A prototype of modern music videos, this is an animated film set to the music of two popular tunes recorded by Herb Alpert and his Latin-flavored brass ensemble - "Spanish Flea" and "Tijuana Taxi". Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2003.
A country couple and their shepherd endure drought, flood, a monstrous bear, hunters and tourists during a somewhat odd few days in their normally quiet life.
The short tells the story of a drunkard going through alcohol withdrawal, as personified by the Devil. Director Bob Stenhouse takes what could be a dark subject and makes it a funny madcap romp.
This short is about a purple dinosaur named Sigmund, who likes to bounce on top of trees. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.
Animation. The theme is Weightlessness. Objects and characters are cut loose from habitual meanings, also from tensions and gravitational limitations. A lyric Eric Satie track accompanies the film. Such a portrait seems necessary from time to time to remind us that equilibrium and harmony are possible, and that we will not dissolve into a jelly if we allow ourselves to relax into them: A horseman rides through the landscape, through the town, but never arrives anywhere in particular. An acrobat swings on a rope above a canal in Venice, and is content just to swing there. Nothing threatens to disturb them. This film is a total contrast to the Kafka-like oddities of Eastern European animation. —Canyon Cinema
This delightful story is simply about a boy wanting to go outside and play in the snow. After getting all bundled up by his mother, the boy has found that he is unable to move! Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.
"The strangeness of this film is laced with carefully moulded apocalypses as the filmmaker explores a vision of life beyond death – the Elysian fields of Homer, Dante’s Purgatorio, de Chirico’s stitched plain. A moving single picture. Evolving the structure or script for the film involved a process of controlled hallucination, whereby I sat quietly without moving, looking at the background until the pieces began to move without my inventing things for them to do. I found that, given the chance, they really did have important business to attend to, and my job was to furnish them with the power of motion. I never deviated from this plan." —Canyon Cinema
This film explores the distant relationship between an elderly amateur musician, the woman who lives in the apartment above him, and the leaky bathtub that is bothering them both.
A family of rabbits are having a birthday party under a big tree, unaware that a mischievous wolf is approaching.
Starting in the late 1930s, illustrator and experimental animator Douglass Crockwell created a series of short abstract animated films at his home in Glen Falls, New York. The films offered Crockwell a chance to experiment with various unorthodox animation techniques such as adding and removing non-drying paint on glass frame-by-frame, squeezing paint between two sheets of glass, and finger painting. The individual films created over a nine-year period were then stitched together for presentation, forming a nonsensical relationship that only highlights the abstract qualities of the images. —Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance
Featuring a commentary by Noël Burch (in nonsense French), Recreation's rapid-fire montage of single-frame images of incredible density and intensity has been compared to contemporary Beat poetry.
Robert Breer animation from 1969. 16mm, color, silent, using spray paint & stencils.
William Shakespeare, without saying a word, gives a quick run through of all his plays in a very special audition.
A man without arms wants an apple up in a tree. A man without legs wants to ride a bike. Can they help each other?
A delicate stroll through the Russian wilderness at different times of the year.
After many millennia of being tortured in Hell, Raymond K. Hessle has finally earned a chance to appeal his sentence of Eternal Damnation. Upon arriving at the "appeals" gate of Heaven he is greeted by the angel who will preside over his case. As Raymond waits at the edge of paradise, he will finally have a chance to prove just how worthy he is.
The cycle of life. A boy whose father is a pilot imagines that his toy plane becomes the real thing, allowing him to fly side-by-side through the heavens with his father. He takes off from a tree house overlooking the sea and his father's landing strip. Their flight is graceful and full of adventure. Then, we watch the boy grow, study, marry, father a child, and become, himself, a grandfather. Holding a toy plane, he takes his grandchild to the same cliff from whence his own imagination took off years before.
Carrot Crazy
Two very bored shadowy characters try to think of something to do--and end up playing "Shadow Puppets."
The earliest recognized film by Lars Trier (made in his youth before he adopted the "von") is this stop motion cartoon, Turen til Squach land… En Super Pølse film (Trip to Squash Land… A Super Sausage film).