A Poignant "PowerPoint Culture" Video

If you weren't reading the Mental Floss blog in 2007, you may have missed this one. I figured it's time to bring it back.

Le Grand Content is a short film that beautifully explores "PowerPoint Culture," the diagramming and charting of our lives. Made by Clemens Kogler and Karo Szmit, the film is funny, smart, and touching. It's also full of curiously perverse truths, like the notion that Santa Claus is often the first experience of religious doubt for children. Anyway, spare a moment to enjoy this:

"Feeling, mistakes, and butts -- these are things we dare not bare in public. That's life." Sing it, brother.

There's a nice review of the film on Kogler's website. Here's a snippet:

Le Grand Content is a subversive undertaking: It demonstrates how systematically disorientation can take place, how logical nonsense can seem. The well-organized presentation, despite its authoritative appearance, does not at all ensure that it should be taken seriously. The persuasive power of the graphic deductions is precisely equal to their absurdity. The gently ringing music which plays throughout the film subtly emphasizes its underlying principle: the melancholy nature of the apparatus. Le Grand Content is a rare kind of work, brimming with dry humor, esthetic confidence and terse precision. For these reasons it has become a surprise hit on YouTube.com, the Web site for digital clips. With nearly half a million viewers, Le Grand Content could well be one of the most-watched Austrian films of the past few decades.

Read the rest for a smart analysis of why this is so good. See also: Jessica Hagy's site Indexed, an inspiration for the film.