Goodbye To Mecury wins best music video award @NFF
Goodbye to Mercury won the Best Music Video award at the Netherlands Film Festival!
Thanks to the jury for these words:
“Sonja van Hamel - Goodbye To Mercury impressed the jury with its strong artistic vision, innovative use of AI, and personal, emotionally charged imagery that lingers in the mind after viewing and goes hand in hand with the music. The jury believes that using AI as a tool for creativity rather than as a replacement will become more common in the future and that this will also create opportunities for new creators with smaller budgets. On the other hand, the jury is aware that this is a controversial choice, but that this also makes it an interesting topic of discussion.”
Goodbye To Mercury @ Go Short festival Nijmegen
Thank you Go Short festival Nijmegen for the Special Mention of Goodbye To Mercury and screening my film at the opening and award winners shows! Jury rapport: “Film and music are strongly intertwined, as the filmmaker is also the songwriter, performer and protagonist.”
About Goodbye To Mercury
A woman searches for her absent father in the faces of strangers—men with a moustache. Driven by a rousing soundtrack, she sings about her father’s mercurial nature and her encounters with him in an estranging journey.
Goodbye To Mercury is based on Sonja van Hamel’s recollections of her unknown father. She grew up in the 1970s with a single mother; lacking a photo of her father, her mother clipped an image from a magazine of a man with a moustache and presented this to her daughter as her “possible father”. As a girl she projected this image on to passengers, turning them all into potential fathers. In this music-driven film, van Hamel weaves AI-generated images based on the original cutout image into a cinematic experience that resembles the alienating reality she experienced as a child.
24 / 5 / 2025 : New Publication
In 2022 I made a short film for Musée d'Orsay (Paris) about Sophie Calle's exhibition Les Fantômes d'Orsay. The museum has now (15 May 2025) published an article on a series of video works made in that context. Very honoured to be included in this publication.
Sophie Calle's exhibition “Les Fantômes d'Orsay” was about the old, abandonded Hotel d'Orsay where Sophie spend months collecting and photographing it's remains in 1978. Creating the soundscape for this film I used, among others, the voices of my mother (French is her first language) and of our cat Vos. I made sound recordings in our old family chalet in Switzerland and in the remaining parts of the Hotel d'Orsay in Paris.
Below is a text I wrote at the request of Musée d'Orsay about my intentions and the creative process of making this film. The animation was made in collaboration with Zoltan Korai. (Watching the film is recommended with headphones :)
Here's an English subtitled version of the film:
Happiness Is A Warm Gun - The Analogues
The Analogues will be showing the animation below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script & images by Sonja van Hamel / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai
Why Don't We Do It In The Road
The Analogues will be showing the animation below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script by Sonja van Hamel / Images by Emanuel Wiemans / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai & Emanuel Wiemans
Blackbird
The Analogues will be showing the animations below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script by Sonja van Hamel / Images by Emanuel Wiemans / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai & Emanuel Wiemans
Piggies
The Analogues will be showing the animations below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script by Sonja van Hamel / Images by Emanuel Wiemans / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animated by Sverre Fredriksen & Emanuel Wiemans
Revolution 1
The Analogues will be showing the animations below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script & images by Sonja van Hamel / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai
Savoy Truffle
The Analogues will be showing the animations below in their live show The White Album (originaly by The Beatles) at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam on November 2nd 2024.
Animation by BirdFish: Script & images by Sonja van Hamel / Art direction by Robert Muda / Animation by Zoltan Korai
Snapje? Planeten
Animation for children's TV show "Het Klokhuis" by me and Zoltan Korai
OCEAAN
Animation for children's TV show "Het Klokhuis" by me and Zoltan Korai. The stop-motion scenes were shot in a handmade "multiplane camera". Screenplay and cut out images by Sonja, animated by Zoltan Korai