In this short experimental film, Czech artist Josef Bolf turns an ordinary architectural space into a fragmented psychological journey.
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When business is slow for private detective Alex Calibourne, aka Iron Joe, he takes on a body guard position for a sultry nightclub singer. The animated first half of a two-part anthology.
Greta Garbo and Vladimir Lenin meet at PUB department store in Stockholm in 1917. They both have lost a dream, and they start a conversation that remains all day while they are walking through the city.
Stranded on a distant planet, a lonely astronaut sends out a signal in search of human contact.
A compilation of images co-creator Frank Mouris had collected from magazines interwoven with two narrations, one giving a mostly linear autobiography and the other stating words having to do with the images, the story the first voice is relating, or neither. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
It's ice skating time. After a few generic ice-skating gags, we get to the main story. An animal falls through the ice, and a pig doing W.C. Fields (W.C. Squeals, apparently) calls for help from a Saint Bernard dog. The dog dispenses a drink, and Squeals begins scheming to get some himself. First he tries faking his own fall through the ice, but the dog sees through it and downs the drink himself. Then Squeals tries using a dish of bones and a magnet, but the magnet falls through the ice and gets stuck around a fish. The fish then swims through a liquor spill from the dog's casket; the drunken fish grabs an ax and, swimming in a circle, dunks another skater. He then latches onto Squeals' skates, and hauls him into an ice-skating contest, where the fish-induced antics win him first prize. Squeals fills the loving cup from the dog's cask, and the fish swims off with it.
While their owner is having his siesta, two old caged parrots rake up memories from the past. This leads to unexpected consequences for the three of them.
Louie the Parrot finds a written will stating that his master bequeathes the family fortune not to him, but to his fellow household pet, a lunkheaded cat named Heathcliff, with the proviso that Louie is next in line to inherit the wealth if Heathcliff dies. So, Louie plots the untimely demise of Heathcliff.
In the prehistoric forest lives primitive family. Mom in this family is strict, wild, gloomy. She just wants everyone to be full and healthy. But everything changes when the son brings the puppy home...
A dog that dreams of space travel is pushed to pursue his ambition after leading a mundane life of routine.
Learning about her husband - Piers Jameson's post at the supposed haunted mansion for supervising a renovation, Claire got excited and wanted to tag along. Little did she know that her husband let on far less than what he knew.
The film is a compressed animation parody of Miklós Jancsó's stylised historical choreographies, in which those facing execution and the executioners trade places as the political compass changes direction cynically.
A centaur family moves into an apartment in Budapest, where the residents, led by the house janitor, don't take kindly to the odd lifestyle of the new residents.
American comic actor, radio and TV personality, puppeteer and voice artist Daws Butler reminisces about his life and varied career.
A genius hacker and his dog help an enigmatic young woman to free the remaining test subjects of a black ops ESP test lab.
A young boy is taken by a train on a mysterious journey. BAFTA-winning 14 minute adaptation of H.R. Millar's 1927 book, Dreamland Express.
Vera is an experimental film that combines drawn-on-film and digital animation. The images unfold to the rhythm of music played by Vera Guilaroff, a pianist from Quebec that has now been forgotten by history. Guilaroff accompanied numerous silent films in Montreal movie theaters during the 1910s and 1920s. To our knowledge, this is the first time in nearly 100 years that her music has been used again in a film.
"Happy Birthday" is an outlook vision about the duel between the bible hero Jesus and a man-made robot. Does the robot manage to break the formed dogmas and convert the religion into his favour or will the status quo remain firm?
Figaro the cat wants to eat Cleo the goldfish in this Pinocchio short.
An animated short that paints an eerie portrait of a lone miner trapped underground after a grisou (gas) explosion. The film unfolds through stark, woodcut-style imagery and a meticulous soundscape—boots echo, water drips, insects clatter.
He, the early riser, and she, the early worker, meet only for a kiss goodbye. It's raining. The great ship sinks slowly but surely. The men do their work, the kind of work where there is no room for haste and only one mistake is made. In such a life, the last cigarette is part of an unbroken chain. Temake, the night dentist, falls asleep and dreams that he will not. It is raining. The evening kiss of farewell approaches.
A darkly brilliant stop-motion adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin about a plague of rats that punish townsfolk corrupt with greed. One of the most ambitious Czech animation projects of the 1980s, notable for its unusual dark art direction, innovative animation techniques and use of a fictitious language.
A happy little potter is approached by a huge hand which wants him to sculpt its statue. The potter refuses, wanting nothing more than to be left alone with his only friend, a potted plant. As the hand's request gives way to bribery, demands, and threats, the potter becomes more desperate to escape its clutch, leading to tragedy.
Across different eras, a poor family, an anxious developer and a fed-up landlady become tied to the same mysterious house in this animated dark comedy.
A man sits down to watch a football match, which seems to consist of the players being violently mutilated in various inventive ways. The players then leave the football pitch and invade the spectator's flat.
A train dispatcher encounters a mute stranger who appears out of nowhere, and finds himself mysteriously involved with a murder in Poland. The end of the eighties in the twentieth century. Alois Nebel works as a dispatcher at the small railway station in Bílý Potok, a remote village on the Czech–Polish border. He's a loner, who prefers old timetables to people, and he finds the loneliness of the station tranquil – except when the fog rolls in. Then he hallucinates, sees trains from the last hundred years pass through the station. They bring ghosts and shadows from the dark past of Central Europe. Alois can’t get rid of these nightmares and eventually ends up in sanatorium. In the sanatorium, he gets to know The Mute, a man carrying an old photograph who was arrested by the police after crossing the border. No one knows why he came to Bílý Potok or who he’s looking for, but it is his past that propels Alois on his journey…
Short film to a song of love lost and rediscovered, a woman sees and undergoes surreal transformations. Her lover's face melts off, she dons a dress from the shadow of a bell and becomes a dandelion, ants crawl out of a hand and become Frenchmen riding bicycles. Not to mention the turtles with faces on their backs that collide to form a ballerina, or the bizarre baseball game.
Three surreal depictions of failures of communication that occur on all levels of human society.
A silent figure known as The Assassin travels through a nightmare underworld of tortured souls, ruined cities and wretched monstrosities forged from the primordial horrors of the unconscious mind of Phil Tippett, the world's preeminent stop-motion animator.
To escape neglect and abuse from his parents, a young boy plants some strange seeds and they grow into a grandmother.
The short-tempered Daffy Duck must improvise madly as the backgrounds, his costumes, the soundtrack, even his physical form, shifts and changes at the whim of the animator.
On a dark and stormy night, four bored ghosts decide to have some fun by calling the Ajax Ghost Exterminators.
A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.
Bill struggles to put together his shattered psyche.
A little girl is taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future.
Forcibly separated from her twin brother when they are orphaned, a melancholic misfit learns how to find confidence within herself amid the clutter of misfortunes and everyday life.
An action epic that explores the origins of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force (better known as Master Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad,) who somehow become pitted in a battle over an immortal piece of exercise equipment.
Bits of found film and different types of animation illustrate a classic chase scene scenario: A woman is abducted and a man comes to her rescue, but during their escape they find themselves in the enemy's secret headquarters.
In Prague, a professorial puppet, with metal pincers for hands and an open book for a hat, takes a boy as a pupil. First, the professor empties fluff and toys from the child's head, leaving him without the top of his head for most of the film. The professor then teaches the lad about illusions and perspectives, the pursuit of an object through exploring a bank of drawers, divining an object, and the migration of forms. The child then brings out a box with a tarantula in it: the professor puts his "hands" into the box and describes what he feels. The boy receives a final lesson about animation and film making; then the professor gives him a brain and his own open-book hat.
An inspirational speaker becomes reinvigorated after meeting a lively woman who shakes up his mundane existence.
After the death of his mother, evil mutant wizard Blackwolf discovers long-lost military technologies. Full of ego and ambition, Blackwolf claims his mother's throne, assembles an army, and sets out to brainwash and conquer Earth. Meanwhile, Blackwolf's gentle twin brother, the bearded sage Avatar, calls upon his own magical abilities to foil Blackwolf's plans for world domination — even if it means eliminating his own flesh and blood.