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  • 2019

Serial Parallels

This experimental animation approaches Hong Kong’s built environment from the conceptual perspective of celluloid film, by applying the technique of film animation to the photographic image. The city’s signature architecture of horizon-eclipsing housing estates is reimagined as parallel rows of film strips: Serial Parallels.

Awards

Credits

English title
 Serial Parallels
Chinese title 序列平行
Director Max Hattler
Production Max Hattler
Animation Zhang Riwen, Iresa Cho, Max Hattler
Photography Iresa Cho, Zhang Riwen, Max Hattler
Editing Max Hattler
Sound David Kamp
Additional sound Sky Kung
Sound research James Banbury
Production management Max Hattler, Iresa Cho
Country Germany, Hong Kong
Length 9’00”
Year 2019
This work was supported by Relentless Melt with a project grant from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and by an ECS grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project No. 21609017). Additional support by the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong, Goethe-Institut Hong Kong and File Under Pictures.

Special thanks to Tamas Waliczky, Jean-Gabriel Becker, Marin Dumard, Eduardo Noya, Di Wu, Yasmin Rai, Queenie Li, Liao Jiaming, Almuth Meyer-Zollitsch, and Harald Kraemer.

Still Images

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Screenings & Exhibitions

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What others have said​

This film is the perfect mix between a conceptual essay and a rigorous mastering of craft and artistry. This experimental animation renders the overwhelming feelings of missing horizon views within megalopoles subjected to densification, while using a photographic technique to reveal the continuity in the buildings’ facades. Sometimes the eyes are focusing on the pastel housing estates, sometimes they are glancing at the technical way of showing them as film strips. The meditative and anxiety-provoking trance is taking shape with the colours and windows that are creating a hypnotic pattern. It forces us to question our relationship to space and to our own way of living, whether it’s in a city, a suburb or the countryside. We never access the anchors of the buildings, so the only way to situate ourselves is when the sky is appearing quickly on screen, so we can finally breathe. In only nine minutes, ‘Serial Parallels’ is showing Hong Kong in a whole new and disorienting way.

Émilie Poirier, Talking Shorts, 2021

In Hongkong leben viele Menschen. Sehr viele Menschen auf sehr engem Raum. Wie Käfige sehen die kleinen Wohnungen aus, vor allem von außen, wenn man an den Hochhäusern entlangblickt. Der Filmemacher Max Hattler geht in seinem neunminütigen Experimentalfilm einen Schritte weiter und blickt nicht nur auf die Wohnungen, sondern an ihnen entlang. In rasanter Kamerafahrt geht es von unten nach oben immer weiter an der Fassade entlang, ohne dass man als Betrachter*in aufgrund der scheinbar ewigen Repetition das Gefühl hätte, diese Fahrt mit den parallel arrangierten Bauten nehme jemals ein Ende. Nur kleine Anzeichen wie eine Wäscheleine, die aus dem Fenster ragt, oder ein geschlossener oder offener Vorhang offenbaren individuelle Züge. SERIAL PARALLELS ist auch eine Bebilderung der Gleichschaltung und der Trostlosigkeit von Leben, mit viel Platz für eigene Assoziationen. Untermalt werden diese Bilder von einer eindrucksvollen Geräuschkulisse, die an das Fahren eines Zugs erinnert und das stakkatohafte Tempo des Films bestimmt. Durch sein konsequentes Konzept und die Überwältigung der Bilder ist SERIAL PARALLELS ist ein assoziativer filmisch-genialer Rausch.

Pressemitteilung: FBW-Prädikate aktuell, Prädikat “besonders wertvoll”, Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung (FBW), Germany, 2021

Hongkong. Wie im Fahrstuhl gleitet die Kamera an den Fassaden von Hochhäusern nach oben und nach unten. Der Rhythmus der Bilder passt sich absolut synchron dem Stakkato-Rhythmus der Tonspur an. Um die Flut der Eindrücke noch zu steigern, laufen die Bild- und Toncollagen auch noch parallel zu weiteren sich gleichenden, aber dann auch wieder sich ändernden Formen. Auf geradlinige folgen nun wieder runde Formen. Die Fassaden zeigen die Fenster und Balkone der kleinen Wohnungen. Stock um Stock gleichen sich diese oder variieren. Die Klimaklötze an den Fenstern jeder Wohnung steigen in den Rhythmus ein. Der Rausch der Geschwindigkeit wirkt dabei nie redundant, da die architektonische Vielfalt dies aufhebt. Ein faszinierendes Erlebnis, das an den Zuschauer auch die Frage richtet, wie wohl die Menschen in diesen Bienenwaben gleichenden Wohnblöcken leben mögen?

Jury-Begründung, Prädikat “besonders wertvoll”, Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung (FBW), Germany, 2021

This captivating architectural animation draws a dizzying portrait of Hong Kong’s urban environment. Through the lens of the animated film, each floor or window corresponds to a film frame. The colors follow one another in a repetitive and rhythmic movement that plunges us into a meditative state that is both gentle and anxiety-provoking. A rhythmic escalation until the saturation of a space in which we finally lose our bearings. It is only when the sky appears to us that we can finally breathe the air we desperately miss as we climb the floors of these overcrowded towers. The experience is not unlike the one that the global situation has forced us all to apprehend individually from the windows of our respective habitats.

Jury Statement, Honorary Mention (Computer Animation), Prix Ars Electronica, 2020

Keine Menschen und doch überall Menschen. Beton, Fenster, Rohre – alles verschiebt sich gegeneinander. Der hypnotische nicht enden wollende Strom von Fassaden liest sich als kritischer Kommentar moderner urbaner Lebensbedingungen. Ein experimenteller Animationsfilm, dessen rhythmischer Schnitt, Sound und präzise Collagierung ästhetisch faszinieren.

Jury Statement by Robert Löbel, Alexandra Gramatke and Mischa Leinkauf, DEFA Promotion Prize Animation, Filmfest Dresden, 2021

In this marriage of technical prowess and poetic observation, the artist serialises Hong Kong’s urban landscape into an overpowering mega-creature. Following its claustrophobic visual pulse, thousands of raw photographs are mindfully reframed and sequenced into surprising compositions of concrete and glass cells, punctuated by fleeting traces of those who inhabit them.

Jury Statement by Noel Palazzo and Ana Santos, Best Abstract Film Award, London International Animation Festival, 2020

An abstract impression of the modern metropolis, Serial Parallels by Max Hattler is meticulous in its editing, harmonious in its soundscape and masterful in its timing. The artist’s skillful juxtaposition of different but similar high-rise housing estates in Hong Kong succeeds to portray complexities of life inside them, without using a single image of its residents. This results in a strong video work that confirms its maker as one of the more exciting voices in the field.

Jury Statement, Sphinx Award for Best Video, Videomedeja Festival, Serbia, 2020

In the projector, the individual images combine along imaginary, parallel running perforation holes of the film to a staccato of shots and montages of urban tower blocks. Serial Parallels displays the connection of technical film history and serial architecture in an extremely austere formality which is frequently interrupted by the signs of inhabitants in individual frames.

Jury Statement (Sabine Küchler, Irene von Alberti, Romeo Grünfelder), Special Mention (German Competition), Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Germany, 2020

Due to the complexity of the animation, and the ability to offer a political speech through the juxtaposition of images without apparent narrative intention, a film that takes us into trance with architectural patterns, we believe it’s a good audiovisual experimental proposal.

Jury Statement, Special Mention (Experimental), Guanajuato International Film Festival, Mexico, 2020

This film reflects on urban architecture in a very physical rather than intellectual way. The megacity is experienced as a pulsating apparatus where you can just sense the presence of otherwise invisible humans. It speaks directly to the retina and vestibular system.

Jury Statement, Special Mention (Animation Avantgarde), Vienna Shorts, 2020

This film is an extraordinary fine and poetic work, which uses familiar methods in unexpected and new ways. And provokes the questions: is repetition our only support, are these monstrous ships a good reflection of human nature. Congratulations to Max Hattler for Serial Parallels.

Jury Statement, Award for Best Film, Kinodot Festival, 2020

Un travail exigeant explorant brillamment le rythme et l’uniformisation du système en cours pour déconstruire, malgré tout, la vie dans tout de ce qu’elle a de plus classique.

Jury Statement, Special Mention (Labo), Animatou Festival, 2020

Si segnala Serial Parallels per la ricerca sul linguaggio audiovisivo. Cortometraggio granitico dove un paesaggio ossessivo sostituisce una umanità collassata nelle cose e dissolta nel digitale. Una città formicaio fatta di pellicole che scorrono come tempo indifferente, ma non impersonale, dove le persone non possono più ritrovarsi.

Jury Statement, Special Mention (Experimental) MalatestaShort Film Festival, Italy, 2020

Serial Parallels is the latest work by Max Hattler, surely one of the most innovative, acclaimed and screened digital moving-art makers in the world today. Serial Parallels has already screened at close to 100 festivals and shows no sign of letting up. Restless, in a laid back kind of way, Hattler seems capable of endlessly rethinking uses for the tools of his craft. The sheer breadth and volume of the construction of imagery in Serial Parallels is almost too much to contemplate. There are artists who toil with great skill and care to utilise a variant of this technique to create a single, complete photograph. Here Hattler has created thousands (if not tens of thousands) and stitched them together to create a relentless moving montage, seamless and apparently able to move through every axis. Utterly remarkable.

Malcolm Turner, Co-Director, London International Animation Festival, 2020

Hong Kong’s distinctively shaped housing blocks form mesmerizing patterns that appear to move and shimmer in this dazzling, subliminally subversive dance of images.

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) + MUBI, 2020

Serial Parallels is nearly a flicker-film, with images that flit past so quickly it’s hard to find a balance. The dizzying heights of Hong Kong skyscrapers, tenements and condos become abstracted parallels (and perpendiculars!). At times it’s hard to tell if the camera is panning, or if the buildings themselves are ‘breathing’. Out of non-organic matter (architectural elements), Hattler creates strange and hypnotic movement as if the city were a living creature. Somewhere between a sewing machine and a construction site, the soundtrack of industrial machinery accompanies predominantly pink and blue hues. Anyone unfamiliar with Hong Kong might think the buildings have been digitally colorized, but those who have visited Hong Kong would recognize the pastel palette. A warning for those sensitive to flashing lights – this is a LOT of provocation for seizures. It is hyper-stimulating yet meditative if one is the type of person to find repetitive patterns soothing in some way.

Daria Gamliel, Cinetalk.net, 2020

the escalating urban anxiety of Max Hattler’s Serial Parallels

Vassilis Kroustallis, Zippy Frames, 2020

… Serial Parallels, remix(es) an abundance of imagery of Hong Kong flat blocks to construct new abstract impressions of urban architecture in the form of film strips. The film’s frenetic rhythm and visuals speak to both anonymity and a multitude of individual histories, while also containing the city’s potential.

Glasgow Short Film Festival, 2020

Max Hattler, another Festival regular, animates the windows, balconies, and façades of unnamed buildings in Hong Kong with such speed and repetition that the iconic high-rise architecture becomes something different altogether.

San Francisco International Film Festival, 2020

In seinem delirierenden Filmkunstwerk „Serial Parallels“ hat der deutsche Animations- und Avantgardefilmer Max Hattler der Brutalität in Stein, die sich in den Himmel stapelt, Leben eingehaucht. Dazu musste er die fotografierte Wirklichkeit nicht einmal manipulieren, lediglich die nur in Nuancen abweichenden Aufnahmen der Stockwerke als Einzelbilder aneinanderschneiden. Mit den Mitteln des analogen Films hat er ein Stück optisches Techno geschaffen, das kein Weggucken duldet. Der 9-Minuten-Film gehört zweifellos zum Coolsten, was das Internationale Trickfilmfestival Stuttgart in seiner Online-Ausgabe zu bieten hat.

Daniel Kothenschulte, Frankfurter Rundschau, 2020

Hong Kong’s characteristic architecture of towering residential areas is being reimagined as parallel rows of film strips, in a composition in texture and color.

Countryside Animafest Cyprus, 2020

Photographic images of building facades are reimagined as strips of celluloid film. Experimental filmmaker Max Hattler subtly manipulates his photographs to produce mesmerizing patterns, moving collages and delightful colour palettes that represent Hong Kong high rise flats, stretching as far as the eye can see.

Leeds International Film Festival, 2020

An experimental documentary that applies the art of animation to the photographic image, achieving a hallucinatory portrait of one of the most vertical and densely built cities in the world: Hong Kong’s immense housing blocks appear to shimmer in a dazzling dance of fluid and dreamlike images. A disorientating and meditative journey that challenges you to let go and immerse yourself in its hypnotic vision, set against a dead-on soundtrack of metallic noises and urban sounds. An innovative and transfixing animation firmly rooted in a hectic metropolis and completely detached of time and space, all at once.

Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, 2020

Todo es susceptible de ser animado. Incluso los edificios de Hong Kong. Serial Parallels es la vanguardista obra que lo demuestra. Max Hattler se propuso fotografiar la característica arquitectura residencial de su nuevo país de residencia, mientras Zhang Riwen y Iresa Cho se encargaron de la también laboriosa tarea de animarlos con stop motion. Las fachas desfilan ante nuestros ojos de un modo tan original y a tal velocidad que pronto dejan de ser fachadas para convertirse en estímulos hipnóticos, algo así como una pieza de electrónica experimental, de trance, pero para los ojos. Cierto que el experimento pierde algo de fascinación en la segunda mitad, pero Hattler encuentra la manera de mantenernos interesados con tan mínimo recurso narrativo, cosa que tiene su mérito. Para quien quiera experiencias nuevas. (8,5 / 10)

Animacion para adultos, 2020

香港的城市景觀，總讓人感到擁擠。若想像，這些高聳如雲、遮住地平線的高樓大廈，變成了一串串垂直捲動的膠卷，那會是什麼感覺？導演以擅長的停格動畫，讓香港密集的住宅大樓產生如瀑布般的流動風景，提供我們重新思索環境與自然之間的關係。

Kaohsiung Film Festival, 2020

Serial Parallels … provides a transfixing portrait of one of the most vertical cities in the world. … captivating architectural animation.

Directors Notes, 2019

… a hypnotic vision of a relentless urban architecture, set to a suitably mechanical soundtrack.

Alex Dudok De Wit, Cartoon Brew, 2019

Max Hattler’s new piece, Serial Parallels is as soothing as it is dizzying. … The experience is like a meditative journey, in which you let go of control and become immersed in the flowing and rushing buildings. The sounds are reminiscent of the kinds of things you would encounter in an urban landscape; motors, helicopters, scraping cement and the warm ticking of a film reel playing. The pace of the sound and visuals create a mesmerising, abstracted view of Hong Kong. The parallel strips are often travelling in different directions and the camera tilts make it feel as though the buildings are looming in closer or slowly falling backward. A disorientating experience that is firmly oriented in Hong Kong with a strong sense of time and place.

Amy Baker, Skwigly Online Animation Magazine, 2019

High rises on speed. Buildings move, up and up and up and then down again, only to move up once more. Fascinating, invigorating, pulsating and fascinatingly meditative.

OFF – Odense International Film Festival, 2020

Hong Kong’s residential skyscrapers serve as the visual material for this mesmerizing architectural animation. Comparable to single frames from a film, the different skyscrapers’ housing pods are individually arranged, some of them in parallel strips. Because of their similarities, the composition creates either static or an elegant flow and, because of their differences, a vibrant life of its own.

Vienna Shorts, 2020

With hypnotic images, Max Hattler captures the endlessly fascinating patterns of the many gigantic residential towers of Hong Kong.

Lantaren Venster, 2020

Another exhilarating rollercoaster ride that feels like a (pleasant) attack to your senses. Like jumping off a cliff but instead of free-falling, you’re flying high above the skyscrapers in Hong Kong. Dizzying, alienating and intense—I mean this as a good thing. 8/10 stars.

Alejandro Meroi, Art House Street, 2020

Essa linguagem de remix também se faz presente em Serial Parallels, de Max Hattler, que inventivamente transforma a uniformidade dura da arquitetura de Hong Kong no melhor cinema experimental que associa os prédios à película cinematográfica em movimento. Neste filme concretista que flerta diretamente com o cinema de instalação, o movimento dos prédios ganha ritmo, musicalidade, o concreto sobe e desce, os ideogramas dançam. O cinema enquanto resultado do movimento do celuloide que sobe e desce, reproduzido na reimaginação de formas estáticas. O filme olha para si mesmo em espelhos digitais, e estas formas que sufocam o céu respiram.

David Terao, Blog do Crítica Curta, 2020

Paralelos em Série (Serial Parallels), de Max Hattler, leva-nos até à paisagem urbana de Hong Kong pela perspectiva conceptual da película cinematográfica. A curta-metragem, muito ritmada, usa a arquitectura em movimento como o motor da narrativa e da região.

Ines Moreira Santos, Hoje Vi(Vi) Um Filme, 2020

Paralelos em Série pode ser encaixada na categoria experimental, dada a sua falta de narrativa no sentido mais comum do termo. Usando imagens fotográficas de edifícios de Hong Kong e usando técnicas de animação, é aplicado um movimento ótico no sentido vertical ao longo de todo o filme. É uma curta-metragem hipnótica, que não deixa ao espectador muitas opções que não sejam a de se deixar levar pela experiência quase meditativa. Nota: 4/5.

Luis Ferreira, Cinema Serima Arte, 2020

…un cortometraje que ha pasado por innumerables festivales y que muestra, utilizando técnicas de animación aplicadas a la fotografía, una visión fascinante, conceptual, de las edificaciones de la ciudad de Hong-Kong, con una técnica audiovisual que resulta casi hipnótica.

En Primera Fila, 2020

Sem uma história ou narração, com uma acelerada edição abstrata marcada por sons urbanos, o artista alemão Max Hattler constrói um filme todo formado por fotografias de edifícios que se sobrepõem geometricamente em um ritmo hipnótico, como uma espécie de cartema animado. Os prédios retratados são de Hong Kong, mas o curta é universal ao problematizar a claustrofóbica vida nas grandes cidades verticalizadas onde não é possível enxergar a linha do horizonte.

Julio Cavani, Cinema Escrito, 2020

Der Kurzfilm “Serial Parallels” von Max Hattler […] zeigt schwindelerregend schöne Serienaufnahmen großer Wohnkomplexe in Hongkong, die durch ihre Nähe und Menschenleere zu abstrakten Kunstwerken mutieren.

Degginger, 2021

Hongkong – Stadt der Wohnsiedlungen, die sich dem Horizont entgegenstrecken. Die Umdeutung der für die Stadt charakteristischen Architektur zu parallelen Filmstreifen – Serial Parallels. Die Annäherung an Hongkong passiert über die Technik der analogen Fotografie. Das Gestern trifft auf das Heute.

Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, 2020

Hochhäuser einer Stadt ähneln in ihrer Form dem analogen Filmstreifen. Eine experimentelle Reise durch Hongkong, gespickt mit Parallelen zwischen dem urbanen Leben und der Mechanik der filmischen Welt.

Filmingo, 2020

Serial Parallels toma edifícios de Hong Kong como matéria-prima e recorre à linguagem das colagens plásticas que transfiguram imagens realistas em abstrações geométricas.

Revista Piaui, 2020

Max Hatter dans Serial Parallels, 2019, a brillamment transféré la nouvelle esthétique écrasante de la société des mégapoles avec ses logements à l’horizon effrayant à travers la perspective conceptuelle du film celluloïd, en appliquant la technique spéciale de l’animation à l’image photographique. Max et ses vecteurs rendent visible l’immatérialité qui nous entoure. Cette immatérialité n’est pas dans le vent, le vent est le protagoniste, les vecteurs protagonists sont l’organisme vivant entier qu’est la ville et ses victimes affectives, dans son film le tout est autour, la totalité est d’être vivant. Tant que nous sommes en vie, nous sommes liés par des expériences, quelle importance a ce qui va arriver? Ce qui importe, c’est que nous soyons vivants dans ce que nous comprenons comme le monde. Alors d’autres nous regarderont et sentiront le vent tourner, antagoniste, complémentaire et nécessaire aux interactions affectives.

Jury Statement, Honourable Mention (Professional Jury), Videoformes Festival, 2020

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