This joyful short animation features a dancing hen that transforms into an egg. The film was made without a camera by Norman McLaren, who drew directly onto 35 mm movie stock with ordinary pen and ink. Colour was added optically.
In an old library, two armies of chess pieces are about to start a war.
Regal is an eagle who is afraid to fly. A little bird offers to help him, but Regal does not believe he can. Will the eagle finally learn to fly?
Čardášová Julie
Short animation by Al Jarnow based on the work of British poet Edward Lear. Made at NYU.
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.
While all the inhabitants of a small rural village are working hard to survive the harsh daily routine, the mayor and his wife are gorging themselves to death. Without generosity, they even refuse alms to a penniless old lady. Among the hard workers trying to subsist, a little girl works courageously to help her exhausted mother. One day, during her lunch break, she goes into the forest to fill her cup of water in a river. There, a poor old lady asks for alms from the young lady, having nothing but her little piece of bread, willingly offers it to her. It is then that the old lady, as a reward, enchants the cup of the little girl ...
Rover, a street-smart dog owned by a Las Vegas showgirl is dumped off Hoover Dam by the showgirl's boyfriend. Rather than drowning, Rover winds up in your basic idyllic farm in a classic city-boy-in-country shtick.
The popular cartoon cat and mouse are thrown into a feature film. The story has the twosome trying to help an orphan girl who is being berated and exploited by a greedy guardian.
The path is known to all, but few follow it. Rising Hope – once the fastest horse in the race, tries to be one of the few.
On October 25, 1946... in a small crowded room at Cambridge University, two of the world’s greatest twentieth-century philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, came face-to-face for the first and only time. A third man, Lord Bertrand Russell was also present, acting as umpire of the event. The meeting - which lasted only 10 minutes - did not go well. To this day, no one can agree precisely what took place in those fiery minutes. Almost immediately, rumours started to spread around the world that the two philosophers, Wittgenstein and Popper, had come to blows armed with red-hot fire pokers!
George and Elroy play hooky and George teaches Elroy how to shave.
Stand-alone cartoon by Spümcø's John Kricfalusi.
'Kiki de Montparnasse' was the unwary muse of major avant-garde painters of the early twentieth century. Memorable witness of a flamboyant Montparnasse, she emancipated from her status as a simple model and became a Queen of the Night, a painter, a press cartoonist, a writer and a cabaret singer.
A 20 minute masterpiece with no dialogue necessary. A King of the Forest gathers elves, sprites, and other assorted woodland spirits for a night of festivities. The spirits frolic, dance, drink, and romance. Conflicts arise and are resolved. The puppetry here is top-notch, and the rear-projections of fire and water add an extra depth to the magical world. A trip to a mysterious and happy world.
This cartoon is directed against the brutality of professional Boxing. In parody form it ridiculed unworthy methods and means used to achieve victory.