A Fly in the Restaurant

When the Valley of Peace is threatened, lazy Po the panda discovers his destiny as the "chosen one" and trains to become a kung fu hero, but transforming the unsleek slacker into a brave warrior won't be easy. It's up to Master Shifu and the Furious Five -- Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey -- to give it a try.

A waitress, desperate to fulfill her dreams as a restaurant owner, is set on a journey to turn a frog prince back into a human being, but she has to face the same problem after she kisses him.

A panda named Pancada, who works at a boxing club, wishes to become a dancer but gets caught up in an upcoming fight due to a case of mistaken identity.

Remy, a resident of Paris, appreciates good food and has quite a sophisticated palate. He would love to become a chef so he can create and enjoy culinary masterpieces to his heart's delight. The only problem is, Remy is a rat. When he winds up in the sewer beneath one of Paris' finest restaurants, the rodent gourmet finds himself ideally placed to realize his dream.

This is a classing Jordan animation, primarily in B/W, with touches of color. Actually, the engraved art work was film on color negative, so that subtle variations in tone are recorded. The mood--enhanced by John Davis' original music--is dream-like. It is both lyric and crackling, producing a kind of anticipatory tension. The scenes, in the usual Jordan manner, follow the surreal principle of placing objects and people where the ought not to be, and making movements that in the waking world are impossible. Each scene is a kind of drama from another world.

Wasteland is a five-part anthology film that deals with isolation, mental illness, and the subjectivity of reality. Each of the five parts can be watched individually, but when viewed in sequence, each story brings out a more interesting and distinct context to its respective pieces.

The Winter Feast is Po's favorite holiday. Every year he and his father hang decorations, cook together, and serve noodle soup to the villagers. But this year Shifu informs Po that as Dragon Warrior, it is his duty to host the formal Winter Feast at the Jade Palace. Po is caught between his obligations as the Dragon Warrior and his family traditions: between Shifu and Mr. Ping.

Suicidal poet Archy tries to end his life by jumping off a bridge, but awakens to find he has assumed the life of a cockroach and has become a part of a community of creatures living in a newspaper office. He also discovers that he can still write poetry, using a typewriter, and begins to enjoy his new life. Archy develops deep feelings for the lovely but self-destructive cat Mehitabel, but will have to fight to win her from bad-boy tomcat Bill.

Hare enlists four brave friends to help him reclaim his home from the wily Fox.

In this episodic animated fantasy from France, an art teacher interprets a series of six fairy tales (each involving a prince or princess) with the help of two precocious students. Princes and Princesses was created using a special style of cutout animation, with black silhouetted characters performing the action against backlit backdrops in striking colors.

"Mouris’s film, YOU’RE NOT REAL PRETTY BUT YOU’RE MINE…, built upon the strongest elements of QUICK DREAM, and added a pop music soundtrack. Mouris says, “I shot another 100 foot roll on classmate Jerry Strawbridge’s home animation stand, and edited that into the best sequences from QUICK DREAM. The whole film was a tongue-in-cheek series of odd couples/couplings, which the title suggested. The FRANK FILM photo collage animation evolved here.” - Yale

ALEXANDER THE GRAPE, an unfinished cut-paper animated short from Jim Henson from 1965, relates the fable of a young grape with big ambitions who learns that it is better to accept yourself than to try to be something you are not. The short was reconstructed from film and audio elements; images from Jim’s storyboard fill in missing segments of the animation.

A cut-out animation musical adaptation of the Irish mythological epic Táin Bó Cúailnge.

Claymation adaptation of Kenji Miyazawa's short tale about a pair of hunters that, after getting lost on the mountains, find themselves looking for a meal at the mysterious Wildcat House restaurant. Faced with endless corridors and doors, and many signs asking them to do a series of confusing actions, the gentlemen start questioning what kind of place the restaurant might actually be behind all these doors.

Animation using cutout animation to craft a bizarre science fiction experiment. Moving spheres, such as balloons and bubbles, are superimposed on static backgrounds to suggest travel and discovery.

An experimental short film by Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica.

The movie takes place entirely in and around the Mini Moni Cafè. The Mini Moni Cafè is run by the first generation members of Mini Moni, who are lead by Mari Yaguchi. Mika Todd is the primary baker for the cafè and Ai Kago and Nozomi Tsuji are bumbling waitresses. One day Kago and Tsuji serve a particularly enthusiastic customer (played by Ai Takahashi) who says she has never had such a delicious cake before. When the waitress explain they do not know the secret ingredient that makes the cakes so good, Takahashi decides to sneak into the cafè later find out what it is and steal it.

Spike waves to a young woman driving a red pickup truck through the desert of Needles, California every day; it is the highlight of his day. In this combined animated and live-action special, we meet an aerobics instructor, Jenny, who wants to be a big city jazz dancer. She and Spike drive around looking at the desert scenery and spending some time at a roller rink. However, when Spike is accidentally thrown out of the skating rink he runs off and is pursued by people on a nighttime coyote hunt.

The way bureaucracy works is told by men in the frames.

In a white lace universe, three inventors create machines which are both pretty and useful. Unfortunately people do not understand them...