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Subtitle: 'a study of the boundary conditions of pareidolia'. Pareidolia, from Greek para (beside, alongside) and eidolon (image), is defined as 'The brain's tendency to perceive meaningful patterns in random structures.' With a semi-scientific attitude, director Blom approaches several individuals in a fixed pattern. Introducing landscape images, pareidolic close-ups and a computer-animated map, he interviews subjects who live around Lourdes and Loch Ness - two epicentres of proven pareidolia. Each interviewee is presented as a talking head and gets the same standard questions (about their preferred death, favourite food, bad character traits etc.), before showing more or less pareidolically interesting objects. Including rocks, stalactites and a tomato, in which people discern faces or animals. Afterwards, Blom judges each individual with a pareidolic percentage. The film begins and ends with a well-known psychological drawing experiment in which school children finish a pre-printed scrawl to arrive at a complete drawing.

Credits

Director
Producer
Scenario
Set geluid
Sound editing
Production company
Volya Films
Distributor NL
De Filmbank

Title: Over het naar gezichten in de wolken speuren
Year: 2009
Duration : 49 minutes
Category: Short Documentary
Edition: NFF 2009

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Stills

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