Having been selected for a double-digit number of festivals and scooped numerous international awards, Contact continues to travel the world. This animated short film has a highly original visual concept and follows the fate of an astronaut who’s stranded on a remote planet. Feeling desperately lonely and eager to reconnect with humans, he puts his hope in not being the only person lost in space. From his dashboard he sends out a message in one last bid to find company. And then, amid the immensity of the universe, the unthinkable happens: he gets a response!
Contact, by British director Katy Wang, is a dream-like work shorn of dialogue. The silence of space is a constant presence, while the 2D sets have been meticulously created. The young film-maker made this as her graduation film for Kingston School of Art and it transports us far into the galaxy with its elegant colours (a blend of pink and grey) and beautifully textured brushstrokes. This science-fiction film invites children to escape into space, whose mysteries stimulate the imagination. There we find a lonely hero in a spacesuit, a very realistically rendered space station and thousands of stars making up a galaxy, and we also sense the effect of the zero-gravity atmosphere that astronauts experience during their missions. Truly, this is a powerful intergalactic journey!
Katy Wang uses this short film to explore one of our most basic needs: human contact. Here she prods us about the feeling of loneliness and the importance of social connections in everyone’s lives. Choosing to make this the focus of a story set in space is all the more powerful because it allows her to cast the total isolation experienced by the astronaut. Children will enjoy tuning into the story and will learn about the value of personal ties and building friendships. Contact manages to provide lovely entertainment while also transmitting a deep and universal message.
