Classic Paintings Come to Life (and Death) in Short Film ‘BEAUTY’

Warning: The above vid is NSFW-ish and kind of frightening.

Rino Stefano Tagliafierro’s “B E A U T Y” is stunning, moving, haunting, sexy, scary, and pretty darn creepy all at once. The filmmaker took dozens of classic paintings and animated them into cinemagraphs, which are a type of GIF in which a formerly still image is slightly tweaked to add an extra dimension of surreal.

“B E A U T Y” is told in three acts. The first begins with lovely pastoral landscapes and images mothers, babies, cherubs, and sweetness. In act two, we get into sexy time as nude figures are altered to touch, caress, and  make love. Then in act three things go dark fast. This is my favorite part of the piece as we see shocking apocalyptic and hellish images flashing before us in a chaotic montage of horror, death, violence, and mutilation until we’re left with nothing corpses and misery.

Fun stuff.

To find out Tagliafierro’s site for a full list of the paintings featured.

[Source: Smithsonian Mag]