The Windmill Farmer: Film by Joaquin Baldwin

Trilobite by Joaquin Baldwin

Joaquin Baldwin’s short film The Windmill Farmer is a captivating silent animation showing the brutality and beauty of nature’s seasonal cycle. Beginning with the titular farmer planting his windmill shoots in the ground, we see his ‘plants’ grow into massive turbines before nature takes its cruel toll. Told with a simple dexterity that will remind many of Up‘s heartbreaking opening montage, Baldwin’s animation has a very simple conceit at its core, but his craft is far from facile.

The brilliance of the film is its use of beautifully crafted 2D animation: the seasons’ progression is conveyed through a marvellous palette of coloured skies; the silhouette of the farmer in the foreground is wonderfully expressive; the power of nature seems tangible.

The score, composed by Nick Fevola, gels with Baldwin’s animation perfectly, communicating the farmer’s sorrow and joy with equal skill, and making the film all the more poignant to boot. A four minute animation with a lot of ideas and heaps of creative ingenuity, The Windmill Farmer engages and amazes in equal measure.

See more of Joaquin Baldwin’s work here