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Keep it in Motion - Classic Animation Revisited: 'Man of the Hour'

Every Wednesday, Chris Robinson takes a look at short animation films. Today: Chen Kang-wei's 'The Man of the Hour' (2004)

Constant time sparring. Can't ever seem to be in the moment, too busy adrift memories and regrets of a past long gone no matter never mind and the antsy anticipation excitement terror of tomorrow. Why spend so much time musing over what has gone, what can never be changed and never will be again? Are we even remembering the right past? Memory is nothing but a fiction. And why fret over a tomorrow that might never be?

How do we find that present? Is it something we can ever really locate? Already my words above are in the past. All of this will be in the past when/if you read it. But that's me thinking in the future again instead of just focusing on THIS HERE NOW (Oh damn, that was gone before I finished the sentence).

Now really has no use. It’s always changing.

There are times when I am in that moment...if that moment means being at one with everything around you. Usually I experience that when exercise, write or am sick. You are so intensely concentrated on the task at hand (e.g. vomiting) that past and present no longer exist, only the movements and breaths of your mind and body.

As Justin Timberlake was said to have been repeatedly whispering to himself pre-Super Bowl, “the present is gone in an instant of becoming."

Sometimes you find it, most days you don’t. It takes practice to be in the moment. It takes discipline. It takes a willingness to let go of ….

Shit…sorry…  had to pee… what was I saying?

"What then is time?" asked St. Augustine. "If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know."

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A well-known figure in the world of independent animation, writer, author & curator Chris Robinson is the Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival.