by Andrew Morrison | A long time ago in a faraway place I spent an unfortunate hour in the company of a full service taxidermist. I had been brought to his studio by a not very nice hunter who didn’t like Canadians and so tried to shock or scare his guest – delicate city boy me – with a kaleidoscope of dead creatures in various states of grim, stinky undress. For a long time thereafter I was understandably put off by the process, if not by the product. Accordingly, I hesitate to celebrate or romance efforts to animate the dead, but I still dig this short film on the subjected. Directed by Nicole Triche, it shows taxidermy for the art form it really is; a distillate of the hunter’s weird, rarefied, inexplicable interface of love and respect for their prey (that I still don’t completely understand) and a craft that attempts to resurrect them via hyper-real exactitude. The cleaner and purer the distillate, the more impactful the work. Bizarre, yes, and definitely not for everyone. But that’s art sometimes. Also, Wendy Christensen’s Wisconsin accent (1:40) is straight up amazing.