Calligraphy Takes Flight in an Award-Winning Animation

Amidst a desert landscape, birds of different breeds fly, eat, swim, and transform, shedding feathers or tails. These birds are crafted from calligraphy and ornament designs: the lines of letters brought to life as beautifully animated birds. Some of the birds are elegant, while others look angry, or frightened. To Iranian director and animator Meghdad Asadi Lari, each of the birds represents a different human trait. The film, called Simorgh, is enchanting and simple, from the texture of the calligraphic lines to the mesmerizing and elegant movement of the animations, enhanced by the music of Saba Alizadeh. The colors of the film are reminiscent of watercolors, while the textures present in the animation evoke the image of paper, bringing the beauty of calligraphy even more fully into the short.

The short animated film, which is Lari’s graduate school thesis, has been shown at film festivals internationally, including the Cannes Short Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Simorgh itself is an adaptation of "Conference of the Birds," the beloved Sufi poem by Farid ud-Din Attar, in which a group of birds gather and search for the legendary “simorgh” bird in order to crown it king. When they reach their destination, they find only a pond of water in which they see their reflections. “Si morgh” translates to “thirty birds” in Persian. Lari’s adaptation adds a stunning but simple visual beauty to the story, literally bringing the text alive.

Source: thecreatorsproject.vice.com