Live from TED TED Conferences

TED2015’s short film festival

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Watching more than seventy live, perspective-changing TED Talks back to back for five days straight is nothing to scoff at. Let’s be honest: Your brain gets tired. That’s why TED’s curators program each session with short video breaks to give the mind a rest before the next set of talks. Funny, inspiring, silly, beautiful, here’s all the videos shown this year at the conference. Think of it as TED’s short film festival.

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Pinnipèdes
, by Victor Caire. Two fat, sleepy animated seals fight and love each other.

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Wiggly Things
, by Rogier van der Zwaag. An animated interpretation of philosopher Alan Watts’ lectures, about how we humans like to “break down the wiggliness of the world.”

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Reach
, by Luke Randall. A robot that needs to be plugged in in order to survive dreams of life outside his window.

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Moving images
, by Lorne Resnick. Lorne Resnick makes five-second video clips that are actually single images that he pulls apart and animates.

Put that there, MIT Media Lab. Footage from 1979 of an early speech interface project by MIT Media Lab’s Chris Schmandt.

Cat gives a dog hypnotherapy, by Chris Cohen. A cat rather absurdly tries to get a dog to give up all its treats.

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Unconditional Rebel – Siska
, by Guillaume Panariello. A single shot of a strange cast of characters moving in slow mo, set to “Unconditional Rebel” by Siska. Includes an angel with an empty bottle of Jack Daniels and a girl under a shower of alarm clocks.

100 Years of Beauty in 1 Minute, by Cut. A video series that shows a century of hair and makeup trends, broken out by decade. Shown with sister videos Nina and Sabrina.

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Free fall
, by Les films engloutis. A breath-taking underwater video of base jumper Guillaume Nery descending into Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas.

Unicorns, by BETC Paris. In the narrative of this video, unicorns are in fact real, and we finally find out why we’ve never seen any.

Trombone silliness, by David Finlayson. A GoPro attached to the end of a trombone results in this aptly named video.

Submarine sandwich, by PES. A stop-motion animation of a sandwich created from unlikely materials.

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Fight! 
Two felt friends beat each other up.

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Waiting
, by The Sea The Sea. A portrait of New York at night through 3,454 oil paintings.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 2014, by Knate Myers. A timelapse video of hot air balloons partying in the sky.

Did You Read … ? from Portlandia. A classic from the sketch show Portlandia, about our insatiable need to consume.

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Statues in motion
, by Li Hongbo. Incredible paper works by artist Li Hongbo makes classical sculptures appear to stretch and move.

Dog vs. tater tot, by Chris Cohen. A dog rather absurdly tries to reach a tater tot across the table.

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Bird ballet
, by Neels Castillon. A murmuration of starlings do their thing.

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Light Motif
, by Frédéric Bonpapa. A CGI monkey in a world of constant change.

Dancing paper, by Ugoita T. Gold origami cranes dance to electro music.

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Shake
, by Variable. Dogs shake off water in slow motion.

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Carolyn
, by Matt Lenski. A man is sad because he’s alone.

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Pollop
, by Leslie Murard. Bunnies at sea do the nasty.

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Harvey and harmony
, by Chris Barrett and Luke Taylor. Two dogs meet in speed dating.

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Ralf Hildenbeutel’s “The Feast,”
by Boris Seewald. Music by composer Ralf Hildenbeutel renders show-tunes-era dancing contemporary.

Zeppelin! by the Louisville Leopard Percussionists. A band of kids play (Led) Zeppelin on xylophone.

Music video for OK Go’s “The Writing’s On the Wall.” The band famous for its complex single-shot music videos released this one full of optical illusions for their single “The Writing’s On the Wall.”

Love has no labels, by Love has no labels. Couples embrace each other behind an x-ray machine to make a statement about love and bias.