An ordinary middle class suburban couple sees a celebrity parrot on TV who supposedly foretells the future. The parrot predicts the world is coming to an end. The couple are initially shocked, and then decide to make the most of the time they have left.
Category: Short
In this short by the British animators Derek Lamb and Jeff Hale, a music hall performer detaches his arms, legs, ears and eventually his head for the amusement of the audience. There’s a wry humour to his performance, but also a striking sense of detail in his movements and gestures- Lamb and Hale were both veterans of the animation world by the time they collaborated on the short. Their style will likely be familiar to anyone who watched Sesame Street during the 80s or 90s- cartoons by both Lamb and Hale were in regular rotation on the show.
A corrosive comment on romantic love by the brilliant Japanese animator Yôji Kuri; a bedraggled male is chased endlessly in alienated landscapes by a voracious female continually repeating the word ‘Ai’ (‘love’, in Japanese). Her attempts at domesticating him with a chain fail, but the chase continues, forever.
A black-and-white short without any words that shows how seven different people spend a Sunday. Karpo Godina’s first professional short and his last black-and-white film.
Arguably Larry Gottheim’s most exuberant experiment in the single-shot, single-roll format (and his first with a soundtrack), HARMONICA trains the camera on a friend improvising a tune in the backseat of a moving car. Held out the window, the harmonica becomes a musical conduit for the wind, while Gottheim’s film transforms before our eyes into a playful meditation on wrangling the natural elements into art.
Tashkent Station in the Uzbekistan capital: Passengers rush to catch their trains. A couple, locked in an intimate embrace, so deeply affects the train driver that leaves the train standing and makes a fundamental change in his life. A miniature by Veit Helmer.
DIFFERENT DRUMMER is a short documentary directed by Edward Gray about Jazz great Elvin Jones. In it he talks about his early days with John Coltrane (with whom he’s seen performing in a ’60s film clip) and pianist Bud Powell. He also performs drum solos and an original piece, “Three Card Molly,” with Ryo Kawasaki (guitar), Pat LaBarbera (sax) and David Williams (bass).
Felix in Exile was created in 1994, a momentous time when South Africa was transitioning through a social, political and economic revolution to a new post-Apartheid society, with new uncertainties and struggles ahead. William Kentridge states that, although his work does not focus on apartheid in a direct and overt manner, but rather on the contemporary state of Johannesburg, his drawings and films are certainly spawned by, and feed off, the brutalised society that it left in its wake.