Reviews
<<
 
   
   
 

"Mécanomagie" takes a stylish, performative path through the landscape of the Ardennes in northern Luxembourg. "Live action" pixilated animation evokes a grounded paisant consciousness of "natural forces" and folkloric myths of the humanoid Jitzerten that pass unnoticed across the country. Along the way, imaginative constructions reveal such marvel as the anthropomorphic nature of rocks, children born of soil and a mysterious bloody book of beetles. The film's success lies in its elegant blending of magical neo-surrealist otherworldliness with a fundamental earth-boundedness.
Stephen Ball, International Melbourne Film Festival 1997

 

A trembling landscape is haunted by a static and yet moving figur - a man turned into a machine? In "Mécanomagie" both the borders of perception and laws of nature are breached so that something new may emerge: nature in a boundless state of intoxication!
Peter Illetschko, Sixpack Film, March 1996

 

It is as if the invisible world has an understanding with this world, the hyperreal forces its way into the common. The movement as deviation causes change. It surrealises the banal, and makes the commonplace eerie. The film maintains a relationship to both worlds, allows a double vision. Its seductive power lies primarily in the ambiguity of what it makes possible - its deviant shooting process - and what is possible outside of that.
Marc Ries, Sixpack Film, March 1996

 

Surreal and cheerful. Very rural animation. A landscape in which everything moves is touched by a static figure that also moves - a kind of mechanical man? Boundaries of perception and laws (of nature) are broken to create something new. A fantastic, bizarre animation film full of sensuality, symbolism and surrealist images.
Rotterdam International Film Festival Catalogue, January 1997

 

The Morton Theater was the place to be all last week for excitement, personal drama, well-executed profanity and comical twists! Noteworthy were the fast paced, well-shot short "Bicycle" by Jonathan Kaplan and the stop-motion landscape in the strange Luxembourg/Catholic-themed "Mécanomagie" by Bady Minck.
Athens Film Festival, October 1997

 

I especially liked Bady Minck's Mecanomagie, an almost gnostic fable in which humans can seem stone-faced, rocks are split apart to reveal living organs, clouds streaking across a pixilated sky seem to be alive, and young children sprout as if born from the soil.
FC, Chicago Reader, February 2000

 

"Un chien andalou" is obviously a big influence. Although there are some fine moments in the film, especially the cakes growing on trees - it seems a little forced at times.
News Digest, Luxembourg, February 1996

 

"Mécanomagie", tohum ekimi, tohumun büyümesi ve hasattan oluşan, çok eski zamanlardan beri süregelen çemberi betimler; din, ritüeller ve doğanin mistik güçlerinden oluşan bir evren. Film, bir manzaranin kolektif bilincini kuşatir. Film, eşzamanli olarak yollarda zig-zaglar çizerek ilerlerken, yerli halktan kimsenin dikkatini çekmeyen insan benzeri yaratiklari, "Jitzerten"i anlatir. "Mécanomagie", canli animasyon tekniğinin kullanildiği bir filmdir.
Festival of European Films On Wheels: Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, Eskisehir, November 1996

 
<<