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Quay Brothers Mark Believe’s Milestone with Enigmatic Short

17/01/2020
Production Company
Los Angeles, USA
165
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The stop motion animated film depicts the rise of a Believe ‘house,’ surrounded by an abstract garden, as a fit metaphor

It’s not often a production company gets a pair of acclaimed filmmakers to create a piece of art to herald their 20th year in business, but Believe Media has done just that. 

The enigmatic stop-motion directors the Brothers Quay have just released an abstract, evocative short that takes viewers on a trip through their imagination, culminating in what appears to be a three-dimensional framed still life that’s simply marked with the word ‘Believe.’ 

The film was produced to acknowledge – indeed, as an homage to – Believe’s astonishing twenty-year history of collaborating with iconic directors whose work extends far beyond advertising. 

Describing the short, the twin brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay – whose work has been admired by such talents as Christopher Nolan, Guillermo del Toro and many others – explain that “it depicts an imaginative ‘Believe house’ that’s magically re-assembled from an initial mysterious landscape via the process of anamorphosis, which brings the concluding picture together within a final, fairytale garden.”

The relationship between the company and the Quays pre-dates the launch of Believe itself. Luke Thornton, who co-founded the studio with his wife and partner Liz Silver, represented them in his previous production company, The End. “We asked them to create an animated closing title card for us back then, which appeared on all of our directors’ reels,” Thornton explains. “So it was only natural that we ask them, more than 20 years later, to help us commemorate this milestone. We gave them no brief, just to make something beautiful, and they came back with this filmic garden, one that’s growing and flourishing.” 

Believe has a long history of maintaining close ties with its filmmakers. Some of its most notable talents – Floria Sigismondi, Zack Snyder and Jake Nava, for example – have been with them since the company’s inception. “We’re very much a family here,” says Silver. “Timothy and Stephen’s salute speaks for itself, but the subtext here is that our culture has always cherished strong visual storytellers.” 

The Quays themselves are experiencing something of a resurgence. They’re currently making the festival circuit with a new film, one financed by Nolan, whose own 2015 documentary about them triggered new interest in their totally unique stop-motion approach. 

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