The Pillar of Fire

A charming animated fable with live action. This is a story about a teenage girl (Pia Miranda) who suffers from depression and dreams and sketches ways on how to end her life. She comes across a beehive one day and comes up with a bizarre plan when she decides that if she swallows enough bees they will sting her death.

A black duckling is rejected by its mother, a hen, but manages to prove his worth when a tornado threatens the hen's chicks.

Dinosaur's Hill

Best known for his roles in Belle de jour, Sweet Movie, and many more, Pierre Clementi was also the architect behind a transgressive, high-minded, and disorienting cinema. Like an acid-soaked freefall, Visa de censure n° X is a rush of nudity and color from one of France’s most seductively watchable actors, set to an album's worth of psychedelic prog rock (performed by the Delired Cameleon Family, a group featuring members of French band Clearlight).

"Román s basou" is another short by master a stop-motion puppet-animator Jiri Trnka. The story is based on Anton Chekhovs story "Roman s Kontrabasom". Princess Bibulova decides to go fishing along the river while not far away a bass player leaves his two companions to go for a swim.

A barrel organ grinder meets the devil on a mysterious moonlit night in this haunted-house fable, which showcases Trnka’s atmospheric use of sound to conjure a macabre mood.

A neurotic inventor creates a time machine and gets lost traveling around yesterday.

The frogs have a democracy, but they beseech Jupiter to send them a king. Jupiter can hardly believe this amphibian foolishness, so he sends them a tree as king. The frogs make obeisance to their new monarch, but they are dissatisfied and petition Jupiter again.

A partly-animated short film, a fairy-tale-like telling of why the nightingale only sings at night. A young girl who has caught a nightingale dreams about the songbird and its mate, and comes to realize that birds are not meant to be captive.

Once Koshchey the Immortal caught the Cat-Scientist and complained that he was bored and had no one to torment. In exchange for help, he promised to let the Cat go. The Cat, as such help, offered Koshchey to marry, but in order not to scare away the brides, he advised the villain to dress up as a good fellow. Despite such a cunning trick, Koshchey failed time after time.

The scene opens in an artist's studio, the artist asleep in his chair. A large old fashioned clock opens and a young lady comes out and awaking the artist, requests him to paint her picture. While the artist is executing the work a clown comes from the clock, takes in the situation and begins to make love to the lady. The artist detects him and compels him to desist his love making. He continues to paint. The clown becomes interested and asks the artist to allow him to paint the picture, and begins smearing a whitewash brush over the canvas, when lo, a most perfect image of the young lady appears. The image then steps down from the frame, joins the young lady in the studio, and the figures, each a perfect counterpart of the other begin to dance to the great astonishment of the artist. The clown the by waving his hand causes the figures of the two girls to merge into one. The artist then assumes his seat and awakens from his dream with a great shock.

Gwen's family is rich, but her parents ignore her and most of the servants push her around, so she is lonely and unhappy. Her father is concerned only with making money, and her mother cares only about her social position. But one day a servant's irresponsibility creates a crisis that causes everyone to rethink what is important to them.

For the past 40 years, Jan Svankmajer (Faust, Conspirators of Pleasure) has been hailed as one of cinema's most consistently surprising, wildly imaginative, and remarkable surrealists of our time. Utilizing a delirious combination of puppets, humans, stop-motion animation, and live action, Svankmajer's films conjure up a dreamlike universe that is at once dark, macabre, witty, and perversely visceral. KimStim (and Kino) is proud to to offer this collection of remarkable short works from an artist that has mesmerized audiences the world over and has inspired filmmakers from the Brothers Quay to Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam.

A brownie settled in the attic of one house. He threw things around, made noise, interfered with cooking, spilled ink, teased the dog and made holes in bags of cereals and sugar, but the owner did not believe in him.

Adaptation of the literary fairy tale written by H.C. Andersen about an emperor who prefers the tinkling of a bejewelled mechanical bird to the song of a real nightingale.

The film is based on Andersen's fairy tale "Swineherd".

The king of the faeries sends for a young hunter after his shadow escapes and threatens his kingdom.

A city of singing cats is preyed upon by a shadowy figure intent on performing a twisted feline symphony.

Allegro Vivace

A short animation that depicts the drowning of a village by modern technology.