In a bizarre and decadent society, faceless characters are tirelessly trying to appeal to a body of bureaucrats in order to finally be allowed to have a face. Will they be happy when they can get a nose, a pair of eyes and a mouth?
Social & External
MUTE is an animated short about a world populated by people born without mouths.
A compact, full-color cut-out animation as ephemeral as the colors swimming on the surface of a soap bubble. The eternal round shape, the orb (sun, moon, symbol of the whole self) balloons its inimitable and joyous course through scene after scene of celestial delight, fixing at last as the mystical globe encasing the lovers whose course it has paralleled throughout the film.
We are first presented a cobweb castle, filled with the haunting doubts of the young protagonist. Spirits appear on the screen and are heard on the soundtrack. Gradually a female guide emerges and escorts the young man into an antechamber to another (and possibly higher) world.
For the first time I am animating hand-painted engraved cut-outs on a full-color background. The film is mood-filled: A duel scene in a snowy forest, obviously the morning after a masquerade ball. Harlequin lies dying, while Red Indian walks away with the wings of victory. The woman between them appears, cat-masked. The mask dissolves away. Her spirit passes into the face of the sun upon the sun upon the sun flower. But Harlequin cannot escape death. The blue world engulfs him.
Lawrence Jordan used forty-six engraved Gustave Doré illustrations from "Idylls of the King" as settings for his extravagantly romantic saga. As Enid, the protagonist, is seen in a vast array of scenes from deep forests to castle keeps. Her champion is sometimes with her, sometimes away fighting archetypal foes. Backed by Mahler, Jordan explores themes of love, death and resurrection.
A prodigious animated short film created using sketches scribbled on sheets of paper scattered around a room, which the author folds and unfolds as the story unfolds.
Phineas and Ferb team up with the Avengers to save the world from Dr. Doofenshmirtz and a group of dangerous supervillains.
Paulette plays in the back yard, in the shade of a tall tree, with her doll, somewhere out in the countryside. Secretly watching other children have fun without her makes her sad. Then suddenly the wooden chair she is sitting on begins to move, and throws her off. She bravely gets on the chair again, which starts to buck like a wild horse, making her very happy. Racing through the countryside, the chair then throws her off, right into the middle of the group of playing children, helping her overcome her shyness.
Father, son, the lighthouse as the center of their lives. Both grow up, the son leaving every day to pursue his studies, then returning to an increasingly elderly father who welcomes him with the same warmth, taking him, as he has always done over the years, to the piano to play together.
In a very distant future, a mysterious alien power has genetically altered the native inhabitants of a planet to serve as their slave labour force. From "birth", these unfortunate beings are taught that the sole purpose in their lives is to complete the construction of a massive city for supreme beings, their "Gods", who will one day arrive. Despite this control over their destiny, some among these enslaved creatures being to resist. One of them attempts to break free - quite literally reclaiming his identity from a world that has taken it.
A hunt for a lost sheep turns into a competition between Hiccup and friends as they compete to become the first Dragon Racing champion of Berk.
The werewolves that live in this secluded place are particularly savage: when not attacking anything that moves, they spend their time arguing and fighting. Driven by instinct, one young werewolf chases pink flamingos through the wild, straying far from home. Before he knows it, he’s in a place he knows nothing about: the world of humans.
An animated short by Qing Huang demonstrating the six essentials in Chinese Painting, according to art critic Jing Hao (fl. AD 920): 1 - Force (chi) - the foremost principle 2 - Rhythm and Mood (yun) 3 - Scheme (si) 4 - The Scene and the Landscape (Jing) 5 - Brushwork (bi) 6 - Ink work (mo)
Two duelling birds get the urge to change their plumage. A blue jay wants to be decked out in the green of cedar, and a loon dons the burnished red of oak leaves, but neither bird foresees the consequences of vanity.
An elderly woman naps and has seven erotic dreams. Each dream sounds the same. "Dreamers" are Craig Bartlett, Alison Snowden and David Fine, Janet Perlman, Sara Petty, Stoyan Dukov, Paul Driessen and Marv Newland. Directed by Marv Newland.
Inspired by the isolated beauty of tropical islands and the explosive allure of ocean volcanoes, Lava is a musical love story that takes place over millions of years.
Two insects fight over the hand of a beautiful lady.
Red's peaceful morning routine is interrupted by a pesky visitor.
A boy and his ghost friend go to see a movie.
A vintage nature film exploring the migratory pattern of a herd of wild creatures.
Short film to a song of love lost and rediscovered, a woman sees and undergoes surreal transformations. Her lover's face melts off, she dons a dress from the shadow of a bell and becomes a dandelion, ants crawl out of a hand and become Frenchmen riding bicycles. Not to mention the turtles with faces on their backs that collide to form a ballerina, or the bizarre baseball game.
This is a hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to achieve various effects of brief fades and fluidity-of-motion, and makes partial use of painted frames in repetition (for "close-up" of textures). The tone of the film is primarily dark blue, and the paint is composed (and rephotographed microscopically) to suggest galactic forms in a space of stars.
Across different eras, a poor family, an anxious developer and a fed-up landlady become tied to the same mysterious house in this animated dark comedy.
The fourth instalment in the surreal Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared videos in which the three returning characters enter a sinister digital world through their computer.
It's the 1890s, and Donald is riding his penny-farthing bicycle to see Daisy when Chip 'n Dale make fun of him. It quickly escalates into a full-fledged war between Donald and the chipmunks.
A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.
In Prague, a professorial puppet, with metal pincers for hands and an open book for a hat, takes a boy as a pupil. First, the professor empties fluff and toys from the child's head, leaving him without the top of his head for most of the film. The professor then teaches the lad about illusions and perspectives, the pursuit of an object through exploring a bank of drawers, divining an object, and the migration of forms. The child then brings out a box with a tarantula in it: the professor puts his "hands" into the box and describes what he feels. The boy receives a final lesson about animation and film making; then the professor gives him a brain and his own open-book hat.
A visual representation, in four parts, of one man's internalization of "The Divine Comedy." Hell is a series of multicolored brush strokes against a white background; the speed of the changing images varies. "Hell Spit Flexion," or springing out of Hell, is on smaller film stock, taking the center of the frame. Montages of color move rapidly with a star and the edge of a lighted moon briefly visible. Purgation is back to full frame; blurs of color occasionally slow down then freeze. From time to time, an image, such as a window or a face, is distinguishable for a moment. In "existence is song," colors swirl then flash in and out of view. Behind the vivid colors are momentary glimpses of volcanic activity.
A cartoonist defies reality when he draws objects that become three-dimensional after he lifts them off his sketch pad.
All alone, Yellow Guy tries to stop a lamp from teaching him about dreams. While Red Guy finds out the truth about the puppets' existence.
Mater finds a small UFO called Mator and they have a night out. Later, when Mator is captured by military forces, Mater sneaks up and saves him with the help of Lightning McQueen and the UFO's mother.
In Don Hertzfeldt's second student film, a hapless cartoon character is dragged through a spectrum of cinematic situations by his frustrated animator.
Mama Buzzard wants her children to learn to bring back meat for dinner. One buzzardling is shy and has to be kicked out of the nest. He's told to at least bring back a rabbit.
A series of dark and troubling events forces Bill to reckon with the meaning of his life… or lack thereof.
Step back into the imaginative and frankly terrifying world of Becky & Joe with Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. In this episode: Some things change over Time.
A cat named Lorenzo is dismayed to discover that his tail has developed a personality of its own.
Farmer Donald goes through his farmer day until a fly causes him to lose control while milking a cow.
During a chicken picnic, Yellow Guy gets upset after Green Bird kills a butterfly. Yellow Guy then meets a butterfly that takes him on a journey to discover his concept of love.
Donald steals Chip and Dale's nuts for his nut-butter shop, which is shaped like a giant walnut, Chip and Dale, roll and "shoot" Donald into a nearby lake.
An experimental film in which both sound and visuals were created entirely by Norman McLaren drawing directly upon the film with ordinary pen and ink. The main title is in eight languages. Rereleased with multilingual titles in 1949.