Caledonia Curry’s story of the Sibylant Sisters starts like many others in the fairytale genre, although it takes just a few words to realize that something is off: “Once upon a swampy ol’ dirt road, two sisters, Caelum and Terra, were growing up under the care of a spindly little witch by the name of Katarina.” The narrative continues with the sorcerous mother beginning to unravel, prompting the siblings to rely on the younger Caelum’s magical powers to survive.

“This story is drawn from my own childhood growing up at the end of a dirt road with a mother who was in the midst of a psychotic breakdown, and a lifetime spent teasing out the relationship between creativity, intuition, magic, and madness,” the artist says.

Curry, who’s better known as Swoon (previously), has taken a sort of narrative turn in her practice as of late, translating her interest in family and intergenerational trauma into a sprawling, mythical tale. Seven years in the making, the project is multi-disciplinary and spans sculpture, installation, costume, film, and more. Many of the works can be seen in a four-part read-aloud, and they’ve also spawned an 88-card deck called “The Oracle of the Sibylants,” complete with symbolic imagery distinct to the artist’s practice.

Included are renderings common in divination, including stars and smoking cauldrons, along with more idiosyncratic objects like a glowing Skee Ball machine and flailing garden hose. “Suffused with joy and tenderness amidst the hardship, these cards speak the language of fairytale, because there are some truths that can only be told by witches and unicorns, ogres and toads,” Swoon adds.

“The Oracle of the Sibylants” is currently funding on Kickstarter, which features a video glimpsing some of the live-action and animated films to come. Stay up to date with the entire project—which Swoon envisions as a traveling exhibition, films, novella, and theatrical production—on Instagram.

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A delightful centenarian named Madeleine lives in a senior home in Canada. Full of vim and vigor, she spends her days knitting, chatting, and keeping comfortable in her modest rooms. When she befriends Brazilian-Canadian filmmaker Raquel Sancinetti, 67 years her junior, a beautiful relationship develops.

Sancinetti’s short film, “Madeleine,” emerged from the joyful, thoughtful, and tender weekly conversations the unlikely friends had over five years, along with Sancinetti’s desire to take her older companion on a road trip to the sea. Madeleine’s age—103 when the project began—meant her physical exertions were limited, and despite many attempts to convince her, Madeleine preferred to remain at home.

Sancinetti did have one powerful tool at her disposal, though, to organize another kind of trip—via the imagination. “We frequently discussed going on a road trip, so I decided to bring her out in the only way I could: through animation,” Sancinetti wrote in an editorial to accompany the Op-Docs series by The New York Times. “This short documentary was completed when Madeleine was 107 years old, and I consider myself very fortunate to have known her.”

“Madeleine” combines stop-motion animation and live action recordings in a poignant reflection on friendship, aging, and living life to its fullest. Born thousands of miles apart, their connection illustrates how beautiful—and unexpected—relationships can develop at different times of life. Sancinetti captures her friend’s infectious good humor and self-awareness with playfulness that also doesn’t shy away from the realities of one nearing the end of their life.

The short won several prestigious film festival prizes, including Québec Cinéma’s Prix Iris for Best Animated Short Film and the Canadian Screen Awards’ prize for Best Short Documentary, among others. See more on Vimeo.

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Most of us can imagine a time when we felt tethered to something or someone we knew wasn’t right for us. Perhaps a job takes too much energy, a loved one needs care that’s physically and emotionally demanding, or we find ourselves in a situation where we feel stuck and don’t know how to let go. That’s the universally relatable premise of the enigmatic short film “Sisters.”

The short animated film is directed by Andrea Szelesová and produced by Pure Shore Films. It follows the mysterious routine of a young woman. We observe a daily trip to feed and water an unusually large figure that seems to grow bigger every day, half-wedged into the earth amid an expansive meadow.

As time passes, the interaction becomes more exhausting, and it appears the monumental figure’s health is slowly fading. But what emerges in her place is just as beautiful as the tender care that the protagonist provided all along, granted she can appreciate the situation for what it has become.

“What we love about ‘Sisters’ is that everyone can find their own meaning in it,” Pure Shore says in a comment. “Indeed, it is about ‘letting go,’ freeing ourselves from what holds us back, whatever that may be.”

See the full film on Vimeo.

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Say you visit a highly anticipated exhibition one Saturday afternoon and find yourself in a crowded gallery, shoulder-to-shoulder with a pack of rabid art goers. As you stealthily maneuver toward your viewing target, an over-stimulated (or, depending on the show, perhaps under-stimulated) child begins to melt down. You suddenly overhear an unreasonably heated conversation about brunch plans. Your heartbeat quickens, and soon, art gallery panic sets in. How do you return to the piece in front of you while also reclaiming your peace of mind?

A collaborative film by animator Gaia Alari and therapist Emily Price visualizes how art can help us get in tune with our senses and emotions. Paired with Alari’s dynamic drawings, Price guides viewers through an exercise designed to focus our attention even in the most anxious or gloomy of situations. Put your hands on your heart and stomach, she suggests, or imagine yourself protected in a cloche or invisibility cape, allowing yourself to feel calm and safe.

“How does your body react to art?” is produced by MoMA, which also released a long-form interview with Price that dives into the psychology of a museum visit. For more from Alari, visit Vimeo.

You also might enjoy a similarly meditative project by Bryana Bibbs, which invites viewers to contribute to a collective weaving as a response to an exhibition about mental health and wellness.

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Beau Miles is a nature-lover, adventurer, and a self-described oddball who makes stuff from other people’s junk. Based in Australia, he delves into urban foraging on his YouTube channel, wrote a book called The Backyard Adventurer, and has made numerous films about everything from building a tiny cabin to exploring Sydney’s most polluted river. Miles also happened to plant a small, flourishing forest in one day.

“Without being dramatic, it was easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done in a single day,” he says. “But it was also fun—and the kind of thing that shifted how I intend to use my ideas and my body as a force for good. It was practical, hard, and an outcomes-driven use of time and energy.”

Miles planted one tree per minute for 24 hours—that’s 1,440 in total—and when he made the initial video, he promised to return every two years to report on its progress. In a recent update, he revisits the 2021 marathon project, documenting the wildlife that has moved in, wandering beneath healthy, young trees, and building a small fire from scrounged wood.

“This was a special day because I really felt like the project had landed,” Miles says. “I had a cup of tea in the new forest, from water boiled on a fire made from the forest itself. It’s perhaps the most profound cup of tea I’ve ever had.”

Another video that Miles posted in July set a virtual one-month timer on an endeavor to turn his streaming channel into a force for good. With funds from advertising, he aims to purchase and plant even more trees. Follow his updates on YouTube, Instagram, and his site. (via Kottke)

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“Wherever I go, bees come,” says Matt Somerville. A carpenter by trade, Somerville is also a committed conservationist, having spent the last 14 years building and installing approximately 800 homes for the dwindling insect populations around the English countryside.

“The Hive Architect,” a film directed by Max Weston and released by the outdoor clothing brand Fera, follows the scrappy, pipe-smoking woodworker as he carves out a log, builds a conical roof, and finally ventures out into a meadow to erect his construction. “There is a widely held theory that our British honey bee couldn’t exist without being domesticated by beekeepers,” says Fera. “However, for bee conservationists like Matt Somerville, this theory is ludicrous.”

Somerville typically spends his winters in his woodshop, creating as many hives as he can during the cold months. Just as the first flowers spring from the ground, he heads out to bucolic locations, where he rigs up a contraption that allows him to install the heavy builds all on his own.

In addition to watching the beautifully shot documentary above, you can find more about Somerville and his process on his website, Bee Kind Hives. (via Kottke)

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Known for their innovative music videos and dance-worthy tracks, OK Go knows the power of great visuals. Coordination is often the name of the game, from the viral treadmills in “Here It Goes Again” to 64 synced and choreographed smartphones in “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill.” For their latest release, “Impulse Purchase,” the group turned to another means of collaboration: open-source animation.

OK Go teamed up with animators Lucas Zanotto (previously) and Will Anderson, along with Blender Studio, to create a digital music video unlike any they’ve made so far. The song “Impulse Purchase” takes Zanotto’s characteristic cartoonish characters, which roll and explode in a variety of playful, geometric shapes and combines the imagery with real-time motion captures of lead singer Damien Kulash’s face.

The video opens with a hint of the process behind the scenes, and the credits reveal even more insights into how the software captured the movements of all the band members.

Blender is an open-source software that enables dynamic 3D modeling and animation, instrumental in the recent Academy Award-winning film Flow. Zanotto and Anderson used a tool called Geometry Nodes, “a node-based way of creating complex geometry that can change dynamically, involve simulations, and ultimately drive a performance in an adaptive way,” Anderson told It’s Nice That. In the spirit of the application used to build it, the music video itself is open-source, allowing viewers to download the source files and tinker around with it.

Move around to more tunes on OK Go’s website and YouTube.

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In a new music video for Lisbon-based musician Xinobi’s song “Strides,” a quirky concept came to fruition thanks to the Callner Brothers. Both directors and producers who specialize in commercials, Ben and Adam Callner worked a different kind of filmmaking magic for this dance-worthy track.

The video opens on two men, seated near a fountain, who discover—or are perhaps chosen by—a pair of floating fanny packs. The accessories, which appear to glow and sparkle, are filled with stickers that read “muy bien,” or “very good.” As the two frolic around Lisbon, practically effervescing with good cheer and a desire to connect with others, they facilitate a diverse and joyful group of people who gather in a court.

But not everyone is happy about this new movement, and in a dramatic clash, anti-muy-bien demonstrators let everyone know how they feel, even though the temptation to join in the fun is real. “Is this about embracing different people and ideas, or is it about two guys wearing fanny packs getting their 10,000 steps in?” the Callner Brothers ask. (There isn’t a right answer.)

See more on the creators’ Vimeo and website.

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In northern climes, winter sometimes feels like it drags on forever. A new animation directed by Mitchell Keys taps into the feeling of elation and brightness that accompanies the first days of spring. And while his short film, “Springrise,” is only about a minute long, it traces the sun’s journey higher into the sky, as if awakening from hibernation while people rejoice.

Hothouse, an apprenticeship program facilitated by the National Film Board of Canada, invites a handful of participants to create ultra-short animated shorts every year. It aims to quickly and flexibly make animations while emphasizing creative and technical excellence, and 2025 marks its 15th edition. You can watch all of this year’s projects, plus dozens more from past cohorts, on the NFB website.

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From a musical bird to a wandering Scottish flower, a troupe of imaginative beings spring forth in a new short film created for Ffern, a fragrance maker based in Somerset. The company tapped London-based creative content studio Pal to create “A Ffern Fairtyale” celebrating storytelling, imagination, and the seasons.

Pal organized several workshops around the U.K. in partnership with Ffern, attended by more than 100 children who told stories, made paintings, and conceived of characters inspired by folklore and springtime. Through a series of imagined beings like the Flower Thing, Naomi the Flute Bird, and the Frost Queen, we glimpse youthful inner worlds—no screens here—brought to life in costumes made by Clarisse d’Arcimoles and Frank Gallacher.

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