Kindred is a short and sweet experience that explores issues of non-binary, gender-questioning, and LGBTQ+ identities in the context of family. It’s an animated piece that manages to be both general and universal in it’s themes, but you learn at the end some of the more very specific ways in which it may be unique to the protagonists. We also talk about the character designs, and how the abstracted animation representations are able to withhold some information that allows for certain information to remain more occluded and then revealed at the end. It’s a brief experience, and I had a chance to watch it a second time before I interviewed director Bambou Kenneth. I ended up doing a shot-by-shot breakdown of the piece unpacking each scene, each perspective shift from 3rd person to 1st person and back again, and how being immersed within VR is able to provide another layer of intimacy to this story.
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Music: Fatality
