Published on TheCGBros YouTube channel
“Nothing makes me happier than seeing brilliant people use our digitised cultural heritage to create new artistic expressions. Here´s Lucio Arese´s beautiful, philosophical, virtual wrecking of some the great sculptures of Western art history. This work bears evidence to the creative powers bubbling at the intersection of crowdsourcing and open heritage.”
(Merete Sanderhoff, Art Historian – Curator and Senior Advisor for Statens Museum for Kunst)
Les Dieux Changeants is a CGI short film that depicts the destruction and collapse of ancient Greek and Roman statues.
The film creates a visually intriguing legacy: the static millenary beauty of those marbles being suddenly put into motion by a physical event, the hit of a bullet.
The act of destruction is represented as an allegory, an uncertain process oscillating between negative annihilation and positive creativity readable on many levels and left open to the viewer to discern.
“A beautifully haunting short film”
(CHAOS, world leading visualization software studio, developers of VRay)
The philosophical meaning of the film is open to interpretation with the emblematic end quote from Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra”. It could be seen as the end of something, a transformation, a cycle, a re-evaluation of established values, the beginning of something new, or just something mysterious or fascinating to look at.
Chopin Nocturne op. 27 n. 2 is the musical counterpart of this work. One of Chopin’s most beautiful pieces, its intimate sweet melancholy opposed to the kinetic brutality of the statues disgregating creates a contrast that gives force and delicacy, primitive energy and decadence at the same time.
“A work of art in more ways than one”
(Computer Graphics World)
All the statues portrayed in the film are 3d scans from real life casts created by Statens Museum for Kunst (the National Gallery of Denmark), from its Royal Cast Collection.
The National Gallery of Denmark has created the 3d scans of all the statues portrayed in the film. Those 3d scans are freely available on MyMiniFactory from the Statens Museum for Kunst profile. The 3d models are scanned from the Royal Cast collection of the Museum and the scanning process has been done by voluntaries from the Scan The World project.
The Museum has a big and growing collection of 3d models made available for the public. This is part of Open, the Statens Museum for Kunst initiative to digitize their entire collection to make it freely available for the public to use, remix and re-elaborate to create new art.
Les Dieux Changeants is a contribution to support and freely promote those very important ongoing programs and initiatives.
The statues displayed in the film are the Laocoon Group, the Barberini Faun, the Belvedere Hermes, the Athena Pallas Giustiniani and Belvedere Apollo. Five iconic image sequences, one for each statue, have been created from a selection of stills from the short film. They are available on CGSociety, world most respected network for digital artists and VFX industry professionals. Four out of five got featured on frontpage gallery and two awarded with a CGAward, the editor‘s pick.
Film Festivals
SELECTIONS / AWARDS
With 8 Award wins already and numerous selections from 12 different countries and 3 continents, Les Dieux Changeants is encountering a great deal of interest from film festivals all around the world. This is a provisory list of the selections and Awards achieved so far:
IndieX Film Fest
Los Angeles
United States
Award Winner – Best Experimental Short
IndieX Film Fest
Los Angeles
United States
Award Winner – Best Microfilm
Independent Short Awards
Los Angeles
United States
Award Winner – Gold Award (Experimental Short)
Vancouver Independent Film Festival
Vancouver
Canada
Award Winner – Best Micro Short
Anatolia International Film Festival
Istanbul
Turkey
Award Winner – Best low budget Film
Anatolia International Film Festival
Istanbul
Turkey
Award Winner – Best Art Design
Indie Short Fest
Los Angeles
United States
Award Winner – Outstanding Achievement Award (Experimental Short)
Tagore International Film Festival
Tagore
India
Award Winner – Outstanding Achievement Award (Experimental Short)
Athens International Monthly Film Festival
Athens
Greece
Honorable Mention – Experimental Short
New Wave Short Film Festival
Munich
Germany
Finalist – Experimental Short
London International Monthly Film Festival
London
United Kingdom
Finalist – Experimental Short
Mindfield Film Festival
Albuquerque
United States
Semi-Finalist – Experimental Short
Tokyo Lift-Off Film Festival
Tokyo
Japan
Official Selection
Independent Short Awards
Los Angeles
United States
Official Selection – Animation Short
Festival Internacional de Cortometraje UVAQ
Morelia
Mexico
Official Selection – Experimental Short Films
Rome Independent Prisma Awards
Rome
Italy
Official Selection – Experimental Short
Florence Film Awards
Florence
Italy
Official Selection – Experimental Short
Around International Film Festival / ARFF Berlin
Berlin
Germany
Official Selection – Experimental Short
SHORT to the Point
Bucharest
Romania
Official Selection – Experimental Short
Lift-Off Online Sessions
London
United Kingdom
Official Selection
Vesuvius International Film Festival
Castellamare di Stabia
Italy
Official Selection – Micro Short
Vesuvius International Film Festival
Castellamare di Stabia
Italy
Official Selection – Best Director
Flickfair On Demand Film Festival
Los Angeles
United States
Official Selection – Experimental Short
Les Dieux Changeants
SPECIFICATIONS / CREDITS
Online publishing date: April 5th, 2021
Running time: 3:48
Aspect ratio: 1:78
Shooting Format: Digital 4K UHD
Color / No language
DIRECTOR, COMPOSITOR, EDITOR, MUSIC EDITOR:
Lucio Arese
MUSIC COMPOSER:
Fryderyk Chopin (Nocturne op. 27 n. 2)
STATUES 3D SCANS:
Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark)
PRODUCER:
Lucio Arese