The Lift by Robert Kohr

Today’s Viewseum entry is a short film with traits that most city dwellers can relate to. Traits pertaining to the consistent use of the elevator, a luxury most city dwellers (including us New Yorkers) tend to take for granted.

Filmmaker Robert Kohr tackles issues of impatience and guilt in his film The Lift. Designed with a bold-line style reminiscent of graphic novels and 3D-rendered backgrounds, the film mixes both realism and fantasy in a domestic setting. Mr. Kohr presents a young woman in a Brooklyn-esque setting making the common gesture (and sometimes mistake) of closing the elevator doors before someone else can get on. The tale sounds simple, but Mr. Kohr proceeds to illustrate the young woman’s guilt and conscience through a series of illustrative hallucinations.

Four years in the making, the film has won multiple awards and screened in over 55 festivals (full list here on Mr. Kohr’s website). Also of note, Mr. Kohr assembled a team of artists found online, all of whom he had never met before. According to Mr. Kohr on his website: “In this day and age it’s important to leverage social networking into your business model and The Lift is an example of this trend.”

Nice work, Robert Kohr.