Thursday, December 6, 2012

Marc-Henri Wajnberg's "Clapman"

[post 312]

I like to think of this blog as a hall of wonders, but what you are about to see — a web exclusive! — is a true marvel of sheer inventiveness and insane imagination in the noble cause of physical comedy.

Marc-Henri Wajnberg is a Belgian filmmaker who has recently won well-deserved acclaim for his 2012 documentary, Kinshasa Kids (see trailer here), as well as for other full-length movies, but the man has actually made more than 3,000 short films as well. Yes, you read that right.

Twelve hundred of these shorts form the series Clapman. Marc-Henri explains: "There are 1200 movies, each movie is 9 seconds. The television channels used those shorts before and after the commercial break, or before and after the news or the weather,  before and after the films .... These films have been broadcast several times a day for several years in fifty channels worldwide."

By my calculation, that comes to three hours of these variations on a gag! I've only seen about 20 minutes of these, and have culled this six-minute excerpt that Marc-Henri has so graciously allowed me to share with the readers of this blog — their only appearance on the web. I think you will enjoy the amazing resourcefulness, the blending of visual effects and visual comedy, and the non-stop creativity.




Special thanks to Geneviève Leloup and her manservant Billy Schultz for introducing me to Clapman!

2 comments:

Peter in Wales said...

Wonderful stuff. A hiddengem

Anonymous said...

Pardon me, you have a very nice blog but the movie in this link is NOT loading for me. Do you have another copy you can re-upload? If not, I understand as it is six years old...