Petro is a modest farmhand living in an impoverished village in some unspecified long-ago era. He wants to marry the lovely Pidorka, but her stern father won’t hear of it. The mischievous demon Basavriuk, offers a deal, enticing Petro into crime for the sake of fortune. Based on Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Eve of Ivan Kupala” (“St John’s Eve”) and Ukrainian folk tales.
Category: Fantasy
Wafer factory-owner P. Tinto and his wife Olivia want a their own child more than anything else in the world, but after years of trying, they have nothing but a pair of extraterrestrial midgets living in their spare bedroom. When they decide to try adoption, a series of misroutings and chance encounters results in an escaped adult mental patient arriving at their door with adoption papers in hand. P. Tinto and Olivia accept this without question and welcome him in as their son. Can this family arrangement work?
A poor working girl goes to a ball and falls in love with the prince. Based on the famous European folk tale as told by Charles Perrault, with Russian verse by Genrikh Sapgir.
This exquisite Soviet animated adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale tells the story of a water-dwelling maiden, Rusalochka, who trades her voice for legs after falling in love with a human prince. The story transitions between the black and white human world of Copenhagen, where tourists believe in love but not in mermaids, and the gorgeously vibrant visuals of the underwater mermaid kingdom, accompanied by Aleksandr Lokshin’s haunting music.
In her second feature (and her first solo feature), the multidisciplinary artist Niki de Saint Phalle pursues her own take on the fairy tale, and the result is a visionary exploration of female desire that unfurls according to the logic of dreams and poetry. The film follows a princess (played by Saint Phalle’s daughter, Laura Duke Condominas) who, following a series of encounters with fantastical beings, is magically transformed into an adult, and finds herself navigating a frightening and surreal new world. A work suffused with ideas and strong ties to Saint Phalle’s work in other media (sculpture, painting, assemblage, etc.), Un rêve plus long que la nuit is both an exemplary artist’s film and an underseen gem of 1970s French avant-garde cinema.
Based on the famous fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, this adaptation is fairly faithful to the original. Portraying the sinister tones of old fairy tales in a dream-like or theatrical style, this surreal film focuses mainly on the young girl Kerttu’s journey to rescue her brother Kai from the evil Snow Queen. Kerttu travels through beautiful and hostile lands, meeting various strange and threatening characters on the way – befriended and helped by some, waylaid and trapped by others. In the classic style of such tales her journey is episodic, punctuated with scenes of events unfolding at the Snow Queen’s palace.
The toys in the playroom of the Jones household magically come to life when their owners aren’t looking. On Christmas Eve, as the toys eagerly await the arrival of a new toy, Rugby the tiger plots to make sure he remains the favorite toy.
Taafé fanga is the film version of a Mali folk tale. The well-known griot Sidiki Diabaté is our guide through the cliff rocks of Bandiagara and through the past of the Dogon people. When the Albarga, the mask of the local spirits and also symbol of power, falls into the hands of the young woman Yayémé, this causes chaos in Yanda. The women exchange their skirts for the trousers of the men. Is it a curse? A divine punishment? The women take over power, but will the new order be able to resist all its inherent contradictions?