This short animation has an interesting take on reception of antiquity because we see it just in the end. It all starts with a man looking at the local swimming pool from his apartment block. He sees people playing and having great time but it seems to irritate him. He desperately looks at his watch, looking for something to happen. As the day ends, the public swimming pool is being closed. Suddenly, the happiness shows up on a strange man’s face. He grabs a towel and leaves his house in the dark. He sneaks up to the pool but as he’s about to go in, he sees that the locker is open. Someone must have gotten in before him but because there’s nobody around, he decides to take a swim. After just a moment he realizes he’s not alone. He meets a woman whose idea was also to swim alone in the moonlight. Surprised and a bit uncertain about the whole situation, they start to get along and play together in the pool. Suddenly, we see a picture-perfect pirouette session performed by strangers. They swim beautifully together to a Johann Strauss’ waltz. The idyll is ruined by the watchman who interrupts them and orders them to leave the estate immediately. However, what he sees is something he did not expect. It turns out that the man is actually a Centaur and the lady is a Mermaid. The watchman screams terrified and runs away. The couple decide to dive into the swimming pool together again.

Both, the Centaurs and the mermaids have dual connotations, positive and negative. Mythology shows bad Centaurs, like Ixion’s children who are wild and brutal. But we also have good ones, who are civilized and intelligent like Chiron or Pholus. The Mermaids identified with mythological Sirens as well lend themselves to ambivalent interpretation. At the beginning, they are simply creatures who entice with their deadly beautiful voices but today the culture portraits them as positive characters. Both, the Centaurs and the mermaids are similar to human beings because of their human faces. The animation shows how we portray others based on their external appearance and how judgemental and stereotypical people are. Luckily, love always wins, as it happens also in this case. The use of the two hybrid creatures to highlight our attitude towards diversity. Both are dangerous and potentially hostile to mortals in classical mythology, but here they are gentle, romantic and very human; they hide their difference discreetly, not wanting to upset or scare anybody. The movie uses inventively classical motives to provoke the viewers’ reflection on the universal issue of tolerance and discrimination suggesting that ignorance may be at the root of the problem.

shortoftheweek.com (accesed: August 17, 2018).