Bek is a 12 minute hand drawn independant animation, wich I wrote, directed, designed and partly animated.
Bek has won BEST ANIMATION AWARD at FIKE 2005, Evora International Short Film Festival, Portugal and won 3rd prize at animacor in Cordoba Spain and a distinction in Reanimacja Festival, Poland. Bek was invited to numerous festivals like Hiroshima, Stuttgard, Anima Mundi in Brazil.
Animated by: Bouwine Pool, Peter Wassink
Sound design and music by: Bart van de Lisdonk, Aico Lind.
Produced by: il Luster productions
Financial support: City of Utrecht/The Netherlands Film Fund/thuiskopiefonds.
Running time: 12 min 30 sec.
BEK (Beak) is a tale about a girl who is born with wings instead of arms and a beak where a mouth should be. Unlike a real bird though, she cannot fly because she is, after all, still a girl. Hated by her father, she is driven from home and ends up joining the circus as a freak attraction.
Adopted by a friendly, drunken clown she settles into her niche as a circus performer. As time goes by, she longs to be a real woman, a human, but there is no place for such a bird-creature in the world outside the circus. So, she creates her own fantasy world as she dreams about the life of a normal girl, somewhere far away from the circus. In the end, she dreams herself away from it all leaving the audience wondering if the girl was actually there, or if it was something they may have imagined – a girl with wings and a beak.
The film is about growing up, and being an outcast . It is about not being able to express yourself even to the people you love and the ones that love you. The girl in Bek is being misunderstood and is trying to find a place for herself in the world by using fantasy and imagination. Not unlike many of the girls her age.
