Prelude 14 begins in deep brilliant red which darkens into deeper reds and lavender shapes, disrupted by a variety of colors settling into browns and grays and shapes most rock-like, all of which is then shot-thru with sufficient yellow to break up all hard-edge form and give a molten aspect to the mixtures of shapes.
A corridor of an apartment is transformed into a claustrophobic and vertiginous vortex that swallows and imprisons you in an infinite fall through a mise en abyme: it’s a pure enclosure inside the image world, it’s the Descent into the Maelstrom.
Animation by japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami for John Lennon's song "Oh Yoko!" -- the song was released in 1971, and the animation made in 1973. Keiichi Tanaami (田名網 敬一, Tanaami Keiichi, born in 1936 in Tokyo) was one of the leading pop artists of postwar Japan, and was active as multi-genre artist since the 1960s as a graphic designer, illustrator, video artist and fine artist until his death in 2024.
In Madonna, Tanaami employs his signature collage-style animation, combining pop art influences, retro aesthetics, and surrealistic motifs. The film explores themes of desire, fantasy, and memory, often referencing elements of post-war Japanese culture and American pop culture.
Five years in the making, Lawrence Jordan's feature-length "alchemical autobiography" Sophie's Place takes as its inspiration the story of the Greek goddess of wisdom, Sophia. Writes Jordan, "I must emphasize that I do not know the exact significance of any of the symbols in the film any more than I know the meaning of my dreams... I hope that the symbols and the episodes set off poetic associations in the viewer. I mean them to be entirely open to the viewer's own interpretation."
Organized in 12 discrete chapters, Sixty Six is a milestone achievement, the culmination of Klahr’s decades-long work in collage filmmaking. With its complex superimpositions of imagery and music, and its range of tones and textures at once alluringly erotic and forebodingly sinister, the film is a hypnotic dream of 1960 and 1970s Pop. Elliptical tales of sunshine noir and classic Greek mythology are inhabited by comic book super heroes and characters from Portuguese foto romans who wander through midcentury modernist Los Angeles architectural photographs and landscapes from period magazines.
A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.
A four-dimensional short anime will start at the very beginning of Shibuya Crossing, that is, 10,000 years in the past. The anime is part of a collaborative project helmed by Yoshitoshi Shinomiya. It features a hybrid of animation and live-action. The short was screened on Shibuya's Crossing screens and a YouTube-friendly version was posted as well. (Source: ANN)
Short film by Mary Ellen Bute
SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity.
Traditional Northwestern Indigenous spiritual images combined with cutting-edge computer animation in this surreal short film about the power of tradition. Three urban Indigenous teens are whisked away to an imaginary land by a magical raven, and there they encounter a totem pole. The totem pole's characters—a raven, a frog and a bear—come to life, becoming their teachers, guides and friends. Features a special interview with J. Bradley Hunt, the celebrated Heiltsuk artist on whose work the characters in Totem Talk are based.
Slow disintegration and aging of artists head, revealing underlying bone structure. Created using old picture-phone technology. New music added in 2013.
A film in which the one 60-story skyscraper that soars in the spaces between roofs spins with incredible speed. I centered the circumference with its 400 or 500 meter radius on the skyscraper and divided it into 48 sections, then took photographs from those spots and shot the photographs frame by frame.
Creeping from the halls of the maze brain, corruption and terror is woven by devils born from the denied errors of mankind.
A visual representation, in four parts, of one man's internalization of "The Divine Comedy." Hell is a series of multicolored brush strokes against a white background; the speed of the changing images varies. "Hell Spit Flexion," or springing out of Hell, is on smaller film stock, taking the center of the frame. Montages of color move rapidly with a star and the edge of a lighted moon briefly visible. Purgation is back to full frame; blurs of color occasionally slow down then freeze. From time to time, an image, such as a window or a face, is distinguishable for a moment. In "existence is song," colors swirl then flash in and out of view. Behind the vivid colors are momentary glimpses of volcanic activity.
Initially commissioned to accompany a Danish production of Alban Berg’s LULU, Lewis Klahr’s cut-out animation refigures the opera's themes in a torrent of images. With an ever-inventive approach to color and symbol, Klahr distills the title character's moral predicament, along with a great many of German Expressionism’s characteristic motifs, in the span of a pop song.
A colorful collage, with a subtle ecology theme, made largely from footage from trial runs of programs used for many of the other films.
Hans Richter, noted for his abstract shorts, has everyday objects rebelling against their daily routine.
In a nightmarish world, dominated by the decline and degradation of Man , Christ resurrected wandering, across three different eras of human history.
An old woman is carrying shopping bags. A child with a gun is riding a scooter. Birds are flying. A city is falling. A party is lit.