13/06/2025 - Meejin Hong’s mesmerising, hand-drawn, black-and-white infinite animation explores the limitations of time and space, questioning the illusion of abundance and infinity in both art and life

After premiering at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and winning awards at Anifilm in the Czech Republic and the Ann Arbor Film Festival in the USA, Deluge by Korean American animator Meejin Hong screened in the Grand Competition Short Film programme at the 35th edition of Animafest Zagreb.

Deluge, a prime example of what is usually termed “infinite animation”, begins with a continuously blooming and decaying cornucopia of what could be flowers and fruits on the left side of the screen. Simultaneously, a human-like figure tumbles to the ground in the bottom right corner, then stands up and leaves the frame, only to be followed by its copies repeating the same movements. Similar anthropomorphic forms quickly emerge on the opposite side, this time performing dance swirls and joined by strange birds with four wings and round falling shapes. All of these images are hand-drawn in thin lines of black ink on white paper. Of the new, continuously emerging images, some are easily recognisable as crosses, human faces and hands or chubby creatures riding bicycles, while others are not so distinct – they could be blossoms or snails or books falling from what we would instinctively call the sky.

Some of the new additions to the evolving phantasmagoria are partly filled with lines and smudges, while others are completely black: shadows appear, tumbleweed and clouds roll and ghost-like shapes glide around. As more and more forms are added, they inevitably overlap, walk or fly over one another and fight for their space on what was once a blank page, overflowing the screen and reminding us of the title of the film. Regardless of their form, they are all confined to an infinite loop, a seamless repetition of the same movements for the same amount of time, which is emphasised by the sound of engines and machines reminiscent of a production line. 

Still, there is never a feeling of chaos or disorder in the overpopulated space. The viewer’s eye is initially drawn to different parts of the screen, lingering on the forms that are less abstract, but it eventually must surrender to the beautiful inundation of figures and doodles and become completely immersed in the hypnotic loops as the sound moves from rhythmic thumps and squeals to a patternless meditative combination of percussion, strings, horns and vocals. The frame becomes filled to the brim, turning into a veritable horror vacui as we lose track of the figures that have gradually disappeared in the ever-growing blackness that reaches a point in which the animation devours itself. Perhaps, for some viewers, it does so even earlier, as the sheer amount of visual stimulation in the film can be as overwhelming as it is mesmerising. 

We could wonder what it all means. Is the combination of infinite cycles and horror vacui a metaphor for the mechanical monotony of everyday life, a comment on the flood of distractions in today’s world or an existentialist critique of the consumeristic accumulation of useless items? Maybe all three, but Deluge seems to be a film primarily self-aware of its own temporal and spatial limitations, reminding us that infinity of any kind is only an illusion and that everything, in art and life, eventually comes to an end.

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