Several years ago, a short film won an Oscar and it consisted of tons of clips from classic Hollywood films. At the time, I thought the film didn't really deserve the award, as there was no original content--just a nice collection of clips from old films. However with FAST FILM, someone got the idea of using classic clips in a whole new and exciting way. Using modern computers, the film makers were able to use film clips in a peculiar way--a way that is frankly too tough to explain! You just have to see it for yourself, but this is NOT just a cheap assemblage of clips. Instead, the clips move and tell a fast-paced story that is just beyond words! Now as for the story, it's not all that important. Instead, FAST FILM is more like an art film--like something you'd see in a modern art gallery. Captivating and strange--it's well worth a look.
9 Reviews
Clever tribute to the movies
Horst_In_Translation13 March 2016
Warning: Spoilers
"Fast Film" is a 14-minute movie from almost 15 years ago and Austrain filmmaker Virgil Widrich came up with this one right after his Oscar-nominated "Copy Shop". And even if this one here did not get in at the Academy awards, so it was still a gigantic success in terms of awards recognition. Its biggest achievement may be the nomination in Cannes. And I personally even liked it more than "Copy Shop". It is a really creative tribute to the movies made by a film nerd (I am sure) for all film nerds out there who can watch this and say which of the films they recognize. It is basically "Logorama" with movies instead of companies. I thought this was a pretty enjoyable watch. May have dragged a bit if it went on for 10 more minutes, but at this runtime, it is a perfectly solid achievement and I recommend checking it out. Thumbs up. Shame Widrich did not make it bigger than he did (so far). I smell some serious talent.
Laugh/scream-out-loud funny, and mayhaps a little touching, to boot!
rzajac15 April 2006
I've got to tell you the circumstances where I first saw this.
I went to an short animation fest in Taipei, Taiwan, with my eldest daughter. We walked into the screening room when Fast Film had been playing for about a minute; in other words, we missed the first minute or so.
My daughter and I were laughing, screaming, cheering, looking at each other in amazement. This thing is such a labor of love. I could easily add comments that fairly well mirror others here in the IMDb, but I'll just refer you to them. I found them to be good reads, and I concur; the artists involved tapped into something about early American film, and as such taps into the collective dream we call life. And to top it off, it takes its silliness seriously, and its seriousness zanily.
You can buy this film (+ electronic license) from an online dealer for US$3. I did, and I watch it once a month or so. Go to any reputable search engine and find it.
I went to an short animation fest in Taipei, Taiwan, with my eldest daughter. We walked into the screening room when Fast Film had been playing for about a minute; in other words, we missed the first minute or so.
My daughter and I were laughing, screaming, cheering, looking at each other in amazement. This thing is such a labor of love. I could easily add comments that fairly well mirror others here in the IMDb, but I'll just refer you to them. I found them to be good reads, and I concur; the artists involved tapped into something about early American film, and as such taps into the collective dream we call life. And to top it off, it takes its silliness seriously, and its seriousness zanily.
You can buy this film (+ electronic license) from an online dealer for US$3. I did, and I watch it once a month or so. Go to any reputable search engine and find it.
Very cool
camachoborracho30 July 2005
Fast film makes you realize how basically every film has the same plot just done differently (hero, bad guys, girl who gets captured, escape, chase, fight, etc.) and recreates it perfectly using clips of film entirely photocopied frame by frame and put on paper. That alone (the paper part) is amazing in itself.
But I found myself just marveling the entire time as I watched this short and despite there being no one main character with which to identify, I was rooting for the hero nevertheless. It was also interesting and humorous in the way that the filmmakers made the characters seem aware that they were in a film based on certain reaction shots from other films - so it was self reflexive in this way. As I watched I couldn't help think "My God, these people have an encyclopedic knowledge of every old film ever made" since the story scripted for the paper movement cleverly parallels what's going on in the film clip(s).
You have to watch this. This isn't your typical artsy short film. It is a feast for the eyes and the mind.
10/10 amazing
But I found myself just marveling the entire time as I watched this short and despite there being no one main character with which to identify, I was rooting for the hero nevertheless. It was also interesting and humorous in the way that the filmmakers made the characters seem aware that they were in a film based on certain reaction shots from other films - so it was self reflexive in this way. As I watched I couldn't help think "My God, these people have an encyclopedic knowledge of every old film ever made" since the story scripted for the paper movement cleverly parallels what's going on in the film clip(s).
You have to watch this. This isn't your typical artsy short film. It is a feast for the eyes and the mind.
10/10 amazing
fast and fun
acmelita10 January 2008
300 different feature films.
65,000 photocopies.
14 minutes of jaw dropping, fun animation.
This is one of those films that simply must be seen to be believed. I believe the director, Virgil Widrich, is once again, taking an animation style into a whole new direction. This man has innovation coming out of his pores. To recast these iconic film actors as into collective hero, damsel in distress and villain takes a unique perspective and skill set.
Fittingly, this compilation (of a sort) is available on a compilation of shorts over at www.Filmporium.com. The $5 DVD also comes with the bizarre bed-time story "Hilary" and the noir "Le Foto Dello Scandalo".
65,000 photocopies.
14 minutes of jaw dropping, fun animation.
This is one of those films that simply must be seen to be believed. I believe the director, Virgil Widrich, is once again, taking an animation style into a whole new direction. This man has innovation coming out of his pores. To recast these iconic film actors as into collective hero, damsel in distress and villain takes a unique perspective and skill set.
Fittingly, this compilation (of a sort) is available on a compilation of shorts over at www.Filmporium.com. The $5 DVD also comes with the bizarre bed-time story "Hilary" and the noir "Le Foto Dello Scandalo".
A fourteenth minutes parody of American cinema
gaiadam93317 June 2010
Fast Film: This vertiginous short by Virgil Widrich, translate to movies an old literary device, the cento, a poem build with lines of other ones, that being united, create a new sense. Shots of hundred of films, framed here in origami (small sculptures made of folding papers), submitted to a process of animation, constitute a summary of American cinema, but also imitates the operation of making pictures. The paper train that runs along is almost always in the track like celluloid within a camera. On the other hand, the trembling movement of the film remembers the projection of old movie copies that threaten to stop at any moment. Between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart kissing each other at the beginning and at the end, the spectator is involved in an indefatigable chase-escape action in black-and- white, or Technicolor, with many bullets, cries, and fitting background music, belonging to different genres: terror, far west, science fiction, musical, comics, detective stories. Sometimes, they appear together in the same scene, when the switch tender switches on the rails, establishing a multiple dialog among them. Notwithstanding the startling variety, it seems that the perennial argument in the seventh art is first of all love and destruction. Adam Gai
Mindblowing
jhanks-452307 April 2019
one of the best shorts ever made
benji-3212 April 2004
this film contains everything what a great movie should contain: a hero played by a guy like bogey, cary grant or sean connery, a beautiful girl like marylin, liz taylor or brigitte bardot and a super-evil villain like godzilla, dr.no, the creature from the black lagoon, frankenstein or dracula. a love story, a spectacular chase and a enormous good against bad- final battle the animation technique is genious and till 2003 unique in the history of filmmaking. never before somebody came to the idea of making a movie only from footage of other famous films. mr.vidrichs masterpiece. but who knows what comes next...
Dejavu
tostinati7 July 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Fast Film is an orgiastic summation of the dream life of the 20th Century. The chief romantic storytelling vehicle of the last century and modern culture's mythology -- The Movies -- is hand cut and pasted into a ripping tale of pursuit, cliffhangers, narrow escapes, final clutches, dashing heroes, melt-in-your-mind babes and shrieking scary monsters. The facility and wit of the enterprise renders a nerdy analysis of the films staggering technique, or an inventory of clips recognized, embarrassingly beside the point. Even as your neural sensor boggles and clicks off one film recognized after another, it all flies under the radar of consciousness. We have been here before; we have never seen anything quite like this.
Above all, it's an achingly funny film. Someone else here said it was sort of sad, too, and with this, I concur. As you watch the purgatory-trapped face of James Wood meld into Gene Kelly into Roger Moore into Sean Connery into Orson Welles into Richard Carlson and on, it is hard not to feel the pull at your heart of a thought set to words a long time ago, now brilliantly evoked by film maker Widrich: "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts... ...The lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth."
It doesn't get any better than this. Check it out. Ten of ten.
Above all, it's an achingly funny film. Someone else here said it was sort of sad, too, and with this, I concur. As you watch the purgatory-trapped face of James Wood meld into Gene Kelly into Roger Moore into Sean Connery into Orson Welles into Richard Carlson and on, it is hard not to feel the pull at your heart of a thought set to words a long time ago, now brilliantly evoked by film maker Widrich: "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts... ...The lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth."
It doesn't get any better than this. Check it out. Ten of ten.
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