One day I woke up from my deepest dream ...
.... my dream was reality.

So, I'm in strange house.
Rooms have no windows, no doors - like in prison.
Not even walls, no ceilings, no floors - like in field.
There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide ....
all around premenstrual silence
... just sky is getting closer ...

There are directors who create short films, seeking to enlighten, or incite their audience to political action. Some create films to test techniques or expand the boundaries of the medium. Some are simply looking to create a nice portfolio piece.

Then there are directors who don't seem to care about anything but the Art of the film. The result can be beautiful, shocking, arresting. Ministry Messiah is a particularly confounding 3 minutes of pure artistic experimentation, and it's not for the faint of heart. Suffice to say that if you are a fan of happy, sterile animated films, this one is probably not for you.

The fact that the short sprung forth from a commercial assignment is all the more surprising. It is extremely unusual for a commercial assignment to result in such bizarre imagery, but then director Gints Apsits is not your typical commercial artist.

Regardless, his unusual approach to the work has paid off. Besides working as art director, illustrator & graphic designer, Apsits has been directing and animating internationally award-winning commercials and short movies. Currently, he is setting up his own specialized studio in Latvia, with ambitions for non-traditional motion and edgy, illustrative graphics.

He took a few moments recently to speak with us about his film and his plans for the future.

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OGDEN- What led you to make this film?

APSITS- Ministry Messiah began life as a one-minute Diesel Dream advertisement, called "My Angel's Wings Are Broken". The work was commissioned by Italian mega fashion brand Diesel, and top Dutch creative agency Kessels Kramer in 2004. I added the second part, to create an extended festival version with a three-minute running time, which became "Ministry Messiah".

OGDEN- What was the client's reaction when you came up with your original idea?

APSITS- In the early stages, everybody was really confused how the final piece would look. It's understandable where this confusion would come from - the concept is surreal, abstract and loose. For example, the initial comments I gave them regarding my idea was part of a poem I wrote: "Rooms have no windows, no doors - like in prison. Not even walls, no ceilings, no floors - like in a field."

It was a bit hard for them to visualize what I had in mind from reading that script. But when I came up with characters, storyboards, and especially the visual design, everybody was a lot more confident.

OGDEN- What do you hope people take away from this film?

APSITS- The original request was to create a dream world. To me, a dream world is hard to identify meaning with objects. As soon as meaning comes up in your mind, objects disappear like fog and leave you alone with more questions than answers.

Similarly, if you don't follow Ministry Messiah carefully enough, you may think it has no message behind it; no script and no story. But I built it like a dream where there is a universal story behind it, but it is unobtrusive. It gives you hints that you can interpret your way, based on your own experience, the events in your own life.