WATCH: Howie Shia’s ‘BAM’ released online
On the heels of a strong festival run, Howie Shia‘s tremendous animated National Film Board of Canada (NFB) short BAM is now available to view online in full. Following three prior shorts produced with the NFB – Ice Ages (produced as part of the film board’s Hothouse apprenticeship scheme), Flutter and Peggy Baker: Four Phrases – Shia’s fourth film takes the audience on a journey of the life of a studious and introverted boxer who fights an ongoing battle with his own psychological demons and propensity toward bouts of violent rage.
My grandfather was both a high-ranking police official in Taiwan—a brutal man by occupation—but also a revered calligrapher and poet. Whenever I tell people that, they tell me how strange that combination is, but really at that time, in that place, I don’t know that it was. BAM comes largely out of a question about who my grandfather would be if he was growing up today, subjected to our modern judgments and definitions. Would he have to choose between his physicality and his intellect, and what do you do with all of that power if you have no wars to fight and no dragons to slay?
-Howie Shia, speaking with Skwigly last year on BAM‘s origins (full interview here)
Watch BAM in full below via nfb.ca:
See more of Howie Shia’s work at ppfhouse.com