Cool Hunting

To celebrate the 2009 launch of the State of Design Festival in Melbourne, Australia our friends at the Portable created a short film competition they call "Film the Future" (in keeping with the fest's theme, "Sampling the Future"). After hundreds of entries and hours of debate they finally selected Takafumi Tsuchiya's music video "Apoptosis" as the winner. Check it out above.

A mental journey, ambient electronica guides the viewer through scenes ranging from skylines to leafy suburbs, which Tsuchiya distorts into a spiraling circular image. The mixture of sound and visual effects make for mesmerizing entertainment, sparking the imagination to work overtime to construct meaning out of the fleeting forms.

Melbourne designer and Film The Future judge Jeremy Wortsman comments, "The first thing that grabbed me was the excellent use of soundtrack. Apoptosis used sound as an integral part of the piece, especially in engaging the viewer in the first moments, setting the visual foundation for the formal experimentation that occurred throughout the piece. To that end, the idea was simple, yet very effective. The source video seemed carefully chosen to yield the most fruitful results in the kaleidoscopic meanderings of the work and in the end, it left me being able to view these ubiquitous scenes of nature and everyday life in a new light, which is definitely a challenging feat to accomplish in a short film."

Portable's objective is to make film and new media storytelling accessible to everyone regardless of their experience, location or technical proficiency by offering audiences the chance to download an entire curated selection of international film and video program for free to their iPods, mobile phones, PSPs and laptops. Now in its fourth year, their Portable Film Festival starts this 1 August 2009, offering nearly 180 films, from over 800 submissions from 46 countries, across the festival categories of Short Film, Music Video, Look at Me, Get Animated, First Hand Capture and Feature Film. Get more info and all the content at Portable.