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AWARDS

WEBBY AWARDS
ORIGINAL CONCEPT / SHORT FILM
 BRANDED CONTENT

TELLY AWARDS
CONCEPT & ART DIRECTION

TELLY AWARDS
ORIGINAL SHORT FILM

Title: "Goal"
Running Time: 1:10 min.

Medium:  16 mm film
Artwork: Various Media
2007

 

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Background: This art film was commissioned by Nike for the 2006 FIFA World Cup
"Play Beautiful" social media campaign. They asked me how I would interpret soccer as an artist living in New York City. Soccer was not as popular in the US back then as it is worldwide. I had no prior experience in filmmaking and did not know much about the sport, but what I witnessed was a collective experience of passion from the fans and the players. It's a sport that can bring grown men and women down to tears of joy or disappointment in an instant. I connected with that feeling of passion for something and that lead me to visualize and realize what that would look like. I even got to experience my own microcosm of Joga Bonito - the Beautiful Game.

Writer/Director/Exec. Producer: Mai La Thai
Producer: Chesley Helmsfield
Director of Photography: Valentina Caniglia
Editor: Kevin Grassman

 

 

 

Anchor 1
"Boat No. _ _ "
Anchor 3

AWARDS

WEBBY AWARDS
ORIGINAL CONCEPT / SHORT FILM

NYC INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
OFFICIAL SELECTION

Title: "Boat No. _ _ - _ _ _ _"
Running Time:  10 min.

Medium:  24p Digital Video
Artwork: Craft Paper​
2010


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Background: For the first time in her life, Mai turns the camera on herself and reveals where she comes from. Inspired by her family’s personal plight to freedom from the Communist takeover, Mai La Thai channels her earliest childhood memories. She reinterprets the events through the eyes of a child of the long and difficult journey at sea. A narrative story unfolds through her minimal technique of combining paper cutouts, mechanical choreography, and deliberate omission of text or dialogue.

 

Writer: Mai La Thai
Producer: Mai La Thai
Director: Mai La Thai
Art & Performance: Mai La Thai

 

 

 

PREMIERING
TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK

Corbis Images
Anchor 2

AWARDS

VEER FILM COMMISSION
ORIGINAL CONCEPT

PREMIERING
ONLINE CAMPAIGN

Title: "A Beautiful Death"
Running Time:  3 min.

Medium: Digital Video
Artwork: Various Media
2013

 

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Background: Veer is a stock photo agency based in Seattle. They asked me to come up with a film idea for their "kill off bad stock photography" campaign. The campaign launched around Halloween targeting creative professionals in the design and advertising industry. I was one of 5 artists selected from a nationwide search. They wanted to run a marketing campaign poking fun of themselves and at the stock photo industry. I was given a set of images from their collection to sacrifice. Feeling sympathy for the chosen images, I wanted to give them "A Beautiful Death" by having them dissolve, fade, and disappear into the light. No digital effects were used. I created and shot the light and liquid in
real time.


Writer/Director: Mai La Thai
Executive Producer: Mai La Thai
Director of Photography: Mai La Thai
Editor: Derek Davidson
Music: Podington Bear

Art & Performance: Mai La Thai

"A Toast to Memo"

AWARDS

WEBBY AWARDS

OFFICIAL HONOREE
EXPERIMENTAL FILM

Anchor 4

Title: "A Toast to Memo"
Running Time:  3 min.

Medium: Super 8 mm 
2010

 

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Background: "A Toast to Memo" is a 3-minute film shot in one take on a single super 8 mm cartridge using a vintage, silent movie camera. This piece was originally performed as a live parody of an infomercial at a local theater. I approached Esther with treating this material as an absurdist film instead. My choice of using a super 8 camera was absurdist in itself since the film is silent and the material relies on sound. I used this opportunity to make it into something else and added sound to give it another bizarre layer. Syncing up the sound was challenge. I had only one 3 minute roll of film and there was little room for mistakes or editing. This is how the film came back from an underground processing lab and synced up with sound in post production. 

 


Director: Mai La Thai
Executive Producer: Mai La Thai
Director of Photography: Mai La Thai

Music & Performance: Esther Silberstein

 

 

 

© Mai La Thai

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