AUSTIN, Texas—South by Southwest's film schedule refuses to hold your hand. While projects like Nobody Speaks ("the Gawker trial documentary") or Life (a modern sci-fi thriller, à la Alien) have loglines that can guide you, that's not the case for everything being shown. Case in point: Sylvio, a "comedy, drama, fantasy" about "a small town gorilla stuck in his job." Huh?

If Sylvio immediately gives off the impression it's a small arthouse/theater-of-the-absurd affair, that's because it is to some extent. Filmmakers Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney have created a slow and stylish version of Baltimore where a gorilla can shoot hoops or play some vinyl, all within perfectly composed frames Wes Anderson would approve of. The score is minimalistic, 8-bit, and catchy. The deadpan humor has a degree of intentional, Tim & Eric-styled awkwardness (though the absurdity is turned down a bit in comparison). Together, these taste elements make the mundane interesting to some extent—but after seeing it, I still didn't really understand why Sylvio became a film.

Then, I Googled it.

This connected series of Instagram-worthy vignettes, it turns out, is a direct product of social media creativity. Sylvio's origins sit in the now-extinct video platform, Vine, as the gorilla's melancholy life played out across hundreds of six-second posts. After riding retrievers through autumn leaves and listening to the latest Ra Ra Riot album in the bathtub, the Sylvio personality gained enough of a following to finance a full-length film through Kickstarter.

And in this light, this film's SXSW debut makes complete sense. Sylvio may be the only feature-length film that is based on, and memorializes, the weirdness that was Vine.

Eat your heart out, Kong

The anthropomorphic Sylvio (simply and silently played by someone in a Halloween-style gorilla suit) works at the Chester Debt Collector, a cold and unfriendly office. He's alone for the holidays to make matters worse, but Sylvio continues to find solace in the smaller things in life. Primarily, Sylvio's joy comes from making short videos with his vaguely John Carroll Lynch-looking handpuppet, Herbert Herpels. (So, as a reminder: a film about a gorilla making short films that make him happy started as a pair of filmmakers making short films about a gorilla that made them happy.)

During one fateful debt-collection assignment, Sylvio tracks down a man named Al Reynolds, who happens to be the host of a failing public access talkshow. Possibly as an attempt to dodge the debt collection, Reynolds ends up inviting Sylvio on-camera, and Sylvio unexpectedly becomes fans' favorite guest. Our hero does virtually nothing during this appearance, but call-in requests for Sylvio eventually force Reynolds' hand. Sylvio has suddenly become a regular.

The first performance doesn't exactly light the world on fire. Sylvio brings Herpels for one of his signature quiet moments (throughout the entire film we see these short pieces: Herpels plays basketball, makes toast, learns to drive, etc.). The phone lines stay deafeningly mum, leading Sylvio to flee in embarrassment. The gorilla is so dejected, he drives out to the sticks and buries Herpels in a sequence illuminated only by headlight. But the next morning, Sylvio can't stop thinking of Herpels and makes a not-so-quick retrieval detour on the way back to his debt-collecting gig.

Sans Sylvio, things get worse for Reynolds. The host can't even afford to pay his staff, and it's now an absolute rock-bottom affair. With nowhere else to turn, he pleads with Sylvio to come back and try something else. Dressed like a firefighter and armed with a garden hose, Sylvio simply breaks vases as Reynolds plays the straight man. It is, literally and figuratively, a hit. More smash skits follow—the best one perhaps being Sylvio and the show staff playing charades as the humans can only guess ape-films (Kong, Planet of the Apes, Mighty Joe Young) before Sylvio breaks a Beethoven bust—and suddenly Reynolds and Sylvio are discussion fodder in the local daytime talk circuit.

“Sylvio’s not just some wild animal—he’s actually a kind of sensitive and talented artist,” Reynolds tells one talk show host.

“Well, I don’t know about that. As far as I can tell, he just destroys everything he sees.”

Synopsis in six seconds

The film's premise and Kickstarter campaign all came before Twitter announced Vine would be no more in October 2016 , but Sylvio ends up feeling like a fitting metaphor for the beloved platform. Sylvio and Vine share a similar sensibility (humor can be an offbeat inside joke, not everyone has to get it) and even a similar trajectory. Our favorite gorilla's puppeteering begins as something he does for himself, but the introduction of success and money complicates everything. Vine found a strong foothold among many Internet communities , but Twitter's overall inability to find a profit (and the success of short, shareable video inspiring competitors like Instagram and Snapchat) may have ultimately doomed the platform . As Reynolds tells Sylvio at one point in the film, "Now that we have sponsors, we have to offer them a certain kind of a show. We have to make sure they’re happy because that’s where the money’s coming from…. it’s not like the old days where we can do whatever we want, we’ve got to stick to the script.”

Sylvio sneaks in other commentaries as well, touching on sponsored content (paper towel ads and Sylvi-Os cereal), pigeonholed creativity (fans on the street walk up to Sylvio with guitars pleading with him to smash), and video violence gone viral (footage of Sylvio shoving some bullies gets him in hot water but doesn't show the whole scene). But this film works best (when it works, that is) as this creative team's ode to their initial platform of choice. As they wrote on Twitter in the aftermath of the Vine closure news, "Vine was so much more than an app. It was a home to art. Every vine was a six second poem, a beacon of light in a dark world." That art now needs different homes, and Sylvio shows both the platform's peculiar and pleasurable influences will continue to surface (whether it's in six- or 4,800-second snippets).

After premiering at SXSW, Sylvio continues to play the festival circuit. Upcoming screenings include events in Atlanta, Georgia; Madison, Wisconsin; and Lansing, Michigan. Future showings can be found on the film's website.

Listing image by Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley | SXSW