Black Tape

From the creators of "Hollow Land", comes a 2D short based on new and documentary footage of the implications of life under occupation around the Arab-Israeli conflict. "Black Tape" is the second film in Uri Kranot's trilogy which started with 2010's "White Tape". In an entangled tango, the victim and victimiser dance, occupying the frame and the space between brushstrokes as "Black Tape" explores the theme of domination.

I was initially surprised that this short was done by the same pair that had worked on "Hollow Land" (Seeing how different the two looked at first), before I noticed that both works do seem to focus on similar political themes, though "Hollow Land" is based in a far more fantasy-like world as compared to "Black Tape".

Back to the short itself, I just found myself so incredibly drawn into this one for some reason (And I don't think many animation shorts focusing on similar subjects ever caught my attention long enough in the past). Perhaps it was the music used, seeing that it just fits so incredibly well with the subject matter, while tango has been known more for it's passion and romance, I also feel that fierceness, dominance and control can be conveyed from it (Especially in this case), as seen within this short where each victim is practically being dragged along with the victimiser.

Style wise, it was listed that the animation technique used for this one was a mixture of 2D computer and drawing on film (I suppose the latter was when things got a whole lot messier, violent and chaotic near the end), I wonder whether most of the short has been rotoscoped from the documentary footage they had gathered, or whether it had all be drawn from scratch. As it seems that this short is not yet available online, I am trying the best I can to remember what I watched, and a part of me is quite sure that this short was rotoscoped, albeit in a really appealing manner (I really loved the pastel look, and the animation is not awkwardly fluid, like Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings) as compared to more well known examples of rotoscope animations.