Mary's Birthday

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.

Parabola is a celebration of film’s ability to create new ways of seeing the forms around us. Creating juxtapositions between light/shadow, stasis/motion, and form/music, this black-and-white short invites us to see the parabolic curve, or “nature’s poetry,” as both invigorating and beguiling.

Mario and Luigi, plumbers from Brooklyn, find themselves in an alternate universe where evolved dinosaurs live in hi-tech squalor. They're the only hope to save our universe from invasion by the dino dictator, Koopa.

A young teenage werewolf is torn between honoring her family's secret and her love for a man.

A girl dreams of becoming a kitten.

This short film is adapted from Madame d'Aulnoy's clasic fairy tale, The White Cat. The White Cat was originally planned as a feature film musical which Anna Biller worked on over a period of a couple of years, creating an original soundtrack, over a hundred costumes, many props, and a children's book. Eventually, realizing it was a bit unconventional and expensive to raise the proper funding for, she instead adapted it for the stage with a cast of eight performers, and called the new version The Lady Cat. The film and play were trying to capture the complex nature of the character of the White Cat, an enchanted princess who has been transformed into a cat, with all of the perversions and fancies that such a transformation implies. This particular scene is about the sexual feelings that are awakened in the two lovers when they witness the awakening of spring.

A sad Arabian queen is cheered by her attendants, a Queen Bee rules over a hive of adoring drones, and a teenage girl is transformed into a queen in a colorful musical fantasy inspired by old Hollywood musicals.

A story about childhood - real and the dreams. After finding a magic shell young Kačenka uses it to model her family life on the sea shore.

Spectacle is proud to present HEAD SPACE, a showcase of animated works exploring dimensions both interior and outlying. Featuring an extremely talented and creative group working in a diverse array of styles, the shorts wander through strange and sometimes sketchy landscapes, including alternate-universe appliance stores, the ramblings of Charles Manson, environmental catastrophes in the Dutch style of painting, and a houseplant’s musings. Some, like Sally Cruikshank’s Make Me Psychic, are established classics; others feature newer animators working in looping GIF format, presented away from the small screen’s momentary pleasures to fully appreciate the art that it is. Occasionally gross, often beautiful, and always interesting, HEAD SPACE is a sampler of the thoughts happening inside and out of each frame.

Refashioning the original intention of footage lifted from an online animated news outlet, The Falling Sky is a cautionary tale about the inexplicable sea and the tumultuous sky—a poetic tour through the dense landscape of recent news in a recap of human foibles, follies and crises that are increasingly out of alignment with the forces of nature.

The true story of John Romulus Brinkley, a small-town Kansas doctor who discovers in 1917 that he can cure impotence by transplanting goat testicles into men. And that’s just the tipping point in this stranger-than-fiction tale. With the balls of a P.T. Barnum, the gonads of goats, and the wishful dreams of flaccid men, Brinkley amassed a fortune, was almost elected Governor of Kansas, invented junk mail and the infomercial, and built the world’s most powerful radio station. By the time all of the twists and turns of Brinkley’s story are revealed, Nuts! certainly earns its title.

After a comet disrupts the rain cycle of Earth, the planet has become a desolate, barren desert by the year 2033. With resources scarce, Kesslee, head of the powerful and evil Water & Power Corporation, the de facto government, has taken control of the water supply. Unwilling to cower under Kesslee's tyrannical rule, a pair of outlaws known as Tank Girl and Jet Girl rise up, joining the mysterious rebel Rippers to destroy the corrupt system.

Elation in Neustadt: by the means of a little witching, Bibi Blocksberg saved two kids from burning to death. While her mother Barbara, a witch of flesh and blood herself, is very proud of her daughter, father Bernhard, overworked and stressed, disapproves greatly of her supernatural antics. Then Bibi gets a message from Walpurgia, the senior witch: she is going to receive her crystel ball, that will make a "real" witch of her, early. Proudly, Bibi jumps up her broom to fly to the Blocksberg, the witches' headquarters. But Rabia, one of the few evil witches, aging in misery and with a secret, begrudges her all the glory...and her youth. And so Rabia sets off events that will soon make Bibi's life fall into pieces.

England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to satisfy a very particular request.

In this evocative film about the eternal human search for home, Berta and Solomon arrive in a land that promises respite from their many journeys. But have they found utopia... or just another stop on their long journey?

A large group of children from different countries sail to the Black Sea port, heading for the international pioneer camp "Artek". Two stragglers of foreigners meet local teenagers who arrange a tour of the port for them.

An experiment in pure design by film artists Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart. Lines, ruled directly on film, move with precision and grace against a background of changing colors, in response to music specially composed for the films.

An experiment in pure design by film artists Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart. Lines, ruled directly on film, move with precision and grace against a background of changing colors, in response to music specially composed for the films.

Imaginative King

Set in the frozen steppes of Mongolia, a young nomad is confronted with his destiny after animals fall victim to a plague which threatens to eradicate nomadism.