In 1958, graduates of the Film School in Łódź – director Mieczysław Waśkowski and camera operator Adam Nurzyński – produced in cooperation with Tadeusz Kantor the short film Somnambulists. The colourful, painting-like moving image was an attempt at transferring the informel onto film stock.
To the toccata portion of Bach's "Toccata and fugue in D minor," we watch a play of sorts. Blue smoke forms a background; a grid of black lines is the foreground. Behind the lines, a triangle appears, then patterns of multiple triangles. Their movements reflect the music's rhythm. Behind the barrier of the black lines, the triangle moves, jumps, and takes on multiple shapes. In contrast with the blue and the black, the triangles are warm: orange, red, yellow. The black lines bend, swirl into a vortex, then disappear. The triangle pulsates and a set of many of them rises.
Rose, a desperate mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment. After a violent car crash, Sharon disappears and Rose begins a desperate search to get her back. She descends into the center of the twisted reality of a town's terrible secret. Pursued by grotesquely deformed creatures and townspeople stuck in permanent purgatory, Rose begins to uncover the truth behind the apocalyptic disaster that burned the town 30 years earlier.
At dusk, an observer captures an absurd phenomenon.
A Dream... is an abstract, horror piece that explores the subconscious mind of modern, western man, touching on cultural guilt, self deception, and maintaining individuality in an impersonal world. The work is inspired by the writings of Franz Kafka.
Two friends find out the importance of paper in their friendship.
Three memories that become one. An attempt to merge heterogeneous materials: a film sequence shot in Rome, a photo from the 1930s, a noisy soundtrack. Fragmented lines, exploding bass frequencies and flickering.
An abstract animated short by Michael Theodore.
A jazzy film in which the spectator is forced to look with the ears and listen with the eyes. An abstract film drawn directly on the computer.
The idea of JAM was conceived while I was attending the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2008.After returning to Japan, I soon began making the film and completed it in four months.This film is based on a very simple idea: the increasingly varied the sounds, the greater is the number of creatures. I wanted to rid myself of the frustrating experience of making Devour Dinner, which was highly unsatisfactory from the viewpoint of the movement in the film. My intention in this film was to fill the screen with chaotic movements.
The mutating forms of Tensai Banpaku, or “Genius Expo” create a stunning abstract orchestra.
A man is horribly tortured by another who wants him to reveal where his girlfriend is hiding.
Trapped between the frames of time.
A horse goddess gives birth to three powerful brothers who set out into the Underworld to save three princesses from three evil dragons and reclaim their ancestors' lost kingdom.
A classic of abstract animation that follows a tiny red arrow's journey through a multitude of spirals of white and waterfalls of color. Directed by Caroline and Frank Mouris, preserved in 2020 thanks to a collaborative effort between the Academy Film Archive and the Yale Film Archive.
袋 Fukuro (Japanese for "bag" or "sack") is a 3-minute short film from 2001. It features Pyramid Head and a Lying Figure from Silent Hill 2, the Fukuro Lady, and many monsters from early sketches for Silent Hill 2. The film contains disturbing, surreal imagery.
Torn from their home by a hand in the sky, colorful entities seek freedom from a rigid binary in this short experimental animation.
Abstract horror short about a girl's face.
An abstract computer-generated film. The image is of squares revolving in space around and through each other. Colors and forms multiply and divide against a beautiful symphonic score by George Kleinsinger.
Confined to an endlessly burning waiting room, a dying sedentary woman experiences herself blurring in and out of her body. In her last remaining fragments she tries to make amends with her spirit before her remaining fragments either decay or create.