Playing God has its New York première at Tribeca 2025, 6 Jun
“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.”
Genesis 1 marks not just the beginning of the Bible, but the beginning of the universe as created by God. Matteo Burani’s short film Playing God also begins with the appearance of light, even if it is just the bright overhead lamp being switched on in an otherwise dark atelier, illuminating (and awakening) an army of grotesque mannequins on the worktable. The Creator – a maker of models – comes to the table, towering over the figures, and fashions from clay and wire his latest, indeed his 815th work: a homunculus. This clay man, brought to life by the artist’s skills, is equally repulsed by the hideous monstrosity of the discards all around him, and in awe of the God whose hand, ever so briefly, he gets to touch. The Creator, however, is a harsh, exacting judge, and soon no 815 will be just like the others, one more unseemly failure in an ongoing quest for perfection.
Animated (by Arianne Gheller) in stop motion, Playing God is a poioumenon – a postmodern metafiction that stages its own creative process. For here God is the animator, equally constructing and deconstructing these men of clay for a Biblical drama that never seems to take place, but in a sense is already underway, with each deformed reject condemned to a hell of watching the whole process start up again and again, and to witness their latest incarnation’s wonder and hope turn to infernal, existential despair. These models, each yearning to become autonomous like their maker, become martyrs in succession less to their own hubris than to His artistic perfectionism. And yet, for all its haunting bleakness and cruelty, this eight-minute piece is also immaculate in its conception and realisation, revealing the tentativeness, the improbability and the inadequacy of our own existence when measured against the divine – who may Himself, in turn, be just another animated part of a grander design understandable only through reflexive metaphor. The resulting hall of mirrors reveals the unfathomable power and genuine horror of creativity.
strap: Matteo Burani’s stop-motion short stages its own creative process, with the clay models martyred to their Creator’s perfectionism
© Anton Bitel
