something new to see in every little corner (every “nook & cranny”). From color changes to squares or circles appearing on the screen. Perhaps visual artist Francien van Everdingen wants to call the viewer to observation in daily life; to looking beyond the first impression. And as a screen saver or abstract art in a modern museum – where the film could be repeated over and over again – it might be a successful project. But it remains a fairly basic, simple whole, where as a viewer you get the impression that someone has just shot some nature images and then spent an afternoon experimenting with a graphic computer program than that it is a meaningful film.