La leçon de choses

The conflict between ducklings and frogs escalates into war. However, a lightning strike makes the fighters realize the trivial nature of their battle.

Arichan the Ant finds a violin in a sandbox and keeps it. However, realizing how important it is to its owner, he returns it to her.

In 1955 Tadahito Mochinaga was asked to create commercials for Asahi beer, which he created using stop-motion, followed by the 1956 short film "Beer Mukashi Mukashi" (Beer, those were the days...), created specifically for theatres. With the help of Kikachiro Kawamoto and Noburo Ofuji, this is the first animated short/commercial in stop-motion made for Japanese cinemas!

Fuku-chan was one of the most popular newspaper comic strip boy-characters in Japan at the time. The film portrays a submarine attack on an enemy cargo ship. Though this, too, was to boost patriotism, Japanese children particularly enjoyed the scenes in which the kitchen crew cooked in the submarine kitchen. Released in November of the same year, the food shortage was quite serious in Japan, and the abundant food supply in the submarine kitchen -- vegetables, fruit, fish, rice, and more which were already luxury items in Japan at the time -- was prepared into various dishes along with a merry, rhythmic song.

When a samurai witnesses a dancing maiden being kidnapped by ruffians, he rescues the poor damsel and takes her to the spring flower dance.

An early silhouette animated film by Hidehiko Okuda, Hakusan Kimura and Tomu Uchida. The original story is a Buddhist tale of a young lady who saved a crab (a spiritual being according to Japanese Buddhist faith) from being eaten, and was later saved from danger by the same crab.

A western occupation propaganda film in which a boy repairs a western style doll that comes to life and uses a magic pen to rebuild his bleak and war torn world into a happy place resembling western civilization.

A war propaganda film by Oofuji Noburou.

Short patriotic war short film by Hakusan Kimura.

Haloa (pronounced: Haa-lo-ah) tells the story of how the first Hawaiian came to be and how the Hawaiian peoples bond is forever linked to the Kalo (taro) plant, the Aina (land), and the Kanaka (people). Haloa is produced by Twiddle Productions in Honolulu Hawaii, and is brought to life with a unique blend of animation, Hawaiian chants, and Hawaiian language.

Short animated film from 1947

Butterfly, a faithful Japanese wife, waits patiently in Nagasaki for the return of her American husband, Pinkerton. She sees the Stars and Stripes fluttering atop an approaching ship and rightly surmises that Pinkerton is onboard. However, the feckless foreigner is arriving in the company of his "real" Caucasian wife, causing the heartbroken Butterfly to commit suicide. This masterpiece of Japanese silhouette animation makes the best of its source material.

Short animated film by Yasuji Murata

A story of three little bears going on an adventure to find the lost little duck.

Short animated film by Mitsuyo Seo

A Vietnamese short anti-American propaganda animation.

Elephants Dream is the story of two strange characters exploring a capricious and seemingly infinite machine. The elder, Proog, acts as a tour-guide and protector, happily showing off the sights and dangers of the machine to his initially curious but increasingly skeptical protege Emo. As their journey unfolds we discover signs that the machine is not all Proog thinks it is, and his guiding takes on a more desperate aspect. Elephants Dream is a story about communication and fiction, made purposefully open-ended as the world’s first 3D animated “Open movie”. The film itself is released under the Creative Commons license, along with the entirety of the production files used to make it (roughly 7 Gigabytes of data). The software used to make the movie is the free/open source animation suite Blender along with other open source software, thus allowing the movie to be remade, remixed and re-purposed with only a computer and the data on the DVD or download.

When a man realizes that a huge clock is keeping an eye on the time he has to live, he will do everything possible to avoid his final destiny.

During the holiday season, when the animals of the Central Park Zoo are preparing for Christmas, Private, the youngest of the penguins notices that the Polar Bear is all alone. Assured that nobody should have to spend Christmas alone, Private goes into the city for some last-minute Christmas shopping. Along the way, he gets stuffed into a stocking

In this evocative film about the eternal human search for home, Berta and Solomon arrive in a land that promises respite from their many journeys. But have they found utopia... or just another stop on their long journey?