Problems offer opportunities. There is nothing more true about the l’art du déplacement, better known as parkour, the art of passing where other people merely see peril. If you’ve been following up on PD, you will know about the respect I pay for traceurs – and trust me, when you see Yamakasi and Banlieue 13, it is merely the Paris eyecandy – so it’s a great joy seeing not one but two short parkour movies coming out during the past week.

Samparkour shows how Zico Corrêa traces the danger edge in São Paulo. Video was shot in HD with a 35mm lens adapter by Wiland Pinsdorf (co-directed by Arthur GW Guttilla, produced by Canvas 24p Films) and if you’ve ever seen some elaborate traceur moves done elegantly with style (and some decent camerawork as well), that’s just it. (via renegade futurist)

Exploit Yourself is more like a NIKE ad, not really a short movie in its entirety of 50 seconds. What’s so great about it is that it’s been done by Big Lazy Robot VFX without any motion capture work at all, that it’s accompanied by The Prodigy’s The Big Gun Down which fits quite nicely to the oooomph-ahh tempo and it’s all been directed by Carl Erik Rinsch who’s actually directing a prequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Exploit Yourself talks about pushing your limits just for the sake of it. Neatly said. (Thanks heaps to all of you who sent this in in the rush hours!)