Crocus

One of the first color films in Europe, made with the Gaspar Color process.

Little Johnny Jones, to be born in the next year, is shown growing to a ripe, healthy old age, thanks to the efforts of his local public health officers. But without them, he might be one of the 5% or so that dies in the first year. The price for the public health service: about 3 cents a week. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.

Motion Painting No. 1 is a 1947 experimental short animated film in which film artist Oskar Fischinger put images in motion to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 3, BWV 1048. It is a film of a painting (oil on acrylic glass); Fischinger filmed each brushstroke over the course of 9 months. In 1997, this film was selected for inclusion in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2000.

A compilation of images co-creator Frank Mouris had collected from magazines interwoven with two narrations, one giving a mostly linear autobiography and the other stating words having to do with the images, the story the first voice is relating, or neither. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

With magic inflatable objects that spring to life to fill his every need, a flippant beachgoer wants for nothing. Well... almost nothing.

Two little girls muse on marriage and babies, love and death as they create and act out plays in their backyard. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2006.

An experimental animated short film in which a piano plays a song and the keys, hammers, and various other parts of the piano are different colors. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

Two short fragments resulting from experiments in controlling the mechanical development of the instrument. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.

A short film about a mother and her son, she teaches him life skills later on the son gets niked by a man so the young donkey can be his work slave and his mother saves him. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2013.

In this Puppetoon animated short film (an Academy Award Best Short Subject, Cartoons nominee), legendary American folklore figure John Henry (voice of Rex Ingram) goes to work for the C&O Railroad, which shortly thereafter buys an automatic steel-driving engine, The Inky-Poo. John Henry matches his strength against the engine, saying that any man can beat a machine because a man has a mind. Can he prevail? In 2015 this film, deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with UCLA Film & Television Archive in 2009.

In 'Spirals' Oskar Fischinger designed visual patterns of extreme complexity which often develop in overlapping cycles, yet he interrupts these patterns with radical editing of single frames of contrasting imagery. 'Spirals' exists as a fragmentary unfinished experimental film. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.

Wallace and Gromit have run out of cheese, and this provides an excellent excuse for the duo to take their holiday to the moon, where, as everyone knows, there is ample cheese. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

Wallace rents out Gromit's former bedroom to a penguin, who takes up an interest in the techno pants created by Wallace. However, Gromit later learns that the penguin is a wanted criminal. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

Wallace's whirlwind romance with the proprietor of the local wool shop puts his head in a spin, and Gromit is framed for sheep-rustling in a fiendish criminal plot.

Early 'visual music' film by John Whitney. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1999.

One of Oskar Fischinger's earliest films, Seelische Konstruktionen (as it is known in German), clearly points the way to the masterpieces of musically-blended experimental animation he would conceive in the decades to come. The sense of masterful timing and rhythm, the easy and natural -- though patently Fischinger-esque -- character traits of the subjects, and the smooth precision of both line and movement are all present already. Unique is the black-silhouetted, semi-cartoon characters (not nearly as rigidly self-contained as Lotte Reiniger's cut-out forms) which seem to adhere to no physical limitations whatsoever. Morphing into shapes, structures, objects, patterns, and even one another, as though they were made of pure mercury and set to music. As for the "story", it's rather non-sensical, and certainly silly, but also has a slightly dark and devious tinge to it as well; men becoming monsters, uncontrollable shape-shifting and the constant, almost desperate movement.

A small fish doesn’t pay attention in school, and ends up getting caught on a hook. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2013.

An old bearded man wearing a raincoat walks into a bar and sits down, placing a mysterious box next to him. The other patrons try, with varying success, to find out what's inside. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2003.

A prehistoric writer sells his masterpiece to a film company, which is butchered horribly in the process of getting made into a stone-age movie. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

Extraordinarily detailed and beautifully drawn animation of a bizarre and surreal world; the domestic life of a fat man, his wife, a sort of oversized obese chicken, and their child/pet, a slug-like creature with a human head. This expressionistic and interior vision of Soviet animator Kovalyov is like an animated Eraserhead. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, Academy War Film Collection, in 2007.