Borderlines

Hanka Nováková's allegory about the problems of boundaries and the way they can be shifted is simply rendered and very effective. Two people, one brown, one grey live in a stick-drawn house with a dividing line between the two. They start off looking the same, except for colour, but when the divide between them starts to lean first one way and the other, things begin to shift.

Suddenly Mr Brown is boxed in by Mr Grey, who uses him as a table. Mr Grey begins to put on weight with his new-found space and it's not long before he starts to use it to gain the upper hand. But Mr Brown is not about to take the dismantling of his home lying down.

Nováková may only be using a stick house to illustrate her point but given the amount of turmoil in the world over territory at the moment, the implication is clear. Her characters are simply drawn but they have strong sense of individual personality, and while her short may be just five minutes long and dialogue-free, but by the end we care what happens to these bald blobs of colour. This is a simplistic rendering of a multi-faceted problem but as you watch Nováková's characters retain a humanity to the last but you can't help but consider that, in the real world, such displays of solidarity are all too few and far between.