Rob Munday

Danish school The Animation Workshop has provided us with a constant stream of content since we first discovered their work back in 2011 – when we featured The Backwater Gospeland Mighty Antlers. Seven years later and we still eagerly await the release of their grad films like an excitable five-year-old on Christmas morning. Whilst this year’s batch brings another fascinating mix of subjects and styles, we’ve chosen the hedonistic tale BACCHUS as our favourite pick from the shorts.

The colourful and fantastical tale of a young woman looking for a little escape from her daily routine, BACCHUS is a film with an aesthetic you want to totally engulf yourself in. With our protagonist’s day-to-day life presented in an uninspiring palette of desaturated colours, the style of this five-minute short really steps up a gear when the titular Roman god enters the fray and lures her into a world of excess, nudity and lust (a pretty inviting trio!).

From here things get a little trippy! Gone are the lacklustre colours and depictions of dreary life, instead they’re replaced with a vibrant, joyous palette and some dizzying, animated choreography. Feeling like a heady mix of Alice in Wonderland and Fantasia, it’s hard not to get totally lost in BACCHUS and lets its dream-like quality wash over you.

Whilst it would be easy to write BACCHUS off as narratively slight, there’s no denying it’s both relatable and an interesting choice for a group of students. Is this how they view life outside university? Do they think “working” life is one long routine punctuated with moments of surprising bliss? Are they right?

…SHIT…ARE THEY RIGHT??

The Animation Workshop are currently releasing the rest of their graduation films on their Vimeo account. Three are currently live – BACCHUS, City of Memories and Within, Without – and they have another two to release after their festival runs – Reverie and Vermine (the latter is another fav. of ours!)