The Amateur Fire Brigade: A Fable of the New Deal

In one of Jan Svankmajer's many mind-blowing, deliberately weird short films, a picnic consists of a suit sunbathing, a phonograph playing records, a shovel digging holes, and a camera taking pictures.

In stop-motion animation, a wardrobe moves through the countryside. It arrives in a house, a child's voice recites Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," and various objects, such as toys and dolls, move about, disintegrate, and play out archetypal scenes. Like Carroll's verse, the images are at once familiar and unfamiliar. A child's play suit, hanging in the wardrobe, becomes the adventure's protagonist.

A three-part depiction of various forms of communication.

It's an afternoon in Versailles, during the reign of Louis XIV.

The dead are transformed into photographs and loved by people. If you touch their cheeks in the photo, they are certainly there.

Sparky likes to gaze out of the window, to see every possible or impossible thing.

A woman remembers her former boyfriends as animals.

When Rong was a small child she and her parents moved from Vietnam to Prague. Now she is grown up and remembers that time and what it was like to feel like a foreigner.

A world famous conductor suffers while leading a mediocre orchestra.

Beginning of the story of the all-known football-headed boy. (Hey Arnold)

Our favorite football head Arnold goes to church and daydreams about the 23rd psalm.

Arnold, a school kid with a vacant stare and hair sticking out, takes the bus to school. He sits idly through lessons. Then, it's time for band, where he plays the piccolo. He daydreams through the Vienna waltz, imagining himself ice-skating, and sending the school bully into the cold water by cutting a circle through the ice around him. The band plays a second song, and Arnold imagines spring. The music ends, the room empties except for Arnold. The teacher says, "Arnold, everybody's gone to recess."

Here is a delicious apple. How would you like to eat it?

It's a starry night in a poor neighborhood in Latin America. Óscar is sleeping in his room when a sudden wind wakes him up. From his window he sees a little goldfish in a dirty puddle gasping for air. Óscar will try to save the goldfish through a rampant adventure full of mysterious challenges.

A girl in a schoolyard discovers the asphalt tastes like liquorice, and soon the kids start eating anything around them.

One day at a holiday home for the disabled in Hammerdal, Jämtland, depicted in clay animation and with authentic sound from the home that the film tells about. Various episodes show everyday events and relationships between the old ones who have lent their voices and characters to the movie figures. The film shows how an ordinary day looks like meals, mail delivery, card games and visits to the Salvation Army. In the end, the real people compare and comment on their characters.

A complex choreography of re-animated miniature soldiers moving to the exquisitely synchronised command of a master manipulator. Toy soldiers against toy soldiers in the satirical animated short Spin

The weird hand creatures undergo different transformations in synchrony with the music.

Lucia, a little girl who is ill in a hospital, is curious and wants to explore. She embarks on a nocturnal adventure.

A mother of three is trying her best to make ends meet. One day the tennis player Rafael Nadal appears. They eat ice-cream and play tennis together and finds themselves in a deserted forest. An absurd but serious story is told about their summer, as wonderful as it is unlikely.