PP1 - 'Sister'

妹妹 / SISTER by Siqi Song - Trailer from Siqi Song on Vimeo.

This stop-motion film by Siqi Song is an intimate and very personal look at the one-child policy in China. Song herself says that this film is not a political film; it wasn't intended to have an agenda, it was more an expression of her own childhood experience as a younger sister in China. She also says that she was very conscious of the story, as she had to balance it between the two different views of abortion from a westerners' and chinese persons' point of view, despite it not being about that.

This short appeals to me for many reasons, however the main ones are:

• The slow pacing of the film - it's not afraid to slow things down and let the audience feel, which I admire and enjoy personally. It made it seem much more personal to me.
• The use of a narrator - they weren't telling the story, they were supplementing it.
• The felted style of the stop motion puppets.
• The muted black and white lighting - it helps with the shorts emotional message, and using colours could be quite distracting from the story.
• The surreal scenes - they both serve to sell the playfulness of a childhood sibling, as well as increasing the story's visual interest as the rest of it is shot in only one environment.
• The repetition of the story as a tool to serve the "reveal" - something about retelling the story but with new information that shows it to have a different message, really appeals to me with short narratives.

EDIT - The full short film has since been privated, therefore I can only link the trailer to it.

Sources 

https://www.awn.com/animationworld/life-sibling-never-was-siqi-songs-sister

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rl71YYky24

https://vimeo.com/374357131