Synopsis

"Les Humains" is an animated collage built from public-domain Soviet propaganda footage and synchronized to aKido's electronic soundscape. The imagery moves between collective action, industrial progress, military spectacle and massed human figures, creating a deliberately uneasy portrait of society. Pierre Falardeau's sampled speech supplies the video's central voice, contrasting Quebec identity and local culture with the influence of dominant international culture. The result is less a conventional narrative than a rapid, provocative meditation on humanity, conformity and resistance.

Factoids & Trivia

• aKido created and recorded "Les Humains" around Christmas 1998 while teaching himself computer-based music. The track was released in 2004.

• The spoken material comes from a Pierre Falardeau conference at Universite Laval in Quebec. aKido sampled the speech from a television broadcast, making Falardeau's voice the track's defining vocal element.

• The production used public-domain Soviet propaganda footage and was made on a reported budget of only $500.

• The video was produced through an early collaboration involving Felix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphael, with Thien Vu Dang and Augustin Lajeunesse also credited in the production materials.

• In 2005, the video won the Best Music Video prize at the Indie Music Video Festival. It also received the overall jury award at Quebec's Grafika awards.

• Its recognition extended beyond music-video programming. The work was presented at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal in 2006 as part of the "Videomusique" exhibition.

• "Les Humains" was later preserved in the vault of the Cinematheque Quebecoise.

• The project became an important early step for Lajeunesse and Raphael, whose later work would move into commercials, installations and immersive cinema.