The Dead

An ode to Norman McLaren from Mirai Mizue

A short kaleidoscopic homage to Norman McLaren from Japanese artists Mirai Mizue and Yukie Nakauchi on the 100th anniversary of birth in 2014.

Slated for inclusions on the Boston based Infinity Factory educational program alongside Map Projections, Digging to China explores a familiar childhood activity on a global scale.

In what would become a familiar theme throughout his carrer, Jarnow explores the earth from above, invoking Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion and the Gnomic map to illustrate different geometric and compromise projections.

Jarnow regularizes a child's primitive sketch of a house into increasingly firmer architecture, showing how the same place might by rendered by different hands. Objects twist and turn, a drawing resolving into a wall painting, as the perspective shifts, boxes within boxes, until the viewer is back outside

After a day of gathering hundreds of seashells and rocks from the beach, Jarnow uses the found objects to construct a stop motion commentary on how we look at nature through various cinematic techniques.

Something strange has been spotted over the tree tops in the forest where Charlie Strap and Froggy Ball live, and Plåt-Niklas quickly builds a monocular to examine it. It turns out to be an emergency signal and the two friends together with Plåt-Niklas and The Parrot set out on an expedition to resque whoever is sending the signal.

A stream of consciousness experiment committed directly to celluloid, Jarnow pays homage to Stan Brakhage and Harry Smith. Abstract designs transform self portraiture, lettering tests and images traced from other films including a Charlie Chaplin short.

Jarnow's first work for Sesame Street and the Children's Television Workshop - yak is a goofy take on the letter "Y."

Tondo introduces the cosmic formalism that was the primary theme of Al Jarnow's independent films. An infinite gridscape alternates with vibrating etchings, spirograms and other surreal realities.

Intended to be an "animation machine," Four Quadrant Exercise finds Jarnow adapting a perspective system, enabling him to render complex motions almost automatically. Created prior to the streamlined ease of computer software, this short is a commitment to the joy of making marks on paper.

The primary motif in this silent picture is a grid that controls the shapes and motions of forms contained within the framework of a rotating cube. Constructed from interlocking cycles, the film explores branches and loops along paths laid down by geometric logic.

Influential animator, Hungarian immigrant and lifelong Frank Zappa enthusiast Gábor Csupó recounts his chance meeting and eventual friendship with the musician himself.

Jarnow adapts an architectural grid catalogue of cubic rotations in order to explore a direct relationship between animation procedure and logical numerical operations. The film is as much the making of animation as it is a paper model of a computer. The cube sheet, upon which the film is based, is so constructed that a horizontal cubic rotation and a diagonal pan yields a diagonal rotation. Combinations of these primary moves result in more complex rotations throughout this awe inspiring film.

A mind-twisting time-lapse beginning on a hill just outside town, doing for the concept of time what Charles and Ray Eames's 1968 film The Powers of Ten did for space. One billion years in two minutes.

A filmed exercise that follows in the path of Rotating Cubic Grid and Cubits, the predictably titled Cube features cubes of varying shapes and size sliding around and growing into and out of one another, demonstrating how multiple parts can make up a whole.

A short film made of cel drawings, showing us how various mammals, plants and objects all share similar skeletal structures. Produced for Sesame Street.

A stop motion opus made up of hundreds of hand-painted wooden blocks that takes the viewer through a brief history of architecture. Primitive structures evolve into larger buildings...

Lady, a golden cocker spaniel, meets up with a mongrel dog who calls himself the Tramp. He is obviously from the wrong side of town, but happenings at Lady's home make her decide to travel with him for a while.

A waitress, desperate to fulfill her dreams as a restaurant owner, is set on a journey to turn a frog prince back into a human being, but she has to face the same problem after she kisses him.