TIFF 2017: The Tesla World Light

The Tesla World Light is a strange stop-motion animation short film. Robert Vilar plays Nikola Tesla in the latter days of his life, fantasizing about a system of free energy for all nations while a lightning-spouting pigeon terrorizes him around his room.

So, it’s something of an art film.

The animation technique is obviously stop-motion, especially for the pigeon, but that’s part of the charm. The rest of the animation is a technique called light animation, which involves moving a bright light in frame, resulting in light rays. In practice, it looks kind of like the trailing lights of a sparkler. It’s a pretty cool effect, and it definitely suits the subject of Tesla and his penchant for electricity experiments.

Story-wise, there is not much going on, and it gets a little abstract and crazy. But that’s kind of the point, it’s an expression of the manic genius of Tesla…