For nearly five decades, Forks, Washington, resident John Anderson has pursued an enthusiasm—one might even call it an obsession—with things that wash up along the Pacific Northwest coastline.

Describing his occupation as “extreme beachcombing,” the pastime transformed into a full-time passion when he retired from his plumbing job and transformed his shop in Forks, Washington, into John’s Beachcombing Museum.

An enchanting mini documentary by Ryan Pinkard and Christian Klintholm follows the intrepid forager on beach treks and through his archive of treasures. “Extreme Beachcombing” is narrated entirely by Anderson, who takes us on a tour of his floor-to-ceiling hoard of curiosities.

If you’re passing through Forks, John’s Beachcombing Museum is open most days from June through August. You can explore a plethora of human-made objects that float in from all over the world, from quotidian plastic toys and dock boots to nuclear submarine locator beacons and a WWII life raft radio.

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In 1971, Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) received her first public art commission. New York City offered the late artist a $3,000 grant to paint a mural at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island. After going inside and speaking with those incarcerated in the notorious prison, Ringgold decided to base the work around a request from one of the women about what she hoped the piece would depict: “I want to see a road leading out of here.”

In Ringgold’s characteristically bold palette, the resulting mural features more than a dozen figures, many of whom are employed in professions unavailable to women at the time. Vibrant and sliced into eight sections, “For the Women’s House” portrays doctors, bus drivers, basketball players, and the yet-to-be-realized vision of a woman as president. The large-scale work was a tribute to the deferred dreams of those who were locked up and a directive to reimagine the stereotypes put on incarcerated people.

According to ArtNet, the artist continued her relationship with the detained women and returned to the facility each month to provide “courses in subjects ranging from mask-making and theater to career counseling and drug addiction prevention.”

When Rikers Island transitioned to housing men in 1998, though, the Department of Corrections painted over the work, concealing it under a thick layer of white paint.

A new documentary directed by Catherine Gund chronicles Ringgold’s fight to regain control over the mural as it tells a broader story about the injustices of the U.S. justice system. Paint Me a Road Out of Here, released by Aubin Pictures, features conversations with Ringgold before her death last year, along with artist Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, who has been commissioned to create a new work to replace “For the Women’s House.”

The film comes at a time when more artists who were formerly incarcerated are gaining attention as they point out the dehumanization and cruelty at the heart of the prison system. Jesse Krimes, for example, interrogates the material conditions of life inside as he incorporates soap bars, playing cards, newspapers, and bedsheets into his practice. And at a similarly infamous facility, artist Moath al-Alwi sculpts ships from cardboard, dental floss, and threads from his prayer cap while detained at Guantánamo Bay.

While the film shares the story of Ringgold’s nearly lost mural—which was relocated in 2022—it also speaks to the power of community and connection through art and making, particularly in places where despair and degradation are rampant. “Art gives us permission to imagine a world beyond what currently exists,” one interviewee in the film says.

Paint Me a Road Out of Here is currently screening at the Film Forum in New York. Keep an eye on Aubin Pictures’ website and Instagram for additional locations.

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Directed by Taliesin Black-Brown and narrated by Ramiro Vargas Chumpí Washikiat, “I Am the Nature” poetically plumbs the human interconnection with nature through the eyes of the Indigenous Achuar people. The short documentary honors the philosophy of a culture whose ancestral lands extend across the modern borders of Ecuador and Peru, deep in the Amazon rainforest. Today, Achuar still living in the rainforest continue to practice and preserve ancestral ways of life.

In the early 20th century, the government granted oil concessions that allowed industry to systematically move closer to the Achuar homeland. Further expansion and development in the region increased dramatically in the 1960s, initiating contact between the Achuar and the Western world.

Washikiat chronicles a vision he had as a boy, which foretold he would travel to the U.S. to learn English. In his journey, he observed incredible cultural and societal contrasts, such as individualism in place of collectivity, and yet his experiences away from the jungle instilled an ever deeper understanding that we are all children of the earth.

“I Am the Nature” introduces us to a way of life inextricably entwined with the surrounding environment, simultaneously reliant on and in harmony with nature. “We peacefully live in a simple way,” Washikiat says. “That’s what we would like to share to the world.”

The short film was an official selection in the 2024 DOC NYC documentary film festival and the 2024 Banff Center Mountain Film Festival, among others. See it on Vimeo.

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We’re more selective these days about how we use the word “meta,” but when it comes to OK Go’s latest release, the band has created—bear with us here—a music video using phones about videos made with phones.

Known for elaborately choreographed music videos that bring pop songs to life through playful, chromatic, even gravity-defying stunts, OK Go (previously) continues to push the boundaries of the genre. The group’s tune “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill,” which premiered last Thursday, features a mindbogglingly complex composition using 64 smartphones to record and transmit a joyful performance.

The band is currently composed of Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind, Dan Konopka, and Andy Ross, who relish the creative potential of the music video genre. Tapping into a unique style of filmic continuity using split screens and meticulously-planned set transitions, the band defies the notion that music videos are a thing of the past.

For “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill,” each phone captured one unique take, which had to be carefully planned in advance. All 64 videos were filmed in slightly different sequences or at different angles, in some cases capturing additional phones in the band’s hands that displayed color blocks or patterns.

In a remarkable feat, the final video records the playback on the phones, arranged on a simple concrete surface, choreographed to reflect an increasingly elaborate performance. See the video on the band’s YouTube channel, where you can dance along to dozens more.

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Rockets soar and sparks fly in Andrea Love’s animated tribute to a favorite New Year’s Eve tradition. In case you can’t make it to a live event this year, sit back and celebrate the launch into 2025 with the artist’s mesmerizing pyrotechnic show.

Love (previously) is known for her tender stop-motion portrayals of daily routines in her Cooking with Wool series, along with myriad felted scenarios for clients like Loewe, Michael’s, Hermès, and Netflix. Learn more about her work on her website, and explore all of her videos on YouTube.

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What if succulents sprouted in squiggles? Or cacti turned orange and floated to the sky like balloons?

An imaginative animation by Hiroshi Takagishi pushes botanical specimens and their potential evolution to peculiar extremes. Inspired by contradictions and irregularities in nature, “Odd” is a digitally crafted film that envisions the ways various specimens could morph from one state to another. As cacti wiggle and wobble or burst into dainty green petals, their recognizable forms become strange and surreal.

Find more from Takagishi on Vimeo.

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How does jealousy snuff out creativity? A stop-motion film written and directed by Ainslie Henderson (previously) follows three furry, felted creatures struggling with each other’s success.

“Shackle” centers on the gremlin-like trio as they conjure the forest’s magic to make music. As pinecones spin like a top, dreamy sounds emerge, and slowly, the creatures add other objects to the woodland symphony. Shape-shifting sticks offer a rhythmic line, while autumn leaves provide a soothing melody.

When one envious character tries to steal the unusual instruments for himself, though, a cloud of darkness reveals that greed is incompatible with art.

The short film is a BAFTA nominee and was recognized as the Best British Film at the London International Animation Festival in 2022. Henderson has also been awarded numerous Vimeo honors for his work, which you can watch on the platform.

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When a mother arrives home with her young son to find her father in the kitchen, the simple act of preparing dinner prompts her to confront her childhood and cultural identity. As her father prepares spring rolls, a traditional Vietnamese meal, both are challenged to find common ground. And what ultimately brings them together is the youngest generation’s creative fusion.

“Spring Roll Dream” is a stop-motion short film directed and animated by Mai Vu while she was enrolled at the National Film and Television School in Buckinghamshire, England. The narrative follows a single mother named Linh, who has forged a life for her family in the U.S. But when her father visits from Vietnam, a statement says, “Linh is confronted with the past and culture she left behind and the question of where it belongs in her family’s new life.”

The figures, scenes, and foodstuffs emerge from sculpted paper, and the film’s dialogue captures bilingual interactions that shift between generations. Interiors glow in the evening light and uncanny happenings induce Linh to reconsider her relationship with her heritage.

“Spring Roll Dream” took home the Lights on Women Award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Watch now on Vimeo.

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When a brave black cat’s world is turned upside down after a massive flood, everything feels uncertain. Fortunately, when the feline teams up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog navigating a boat in search of dry land, the eclectic group relies on their unlikely friendships and a mix of courage, trust, and wits to survive in their newly aquatic world.

Flow is a new feature-length animated movie directed by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis, co-written by Zilbalodis and producer Matīss Kaža. Focusing entirely on the animals’ movements, dramatic angles, and emphatic lighting effects, the film entirely foregoes dialogue for stirring music and emotive meows, barks, and purrs.

Notable for being rendered entirely in open-source software Blender, a tool used for making 3D graphics that has historically been employed for video game design, Flow taps into the possibilities of world-building. Critics liken the dreamy settings to an open-world video game, which as opposed to play that’s more structured or linear, encourages exploration and the joy of discovery.

Flow uses non-photorealistic imagery—also known as NPR, a computer graphics technique for expressing the aesthetics of other mediums, such as painting or drawing—to create otherworldly landscapes and interactions. Merging fantastical elements with accurate animal movements, the film strikes a remarkable balance between the real and the unreal.

Flow was selected to premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes Film Festival in May, and it also screened at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where it won three awards. Whet your appetite with the trailer, and see the film in select theaters now.

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In an isolated home in the tiny, prairie hamlet of Hairy Hill, Alberta, a young girl named Ethel lives with her three younger siblings. She carries the burden of caregiver as the children navigate a dysfunctional relationship with their mother, who cryptically transforms into a bird and flies away. Ethel is then faced with sustaining their livelihood on her own.

Director Daniel Gies co-wrote “Return to Hairy Hill” with Emily Paige, with whom he also co-founded Montréal-based studio E.D. Films. The short is based on the true story of a woman named Marie-Anne Ethel Garnier—Gies’s grandmother—who was born in Hairy Hill in 1940.

Rendered in black-and-white, otherworldly paper figures traverse a dreamlike landscape at the foot of a mountain range as winter approaches.

“Paper was always a key element used throughout the story to convey an impermanence and fragility of the human characters that contrasts with the organic, painterly animals and environments,” the studio says. Gies and Paige achieved the analog effect by using three-dimensional computer graphics to create the impression of stop-motion puppets.

The studio describes the project as “a haunting and deeply personal tribute to family folklore,” drawing on stories of what it’s like to live in remote and often harsh environments. As Ethel watches her siblings transmogrify into woodland creatures, she must carefully consider whether she will join them in her own metamorphosis or defy fate and venture into an entirely new life.

Real paper puppets served as models for the evocative characters, and the effects of light and shadow emphasize the fraught relationship between the known and unknown. Enmeshing a variety of styles, the animation includes three-dimensional painterly forests, sculptural details, and classic, two-dimensional techniques.

Check out E.D. Films’ website for a behind-the-scenes look at the process, and follow the studio on Vimeo.

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