Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions: Behind the Scenes

This is a simple, bittersweet tale for all ages that you feel like storing away deep inside of you, yet one that is so full of emotion that you’ll end up sharing with everyone around you. It’s the story of life itself.

Stop-motion animated short produced as a film student graduation project at the Gobelins Animation School of Paris by Carlo Vogele, class of 2008, leading to a career as a character animator at Pixar. It was selected as the winner of the Best Graduation Film award the following year at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

In a forest in the mountains, a little girl makes a mysterious encounter.

A meek office worker finds himself flung into a fantasy world as a naked muscleman. An early version of the Den character, known from the comic magazine Heavy Metal and the movie by the same name.

One man always on the move will have an encounter that puts into question everything he knows.

Yoji and Kei, a boy and girl, live in a town in the not-so-distant future with their foster parent, Anna. But these seemingly ordinary children have a secret hidden even from their unsuspecting mother. Yoji and Kei are superhero defenders of their town! With a flap of their capes, the two of them and their robot bear sidekick, Oscar, protect the citizens in their town with their handmade high-tech machinery. But from what menace? And will our little heroes be able to overcome the crisis about to threaten the town's peaceful everyday serenity?

The film focuses on the thoughts inside the head of a man, an astronaut scheduled to go to the Moon. As he ponders the flight, he laments having an “ordinary” name he fears will not resonate throughout history. His thoughts lead him to consider some of the pioneers of flight-Icarus and his wings, the Montgolfier brothers and their balloon and the Wright brothers and heavier than air flight.

Thirty Million Letters is a 1963 short documentary film directed by James Ritchie and made by British Transport Films. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

The Arkansas school integration crisis and the changes wrought in subsequent years. This film profiles the lives of the nine African-American students who integrated Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, during the fall of 1957. The film documents the perspective of Jefferson Thomas and his fellow students seven years after their historic achievement. Central to this story is their quiet but brave entrance into Little Rock High, escorted by armed troops under the intense pressure of the on looking crowd. We learn first hand their impressions of the past and present and their hopes for the future. Their selfless heroism broke the integration crisis and pioneered a new era. This film went on to win an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short in 1964.

This documentary shows how an Inuit artist's drawings are transferred to stone, printed and sold. Kenojuak Ashevak became the first woman involved with the printmaking co-operative in Cape Dorset. This film was nominated for the 1963 Documentary Short Subject Oscar.

Comprising train and track footage quickly shot just before a heavy winter's snowfall was melting, the multi-award-winning classic that emerged from the cutting-room compresses British Rail's dedication to blizzard-battling into a thrilling eight-minute montage cut to music. Tough-as-boots workers struggling to keep the line clear are counterpointed with passengers' buffet-car comforts.

Traces the rise of life on earth from primordial ooze to the present.

Jenny is a Good Thing is a 1969 American short documentary film about children and poverty, directed by Joan Horvath. Produced by Project Head Start, it shows the importance of good nutrition for underprivileged nursery school children. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Birth of a doodle

A Danish, silent, stop-motion puppet adaption of the fairy tale “The Beauty and the Beast”

Oscar nominated animated short from 1973. Pulcinella dreams himself into a wild nightmare of a dream that leads us through an abstract world.

An Oscar-nominated film with no narration showing the Exploratorium (The Palace of Arts and Science) in San Francisco. It shows many of the exhibits and the reaction of visitors to many of these. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

Examines the mesmerising construction of clear crystal glass pieces created by the craftsmen of Waterford. The process from the intense heat of the furnace to glass blowing, shaping, cutting, honing, filling and finishing is all depicted in this celebration of the art of creation of Waterford Glass. Academy Award Nominee: Best Live Action Short - 1976.

An intimate view of the panorama of African wildlife, giving a sense of what it is really like to be there, and in a dramatic climax makes a poignant plea for conservation. Filmed in Zaire, Kenya and Tanzania, the film takes the viewer from deep inside an anthill, to the majestic giraffes suckling their young. African storms, dung beetle ritual dances, duels for supremacy, feeding time, and playtime all end as the animals disappear one by one while the sound of a rifle shatters the existing magic of life. Winner of the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject, 1976.

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