One of my very favourite films of 2013 (and I think my favourite ever short) is a three-minute work by Hartlepool artist Maxy Bianco, called Pig The Dog. I saw it screened with 15 others on a loop at the Baltic Gallery, as part of the Random Acts exhibition, supported by Channel 4.

Doing my ‘end of year chart’ I placed this short film second, with only Clio Barnard’s masterpiece The Selfish Giant above it – so it obviously made a huge, lasting impact. It’s about an unusual life spent on the semi-rural scrubland at the edge of a northern city.

For the first half of 2014, I regularly looked for it online and failed to find it. Then yesterday at TEDxBrighton, one of the speakers vividly reminded me to seek out Pig The Dog – and this time I’ve struck gold; it’s gone up on the filmmaker’s Vimeo site.

So here it is, if you have three minutes to spare. Even if you only bother with one thing I’ve banged on about in recent months, please make it this one. There’s some swearing but you can live with that.

 

Pig the Dog from Maxy Neil Bianco on Vimeo.

By the way, here’s my live-blogging account of the TEDxBrighton talk that inspired me to go back and look for Pig The Dog again, though better watch the film first, before reading anything I’ve said about the talk.