source: brooklynfilmfestivalorg
Producer: Jean-Jacques Benhamou – Screenwriter: Philippe Grammaticopoulos – Editor: Philippe Grammaticopoulos – Cinematographer: Philippe Grammaticopoulos – Sound: Philippe Grammaticopoulos – Music : Pierre Schaeffer, George Crumb – 3D Modeling : Nicolas Combecave, Philippe Grammaticopoulos – 3D Animation: Lucas Vallerie, Jean-Charles Gonin, Philippe Grammaticopoulos – 3D Rendering : Jérémie Droulers, Loïc Salmon, Philippe Grammaticopoulos

In a very industrialized world, where humans only eat transgenic food, some plates make for surprising dishes….

Philippe Grammaticopoulos was born in Brussels (Belgium), where he studied Comic strip at Saint-Luc Institute. He also graduated at the digital animation school Supinfocom in Valenciennes (France). He worked as a drawer before becoming an animation film director. He publishes Comics strip, children books and drawings for newspaper like Le Monde. At the present time he lives and works in Paris.
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source:dlacmorg
In a very industrialized world, where humans only eat transgenic food, some plates make for surprising dishes… This story is a thought about our epoch, an ironic and critical vision of the food-processing industry. The agribusiness uses the scientific progress to make a profit, to the detriment of the public health. The story finds a place in a world polluted and denatured by experiments, where all men eat only giant snails. In this context, a man explores a giant empty shell which becomes the gate of hell.
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source:wewastetimecom
Philippe Grammaticopoulos was born in Brussels (Belgium), where he studied Comic strip at Saint-Luc Institute. He also graduated at the digital animation school Supinfocom in Valenciennes (France). He worked as a drawer before becoming an animation film director. He publishes Comics strip, children books and drawings for newspaper like Le Monde. At the present time he lives and works in Paris. Filmography director : – 2000 « Le Processus », student animation film – 2004 « Le Régulateur », first animation film – 2007 « Signature », Amnesty International spot – 2009 « Les Ventres », second animation film.
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source:undersoutherneyesedpinsentcom
Delightful short film inspired in part by Rene Laloux’s animated work, “The Bellies” features a simple story about human avarice and arrogance in controlling nature, and how eventually nature and unacknowledged guilt prevail over greed and materialism. An unnamed gentleman, gross and piggy-eyed, gorges on snails for lunch at a restaurant; his fellow diners, all much the same as he is, eat the same meal in a bizarre co-ordinated Mexican-wave mass action. After lunch he goes back to the company laboratory where visitors await him: he explains the process by which small snails are genetically engineered to grow into ginormous gastropods for human consumption and takes his admiring guests on a tour around the facility. After the tour ends and the gentlemen sign a deal, the self-satisfied owner walks around the facility grounds where giant empty snail shells abound. On a whim, he crawls inside one such shell to assure himself he’s not hearing strange ghostly noises …

The animated figures are CGI-created while the backgrounds look as though they’ve been done with pencil and paint. Special effects are computer-generated. The figures don’t appear at all realistic but they are meant to satirise self-satisfied bourgeois conformity. There’s no speech but sprightly and playful acoustic music accompanied by sound effects emphasise mood and create, sustain and build tension. The whole cartoon has a very clean, spare look in keeping with the sanitised and conformist future society portrayed.

The last third of the film is the most surreal and really fits in with a dream-like Laloux-inspired universe: our piggy-eyed company director is forced to suffer as his factory-farmed snails have suffered and must run for his life. The film makes a point about how pursuit of materialist pleasure ends up eating you, how ultimately a culture based on gluttony will cannibalise itself. The giant fork that pursues the man turns into a creepy spider predator with a life of its own.

It’s a little slow and drags out the story in parts, especially during the graveyard scene where the company director starts thinking he’s hearing distant voices … but overall “The Bellies” is an entertaining piece with a surprisingly deep message about a future, materialistic society and how it dooms itself into extinction.