Last week, whilst browsing Pinterest, I came across a quite magical image of a young girl in a white dress with a crown of flowers in her hair. The girl seemed very elf-like to me; a spirit of nature, as it were. It turns out that this image was a shot from a short film, created by two Canadian brothers, Seb and Ben McKinnon, The name of this film is simply Kin, and it is actually part of a larger project, known collectively as The Kin Fables.

The Kin Fables project encompasses a number of things, the most important of which is (to this point) a trilogy of short films. Kin is the first of these films; the other two are titled Salvage and Requiem. However, The Kin Fables also includes original music and a graphic novel (which I don’t believe has been completed yet). And as if that were not enough, the McKinnon brothers are apparently currently working on a full-length film, which will be based on the concepts from The Kin Fables.

I’m only guessing, but I assume that the full-length film will have a clearly defined narrative. The original trilogy, however, does not. To describe the three films as long music videos is almost unkind, but that is in essence what they are. They are a collection of beautifully constructed scenes, almost all of which play in slow motion, accompanied by stirring, poignant electronica. There is, of course, an underlying story that connects these scenes (which appear to be chronological), but without any dialogue it is left entirely up to the viewer to determine what it is. My own interpretation is that the girl is indeed a spirit of some kind, who represents childhood dreams. The protagonist (i.e., the boy, who is later shown as a young man) was once close to this spirit but at one point turned his back on her (and as a consequence, his childhood). But there is a lot more going on in the films, so maybe my interpretation is overly simplistic!

Overall, I found The Kin Fables trilogy a real pleasure to watch. If you, like me, are a fan of vivid fantasy imagery (like that of the 1980s film Legend, for example), as well as electronica, I highly recommend it!

If you are interested in watching The Kin Fables, you can do so on Vimeo. Alternatively, you can visit The Kin Fables website, which has several bits of interesting information on The Kin Fables project.