The inhabitants of a Spanish village gather for the visit of a death defying tightrope walker. He comes with his own attractive aura of danger and drama, and the crowd are not disappointed. Animated in a sketchy style on paper, this film powerfully uses the graphic freedom of this technique to select and embellish, to swoop and wander around the village. Austere sound effects and an Albeniz guitar piece are used to heighten this charmingly modest drama in which ordinary things – a hammer driving a nail, a flock of birds wheeling in the sky – are given their due.
Category: Animation
The film tells the story of a fly, which falls into a large garden on an autumn day. The fly is fleeing because the occupant of the house wants to hit her. During the few minutes of the story, the viewer sees the world through the eyes of the fly, describing it from the insect’s point of view.
A sweet reminiscence about a family of four children and their RAF-veteran dad, who knows the timetable of every bus in London, but realizes his large family needs a car. He buys a Peugeot station wagon – license plate GFP831E, and the family sets off for annual holidays exploring every corner of Europe – “adopting local customs but never forgetting who won the war.” The narrator is one of the children who, as he ages, sees things he missed as a lad – the car no rocket, dad no speedster. As the years wear on, and the car sits in the driveway, dad keeps it ready for the next great summer holiday.
A tenor, in suit and tie, with a receding hairline, sings a ballad to his love, “Your face is like a song,” to simple piano accompaniment. As he sings about his love’s face, his own face goes through phantasmagoric changes, beginning with his warbling mouth moving about. As the singing continues, his face twists, turns, explodes, liquefies, becomes block-shaped, multiples, curls, disappears in sections and all at once, and always reconfigures itself serenely into its original shape.
Once upon a time in a forest, an elephant encounters a snail, when suddenly it begins to rain. The snail asks the elephant whether he wants to come inside his shell. The elephant accepts this kind invitation even though the snail’s house is a wee bit small.
A series of strange abstract images are projected in a movie theater. An old man from Russia in the audience watches this and can make neither head nor tail of them. He heckles the picture, wondering out loud, “Vhat da hell is dis?” while irritating the other patrons around him. He comments outrageously the entire time, saying, “It must be some symbolism! I think it’s symbolic of… junk.”
Animated drawings illustrate the life and explorations of Samuel de Champlain, founder of Québec City. The film follows Champlain from his first ambitions to map the New World and discover a passage to the sea, to his later dreams for New France.