This animated film is based on an old Persian parable. The inhabitants of a village learn to overcome their fear of the unknown. The benefit of their new-found knowledge is demonstrated. The black-and-white images are reminiscent of German wood-cuts. No dialogue.
Category: Animation
A disturbing cinematic opera from Melbourne film-maker, Michael Lee, presenting an intense emotional collage of film clips, original footage and complex object animation, structured loosely in the form of a Catholic Mass, to communicate the film-maker’s traumatic Catholic experience. The film is intended in part as ‘anti-imagery’ in response to the iconography of Catholicism.
The humour and irony-laden art criticism of György Kovásznai’s previous films is further developed in this short. Each of the three episodes acquired a different visual presentation. The first episode makes fun of the cinema (and its overstimulating effect), the second of the theatre (and its hypocrisy) and the third of the classical music (and its snobbism).
A live action viewpoint camera cuts between various mundane settings – children in a nursery, a house, office, workshop, church, hospital, farm, train and so on. The images are increasingly treated with effects, then shift to animation – showing rolling abstract patterns – before reverting back to live action, to be brought up short by a door with a notice pinned to it: “Stop! Entrance Prohibited”.
Scissors dance like a ballet dancer on sheets of paper. She carves the sun, the flower, the fish. The boy needs new toys. Scissors offers colored cubes and patterned balls. And then she cuts out the girl. A naughty boy wants all the toys for himself. The girl is offended and hides. The boy understands that being alone is boring. Then the scissors cut out many more boys and girls. The fun games begin.
Whispered to by an ancient tree, young shepherd Mihály dreams of more than his simple existence among grass and sheep. The journey he embarks on brings him into contact with golden birds, a dragon and a fair damsel The film’s incredibly rich visuals are based on the animation transfiguration of late Gothic, early Italian Renaissance frescoes, altarpieces and tableaux. Based on a poem by János Pilinszky.
A slowly disintegrating painting, a bird on the painting that later flies away. An ethereal female figure that pops up from time to time, then as a counterpoint a disgusting insect, an undulating multitude of pebbles and a plethora of letters fill the picture. In other words, the combined spectacle of visual motifs and sound effects creates a unique and memorable vision of the passing of time and the continuous change of time.