Film

A washing machine spinning out of control and into its own destruction serves as a prelude to a stream of performances and documents of fringe forms of intimacy and constriction, culled from various online communities. Rafman gives a poetic treatment to the images, both sweet and abject. “It’s like Dante’s Inferno but without the drama. Just the people floating in the mud” (Dis Magazine). 

Playing like a series of overheard conversations, Life and People grapples with communication, language, and recitation by staging common situations—a doctor’s prognosis, a teacher’s report to a parent—in the director’s signature deadpan, but replicating the awkward interactions of his animation to live-action performances. 

A relic from the future, after the extinction of human beings, the film tells of the devolution of “quantum humans” into their mortal ancestors, awakened through ritualistic dancing and speaking in tongues.