Dur­ing the past decade, Howard Hall has direct­ed four IMAX films that take you deep under the sea, right into the homes of amaz­ing marine life. Now, Hall has brought his act to Vimeo where he has post­ed a mon­tage of his favorite under­wa­ter shots from the past year. Filmed with a RED One cam­era, this footage was tak­en in the waters of the Mal­dives, Alas­ka, Cal­i­for­nia, Cos­ta Rica, and Mex­i­co. And it’s all fair­ly stun­ning. I would high­ly rec­om­mend watch­ing the video on Vimeo itself and siz­ing it to full screen. H/T to @eugenephoto.

Every Novem­ber 2nd, Mex­i­cans cel­e­brate the Day of the Dead. Close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with oth­er Catholic hol­i­days (All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day), the Day of the Dead gives par­tic­i­pants a chance to pray for and remem­ber dear­ly depart­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends. And it’s often car­ried out in a fes­tive spir­it, not one marked by melan­choly. As Car­los Fuentes, one of Mex­i­co’s most cel­e­brat­ed writ­ers, once said about death: “We Mex­i­cans don’t advance towards death, we return to it, because death is not the end but the begin­ning, the start of every­thing: we descend from death.”

Today, on the Day of the Dead, we give you a clay­ma­tion film that cap­tures the mood of the hol­i­day — Has­ta los hue­sos or Down to the Bone. René Castil­lo, a self-taught ani­ma­tor from Guadala­jara, wrote and direct­ed the film back in 2001. And it went on to win many inter­na­tion­al awards for excel­lence in film. Down to the Bone runs nine min­utes, and it’s a wild ride through­out. H/T M.S.

The Last Farm, a short Ice­landic film direct­ed by Rúnar Rúnars­son and star­ring Jón Sig­ur­b­jörns­son, is now being fea­tured in the YouTube Screen­ing Room. Nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award for Live Action Short Film in 2006, the 20-minute pro­duc­tion gets into some sober­ing yet inescapably uni­ver­sal issues – love, aging, fam­i­ly and death. And I’ll leave it at that. You can now find this film list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online along with 200+ high qual­i­ty cin­e­mat­ic works. Or you can pur­chase it on a DVD that brings togeth­er sev­er­al Acad­e­my Award-nom­i­nat­ed short films from 2005.

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