One animal species disappears from the planet every twenty minutes. The most consequential of all disappearances – because the most invisible – is that of the honeybee. Without bees, the food chain collapses.
“New Bees” is a fake commercial for a product that does not exist yet: robotic nano-bees, designed to replace the ones we are losing. The film was produced with Berlin studio Polynoid and Woodblock, directed by a team of CG artists under Jan Bitzer, Tom Weber and Ilija Brunck. Alexander Kalchev : “We had a specific visual brief: the tone of a corporate product launch – optimistic, clean, reassuring – deployed in service of a genuinely disturbing future.”
“Finding the right ironic/sarcastic tone for the film was a challenge,” said Brunck. “It should work as a realistic commercial that advertises robotic bees with all their advantages, and still picture a creepy dystopian future that nobody wants.”
The film was part of Greenpeace’s global Save the Bees campaign on sos-bees.org. Years later, the “Hated in the Nation” episode of Black Mirror (Series 3, 2016) explored almost the same premise – a world where bees have been replaced by mechanical drones that turn weaponised.
