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.
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.
The flower fairies help a little girl named Mary to thwart germs.
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.
In a white lace universe, three inventors create machines which are both pretty and useful. Unfortunately people do not understand them...
A square dances.
In order to win the hand of a princess, a man must defeat an evil dragon and claim its treasured magic stone. Upon his return, Baghdad has been invaded and he must use the stone to defeat his new enemy.
In this short animation film the triangle achieves the distinction of principal dancer in a geometric ballet. The triangle is shown splitting into some three hundred transformations, dividing and sub-dividing with grace and symmetry to the music of a waltz. The film's artist and animator is René Jodoin, whose credits include Dance Squared and several collaborations with Norman McLaren.
I told a story, Kirikou and the Sorceress, that reached a large number of people. It was the first time in my life. But this film was not my first one. I had also made short films, with a very limited distribution. Nobody saw them. I am lucky enough now to introduce them to you, to make these little mechanisms run again; they are the result of perseverance and passion. Besides the almost forgotten past, I have added a dance of today, which I conceived for Björk. Also something of the future, a post-scriptum to my film "Azur & Asmar". In addition to the films, I try to explain the happy magic of these bits of nothing which became my life. Michel Ocelot
Hare enlists four brave friends to help him reclaim his home from the wily Fox.
A series of vaudeville acts inserted in images of reality, meant to demonstrate the ephemeral nature of all things.
The way bureaucracy works is told by men in the frames.
Film shows the story of Papageno (the one from Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute"), who wants a mate, yet has difficulties getting one.
A surrealistic fantasy based on the 15th century woodcuts of the dance of the dead. A film experiment that deals with the photoreality and the surrealism of life. A collage-animation that cuts up photos and newsreel film and reassembles them, producing an image that is a mixture of unexplainable fact (Why is Harpo Marx playing a harp in the middle of a battlefield?) with inexplicable act (Why is there a battlefield?). It is a black comedy, a fantasy that mocks death ... a parabolic parable.
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.
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.
Three artists struggling against the grid of society find spiritual renewal.
An animated adaptation of Poe's famous short story.
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.
Conquerors land on a newly discovered planet and try to colonize and explore a new discovered planet.