Dutch Première @ Go Short festival Nijmegen
Goodbye To Mercury got officially selected for Go Short festival Nijmegen in the Music Video Competition!
Dutch première in the Music Video Competition 3 april 21:00 in Filmhuis LUX Nijmegen
Also selected by:
ANIMA international animation festival Brussels 2025
Filmfest Dresden international short film festival 2025
Goodbye To Mercury - a short music film
“Goodbye To Mercury is a short film that comes in disguise of a music video but hides a mindblowing personal story.”
A woman searches for her absent father in the faces of strangers—men with a moustache. Driven by a rousing soundtrack, she sings about her father’s mercurial nature and her encounters with him in a poetic, cinematic journey.
Synopsis
Sonja van Hamel grew up in the 1970s with a single mother, her father having left before she was born. Since she had no image of him, her mother clipped a photo from a magazine that resembled him, presenting it to her daughter as her “possible father.” This tall man with a moustache became an obsession for the girl during her youth. Unconsciously, she began projecting this vague image onto strangers, turning them all into potential fathers.
In Goodbye to Mercury – she names her father Mercury to highlight his unpredictable nature – van Hamel takes the original cut-out picture and applies AI-generated imagery to depict her search, blending music, words, and animated stills to create a poetic journey in which memories, emotions, and associations shift, merge, and reveal a biased reality.
In a layered, atmospheric monologue, van Hamel creates an unconventional cinematic experience that questions her identity and alternates between her own and her mother’s perspectives. She captures the complex emotions evoked by Mercury's absence, her eventual first encounter with him at a train station when she was 28 years old, and his recent, unexpected death.
The film is both a construction of a child's unusual history with a parent and a universal ode to the profound grief of saying goodbye.
Written and directed by Sonja van Hamel
Animated by Zoltan Korai
Music by Sonja van Hamel performed by The Leonids
Produced by BirdFish
Short film about Sophie Calle - Musée d'Orsay, Paris
I made an audio-visual transcription of Sophie Calle's exhibition “Les Fantômes d'Orsay” for Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The expo is about the old, abandonded Hotel d'Orsay where Sophie spend months collecting and photographing it's remains in 1978. Creating the soundscape for this film I used, among others, the voices of my mother (French is her first language) and of our cat Vos. I made sound recordings in our old family chalet in Switzerland and in the remaining parts of the Hotel d'Orsay in Paris.
Below is a text I wrote at the request of Musée d'Orsay about my intentions and the creative process of making this film. The animation was made in collaboration with Zoltan Korai. (Watching the film is recommended with headphones :)
Here's an English subtitled version of the film:
Sexy Sadie - The Analogues
The Analogues will be showing the animations below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish. Script & images by Sonja van Hamel / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Sverre Fredriksen
Happiness Is A Warm Gun - The Analogues
The Analogues will be showing the animation below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script & images by Sonja van Hamel / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai
Why Don't We Do It In The Road
The Analogues will be showing the animation below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script by Sonja van Hamel / Images by Emanuel Wiemans / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai & Emanuel Wiemans
Blackbird
The Analogues will be showing the animations below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script by Sonja van Hamel / Images by Emanuel Wiemans / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai & Emanuel Wiemans
Piggies
The Analogues will be showing the animations below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script by Sonja van Hamel / Images by Emanuel Wiemans / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animated by Sverre Fredriksen & Emanuel Wiemans
Revolution 1
The Analogues will be showing the animations below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script & images by Sonja van Hamel / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai
Savoy Truffle
The Analogues will be showing the animations below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script & images by Sonja van Hamel / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai
Snapje? Planeten
Animation for children's TV show "Het Klokhuis" by me and Zoltan Korai
OCEAAN
Animation for children's TV show "Het Klokhuis" by me and Zoltan Korai. The stop-motion scenes were shot in a handmade "multiplane camera". Screenplay and cut out images by Sonja, animated by Zoltan Korai