A Blue Room

A solitary man works in a tall office building. The only moment in his drab life that's out of the ordinary each year seems to be opening the birthday card and gift from his mother. Usually it's a tie, but one year it's an accordion. It goes into the closet with his many ties. A year or two later, he discovers what happens to the papers he processes every day. His discovery sends him first to the building's top floor, then to his closet.

Bambi is nibbling the grass, unaware of the upcoming encounter with Godzilla. Who will win when they finally meet? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.

In this animated short, a terrible curse deprives Balthasar's kingdom of its stories. Taking the unicorn's horn back into The Belly of the Earth is the solution. Poppety will lead an expedition, by chance uncovering a hitherto closely guarded family secret.

A lonely woman with an overwhelming obsession of masturbation must extricate herself from what consumes her every moment.

Puce Moment is a short 6 minute film by Kenneth Anger, author of the Hollywood Babylon books, filmed in 1949. Puce Moment resulted from the unfinished short film Puce Women. The film opens with a camera watching 1920s style flapper gowns being taken off a dress rack. The dresses are removed and danced off the rack to music. (The original soundtrack was Verdi opera music; in the 1960s, Anger re-released the film with a new psychedelic folk-rock soundtrack performed by Jonathan Halper.) A long-lashed woman, Yvonne Marquis, dresses in the purple puce gown and walks to her vanity to apply perfume. She lies on a chaise lounge which then begins to move around the room and eventually out to a patio. Borzois appear and she prepares to take them for a walk.

An alley cat is foraging for food when he sees Tom's house and decides it's a rich haul. He dresses as a foundling baby and lands on the doorstep. Tom takes him in and Butch proceeds to raid the fridge between Tom's babying him. What he doesn't know is that Jerry's going to grab the ham Butch swiped every chance he gets.

Tom heads for a big city penthouse to become acquainted with a rich pretty female cat that lives there. He brings her Jerry as a gift and does some humiliating things to Jerry. Jerry, in turn, attracts the attention of another cat who also becomes interested in the female cat. It eventually turns into a fight between Tom and the other cat for the lady's hand but Jerry is the one who gets her in the end.

Tom, a castle soldier in 16th century France, is assigned to guard the food laid out on a banquet table. Jerry and a smaller mouse companion, two wandering "mouseketeers", make the situation miserable for Tom as they abscond with (and occasionally eat) all the food they can.

Tom's in love again, and Jerry's devil conscience reminds him of times this has happened in the past (which, of course, we see, in the form of clips from earlier shorts), and how that's been nothing but trouble for Jerry.

The story of a cat who, legend has it, longs to become human.

The Cat in the Hat is all set for a lovely picnic, but the evil Grinch changes his plans by inventing a contraption that captures noise and makes it sound ferocious. The Cat has to save the world from the clutches of the Grinch and the only way to do it is to reach Grinch's soft spot.

Cao Fei recorded her experiences within the online social platform Second Life. The result is a wistful, surreal vision of an alternative reality sprung from the pop culture fantasies and hyper-consumerism of contemporary urban China, while also trying to transcend its real-life limitations. It can be seen as an answer to the challenge posed by River Elegy: how to envision a new Chinese destiny founded on principles of individuality, creativity, discovery, and freedom. The film also reflects the contemporary condition of the virtual supplanting our experience of the real.

A plump and exuberant monk goes fishing, and a playful fish eludes him. First the monk uses a rod and reel, then a net; over and over, he ends up fish-less and wet. Sleepless, he tries luring the fish at night with a bank of candles. He tries a bow and arrow. The tireless and insouciant fish leads the monk through a viaduct, over irrigated steppes, across cisterns, down canals.

A couple has a fight over a game of Scrabble unaware that a full-scale nuclear war has started.

This animated short follows an unwanted baby who is passed from house to house. The film is the Canadian contribution to an hour-long feature film celebrating UNESCO's Year of the Child (1979). It illustrates one of the ten principles of the Declaration of Children's Rights: every child is entitled to a name and a nationality. The film took home an Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film.

After a car accident, Ben wakes up in hospital. Not knowing where he is or what is going on, he starts exploring the corridors...only to find that the staff don't have his health in mind! The hapless patient must pull himself together and do everything he can to escape. It's an action/horror/comedy — ending with the wheelchair chase from hell!

In a Medieval castle, a marauder tries to kidnap the twin infant sons of the lord. He makes off with only one, whom he drops about a mile away. A pig rescues this baby, so one brother grows up high on the hog, the other down with the swine; one is lazy, his lost brother is industrious. Years later, when a neighboring prince declares war, the brother in the castle is too soft to fight. Through happenstance, the twins are united just before the final battle. Will the upper-class brother let his humble sibling lead the troops to certain defeat and death? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

Bunny, an elderly rabbit who uses a walker, is in her kitchen one night baking a cake. A photograph from her wedding day is on her wall. A pesky and persistent moth bangs about the kitchen. She shoos it outside, turns off the porch light, and returns to her baking. The moth finds its way back into the kitchen, she bats it with a wooden spoon, and it falls into the mix. She stirs it up, pours the batter into a pan, and pops it into the oven. But the moth isn't done: it has a different mission, turning the oven into a portal, and inviting Bunny on a voyage of reunion.

The film begins with an Earth space craft stumbling upon a movie floating in the vast nothingness. The film turns out to be from planet Zog and when people see it, they are shocked and angered by the Zogs (or is it 'Zogians' or 'Zogites'?). It seems that they have their genitals where our heads are and vice-versa. To make things really weird, they eat and drink with their genitals and defecate with their faces.

Dislocation in time, time signatures, time as a philosophical concept, and slavery to time are some of the themes touched upon in this 9-minute experimental film, which was written, directed, and produced by Jim Henson. Screened for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in May of 1965, "Time Piece" enjoyed an eighteen-month run at one Manhattan movie theater and was nominated for an Academy Award for Outstanding Short Subject.