Spook Sport (1940)

Spook Sport is an expressionistic interpretation of Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns.

In the 1940's, Mary Ellen Bute hired Norman McLaren, who didn't live in Canada yet, to draw directly on film strips the characters of ghosts, bats and other figures and to synchronize them with Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre. Some original paintings of McLaren would be reused in Bute's later films, including Tarantella (1941), Color Rhapsodie (1951) and Polka Graph (1952), where they seem less at home stylistically than in their original context. The final result is a mix of conventional cel animation and pen drawings, drawn directly on 35 mm film stock.

Although the animation moves in time to the music throughout the film, there are two particular moments that feature specific gestures synchronized to the music: when a xylophone plays a prominent theme in the music and when the timpani plays a motif later in the piece. In the first, the animation features the ghosts dancing over an xylophone made of bones; in the second, bone mallets play drums in time to the music.

This film is a splendid example of animation which responds to preexistent music both in terms of the narrative and in terms of actual sound.

The music is programmatic in nature. Although this is an abstract film, it tells a discernable story and the characters are always recognizable. Thus you feel more comfortable with the visual images.

You can buy Norman McLaren: The Masters Edition and The Film Work of Norman McLaren.

Cap'n Bush

by Miguel Valenzuela

Le Vampire (1945)

The Vampire is a pseudodocumentary, in fact, it's largely fantastical in elements. This film has stuff that speaks sub textually about Nazi Germany and the like. It certainly covers a lot of the different types of horrors in the world and it's quite original, too. The Vampire it is full of rhythm and precision.
The bats are being macro analyzed and they are personifying human emotion. After a brief overview of the general weirdness of the animal kingdom, Jean Painlevé talks as some sea creature creeps along the floor of the ocean like something out of a German expressionist film.



Then The Vampire gets a little into Murnau's classic Nosferatu, which eventually leads to a discussion about what vampire bats are like, illustrated with a live guinea pig. Duke Ellington's music scores it to bring us back to the sort of New Orleans voodoo tradition of vampires.
And thus what should be a documentary about parasites and bloodsuckers, becomes a subtle critique of the Nazi party.
Painlevé's exploration of a twilight realm of bats is very poetic. The approach is quite interesting along with being somewhat self-conscious aware. Painlevé preoccupies himself with juxtaposing things to create quite odd effects. The film is full of lush imagery and imagination.
Painlevé sees in the shapes and behaviour of the creatures he is observing, his own especial analogies and associations: the terrors of human fantasy are
set beside the terrors of creation.
You can buy Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s.

Profession Clone

Translation: I'm a doctor cloning little kids; good cloning is what everybody needs!

by Andrei Bakhurin.

Hunger (1974)

The film Hunger inspired a generation of computer animators in Canada. This short is created by Peter Foldes under the auspices of the National Film Board of Canada. Hunger includes striking computer-generated interpolations of key poses drawn by hand and painstakingly digitized into the computer software.
NRC (National Research Council of Canada) scientists Nestor Burtnyk had programmed a complete key frame animation package that allowed the creation of animated sequences by providing only the key frames. The National Film Board in Montreal was contacted and thus a project to allow artists to experiment with computer animation was launched.

The first experimental film involving freehand drawings, called Metadata, was made by artist and animator Peter Foldes. This led to a more substantial collaboration on a 10-minute feature called Hunger/La Faim about world hunger and about rich and poor countries. The film took a year and a half to be created.
It became the first computer-animated movie to be nominated for an Academy Award as best short for "its trailblazing progress in the development of software and techniques for computer assisted key framing for character animation". It received other honours, including the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and other international film awards.



This films is a satire of self-indulgence in a hungry world. Rapidly dissolving, reshaping images, made with the aid of a computer, create a stark contrast between abundance and want. A man eats, at first sparingly but soon, his appetite grows to gluttony, greed and gratification of every desire. The nightmare that finally haunts him is the one that hangs over our desparate world.
Hunger remains a landmark of early computer animation.
You can buy Best of the Best - Strange Tales of the Imagination.

All America City

by Joseph Tripi

SELECT AWARDS & EXHIBITIONS


• 11/2006 Parsons FEAST Group Exhibition New York, NY

• 11/2006 SVA BFA Photography Mentors Program New York, NY
One on one mentorship with Elisabeth Biondi- Visuals Editor of The New Yorker

nd
• 10/2006 SVA BFA Photography Gallery – 2 Floor New York, NY
Solo exhibition of Rustbelt Revival series.

• 09/2006 1635 Wharton St. Philadelphia, PA
Solo exhibition of Rustbelt Revival series.

• 09/2006-05/2007 SVA Special Photography Award New York, NY
Scholarship based upon photographic merit and GPA.

Collision (2005)

Collision seems to be an abstract reflection on the clash of cultures which forcibly merges American quilts and Islamic patterns into beautiful kaleidoscopic scenes. I'm not sure this film is an original depiction of aesthetics into politics or an abstract satire based on the geometry of flags. Why couldn't it simply be a film about RGB, the three video color channels red, green and blue?
For an American audience, particularly, the sound cues must really help identify which culture the shapes and colors represent. Many Americans will only interpret this short as a disturbing yet potent piece of abstract political filmmaking. Personally I enjoy Max Hattler's film for its aesthetic quality.

The colours work well as do the sounds effects. The transitional movements into different shapes remind me of Oscar Fischinger's works. I can also see motifs of Islamic art in the patterns. The sound might be a collision but the video ends with the ambiguous sound of fireworks, which can either be destructive or celebratory. In the end the colors smash together into a manic color wheel of harmony. Thus this work can be interpreted in a radical number of ways.

The Process

"The is a journey and exploration through a personal 'pleroma', an imaginary landscape populated by strange, wondrous creatures and archetypal characters. Throughout the creation of this story, readers will find that the art will vary radically from chapter to chapter. This relates to another stop along the way; that of the journey of the artist. By exploring this personal world, I also hope to expand and develop my own visual idiom by experimenting with new ways of making art and storytelling. Even this introduction is by no means permanent. I will be updating it and finetuning it as the story develops. Everything here is in flux and part of an exploration and investigation into life, creativity and spirituality."

You can continue to read The Process by Joe Infurnari.

The Music Box (1932)

The Music Box was directed by James Parrott, produced by Hal Roach and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and it's one of the longer shorts for its time. 

The film is a partial remake of their 1927 silent short Hats Off, which was filmed at the same location and is today considered a lost film. Hats Off was itself remade in the same location in a film called It's Your Move starring Edgar Kennedy in 1945. But the inspiration to build a comedy around those steps apparently came to producer Hal Roach even before Hats Off. 

Although The Music Box won the first Academy Award for Live Action Short Film (Comedy) in 1932. This little classic is generally regarded as the Stan&Ollie's best film. 

The Laurel & Hardy Moving Co. have a challenging job: hauling a player piano up a monumental flight of stairs to Prof. von Schwarzenhoffen's house. Their task is complicated not only by a sassy nursemaid and the impatient Prof. von Schwarzenhoffen himself, but also by the force of gravity, which repeatedly pulls the piano back down to the bottom of the stairs. 

What could have been one joke repeated over and over to the point of monotony, became, instead, a comic fugue with innovative variations. Stan and Ollie labor with a mighty effort but obtain minimal results: the beauty lies in watching the team work out one hilarious routine after another. 

This film is slapstick of a very high level, born of the utmost frustration. 

You can buy Laurel & Hardy (Sons of the Desert/The Music Box/Another Fine Mess/Busy Bodies/County Hospital).

Nature 05

Sebastien Chort. After 4 years working for Blur Studio ( 3 years as Supervisor), he got hired by Dreamworks for a Lighting position. He started working on Bee Movie and then Kung Fu Panda.

One EskimO - Hometown (2007)

One eskimO are a four piece indie band from London, consisting of Kristian Leontiou (vocals), Adam Falkner (drums), Martin Waugh (guitar), Jamie Sefton (bass and horns). The band have since released the heartwarming 'Hometime' (early December 2007, U.K.). The video to Hometime is animated by Smuglling Peanuts and is currently circulating through the underground, appearing on MTV TWO's 120 Minutes session and online. The band's animated video has been nominated for the Public Choice award at the 2008 British Animation Awards.

The little eskimo spent most of the time wondering and thinking up stories and singing along to all the tunes that lived in his head. You see the eskimo loved nothing more than just to sing at home in his ark. It was here in his beautiful ark that he would figure out how to join the stories with the songs that floated around in his head.
Enchanted by the beautiful sound, three very curious animals decided to be brave and follow the noise.
This musical video is very sensitive, delicate and well drawn.
The humans beings are dead, sad and blighted creatures. How can't you think about your life?

La Piovra (Octopus)

Armin Barducci. He's the penciler of Aleph, Il Giocatore. His comics have been issued in various anthologies.

Second Growth

Bill Cone works as a Production Designer at a computer animation studio.

Hourly Comics

John Campbell. You can read Hourly Comics.

Allegretto (1936)

Allegretto develops itself as an invigorating contrast between overlapping, expanding concentric circles and flocks of angular, foreground shapes that sail across the screen in time to Rainger's jazzy score.
There's a series of white and pale green lozenges, irregularly distributed across a larger rhomboid shape composed of rectangles divided into red and deep green at each of whose tip hovers a scattering of white diamonds. Diamond and oval shapes in primary colors perform a sensual, upbeat ballet to the music of composer Ralph Rainger. The geometric dance is set against a background of expanding circles that suggest radio waves. Allegretto presents an intricate layering of a number of recurring motives.



This was the first film Oskar Fischinger made after he emigrated from Berlin to Hollywood in order to escape the increasingly difficult political situation in Germany. He made the film for Paramount as a kind of interlude in a longer musical film but the collaboration collapsed completely and it was never used.
He found that Paramount had changed the film project from Technicolor to black-and-white. Also, Paramount printed the black-and-white version intercut with various live action images, so it was no longer totally abstract.
Several years later, with the help of Hilla von Rebay, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (Guggenheim Foundation) allowed him to buy his short film Allegretto back from Paramount, so he was able to complete it in color as he had originally intended. Fischinger then redid and re-painted the cells and made a color version to his satisfaction. The layers of cels allowed Fischinger to develop rhythms, harmonies and counterpoints of forms, while the colors change from frame to frame to create lush hues on divisionist principles, achieving particularly luminous and chromatic hues that could not be produced by normal methods of animation photography (William Moritz). Fischinger was forced to finance the distribution of this film himself and was able to make only a few copies but the film was shown at museums and centers of advanced art all over the world. This became one of the most-screened and successful films of visual music's history and one of Fischinger's most popular films.
You can buy these: The importance of being Fischinger and Oskar Fischinger: Ten Films (DVD).

Robot Girl

by McBess.

Manhatta (1921)

Manhatta is the result of a collaboration between painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand (neither of the two had previous filmmaking experience and no connections to the film industry). It is a cinematic prose poem exalting the energetic and modern pulse of New York City.
This film is a rhythmic series of images, interspersed with verse excerpted from Whitman, fashioning an expression of the city over the course of a day. Their urban portrait begins at dawn as scores of people arrive in the city for a day of work. The ten minute film spans an imaginary day in the life of New York City, beginning with footage of Staten Island ferry commuters and culminating with the sun setting over the Hudson River.
It consists of 65 shots sequenced in a loose narrative in which the primary objective is to explore the relationship between photography and film.

Its many brief shots and dramatic camera angles emphasize New York's photographic nature. Strand and Sheeler exhibited Manhatta as both projected film as well as prints made from the film strips that were used like photographic negatives. They created a sense of life.
Manhatta can be viewed as a representation of New York City through the eyes of a still photographer (Sheeler) : camera movement is kept to a minimum, as is incidental motion within each shot. Each frame provides a view of the city that has been carefully arranged into abstract compositions. For the most part, the camera stays stationary to capture the images of the extraordinary cityscape. Sheeler and Strand aimed their camera from great heights in the city’s office towers. The city’s architecture repeatedly minimizes its inhabitants. Even the construction of these mighty edifices is not a celebration of human greatness. Manhatta is an abstract and often disturbing glimpse across a city that seems too large for its people.

Untitled

Kyle Cassidy

The Peculiar Adventures of Hector (2007)

LARSOA has teamed up with Texaco for the launch of ‘Hector’, a road safety character brought to life with the help of triple Oscar winners, Aardman Animations. ‘The Peculiar Adventures of Hector’ DVD has been offered free to customers when they make a fuel purchase at any of Texaco’s (the UK’s largest branded network of independently-owned service stations) 1,100 retail sites from the start of November.


The five animations, along with ‘bloopers’ and ‘the making of Hector’ are available as free downloads at www.hectorshome.com with games and interactive activities. In the site, children can also explore and engage in fun activities based around the themes of road safety.
This cartoon enters the imaginative world of Hector as he embarks across a range of road safety lessons with the help of a colourful cast of animal friends. Offering creative titles such as Hector and the Hairy, Scary Tarantula’s Tentacle, which tells children the importance of using a seatbelt, the films are designed to educate children through entertainment.

Inkspinster 6

Inkspinster is by Deco. If you want to read Inkspinster 5, click here.

Alice in Wonderland (1903)

Alice in Wonderland is a 1903 silent film directed by Cecil Hepworth and starring May Clark in this more twisted version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Parts of the movie are lost; there is only one known copy of this film remaining so the British Film Institute are unable to restore the missing parts.
Alice in Wonderland was made just five years after Dodgson's death. Barely nine minutes long, this movie necessarily shows only a few fragments of the novel. Hepworth was insistent that the images stay faithful to the drawings of Sir John Tenniel, the original illustrator of Lewis Carroll's story, so it's strange that the central character looks nothing at all like Tenniel's Alice.

Hepworth has been a vitally important figure in Britain's early cinema. Alice in Wonderland was the longest film yet produced in Britain, originally running about 12 minutes.
The film was made on the small wooden stage in the garden of the villa housing Hepworth's company, with exteriors shot in the lavish gardens of Mount Felix. There were no professional actors at the studio, so all of the staff pitched in and played parts.
Some of the special effects are achieved through simple jump cuts, much less flamboyant than what Georges Melies was doing in France at this time. Like in Melies' film, in this film, too, there are linking shots through dissolves. The film required an unusual amount of planning for its day. Alice in Wonderland was an extremely ambitious undertaking for its time and it achieves nearly all of what it set out to accomplish.

Maybe 03

By Maura Cluthe .

Shaun the Sheep (2007)

Shaun the Sheep is a British show from Aardman Animations ('Wallace & Gromit') about a Sheep named Shaun. The character of Shawn the Sheep made his TV debut on Christmas Eve 1996 in Nick Park's Academy Award-winning short film A Close Shave where one of Wallace's contraptions sheared off all of Shaun's wool. Shaun later appeared in the 2002 series Cracking Contraptions episode, Shopper 13, ostensibly to rescue a wayward wheel of cheese.

The spin off series, Shaun the Sheep, consist of fourty episodes, each seven minutes long.

In this series, Shaun has many adventures with his barnyard compatriots and the rest of his flock. He is a sheep who doesn't follow the flock. The series is hilarious, adorable and far too good for the children it is clearly aimed at. Inquisitive, imaginative and mischievous, Shawn's independent nature can lead him into tricky situations. He is still young and quite naïve and his curiosity and inexperience can prove a recipe for trouble.
Every episode is a combination of slapstick and classic silent comedy in Aardman’s recognisable animation style. There is no spoken dialogue, even by human characters. In this way the series is reminiscent of early silent comedy films.

You can buy Shaun the Sheep - The Box Set and Shaun The Sheep - Saturday Night Shaun.

Self Portrait

Ratingher directes Donna Bavosa Produzioni. His comics have been published on magazines Petrolio, Fandango and iPunk.

Street Fight (2005)

Street Fight is an Academy Award-nominated documentary by filmmaker Marshall Curry. This documentary follows the 2002 mayoral campaign in Newark, New Jersey in which Cory Booker attempted to unseat longtime mayor Sharpe James. It provides a fascinating in-depth look behind the scenes of campaigns and elections and shows a series of outrageous scenes.

The documentaries can be a force for good in the world. At their best, they expose people to new issues, struggles, characters and lifestyles. They challenge us and help us to understand each other.
Street Fight is a film about race and politics whose goal is to attract an audience that does not necessarily care about or does not know that they care about, race and politics.
This film will seduce you, using humor, irony and drama to lure you out of your comfort zones. Street Fight's subject matter is something you haven't seen before.

You can buy Street Fight: A Film by Marshall Curry.

Snowbound

Lisa M. Robinson. Awards include a Fulbright Grant, as well as “Curator’s Choice” at the Houston Center of Photography Membership Exhibition and the “Top 50 Photographers” chosen by Critical Mass. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work, and was recently selected as the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Fellow at the MacDowell Colony.
Snowbound has been exhibited internationally in Argentina, Syria, Lithuania, Denmark, Uruguay, Chile and Bolivia. Lisa M. Robinson was recently nominated for a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant.

He has issued Snowbound.

Measles (2007)

Measles won the Public Choice award at the British Animation Awards 2008. It's animated by Sweetworld TV, directed by Lisle Turner and written by Robin Ince and Neil Redmond.
Usually I don't enjoy commercial films but it is worthywhile watching this short. It's a funny cartoon with an important message: every day someone dies. Did you ever ask yourselves how many lives can be spared? Amnecy International estimates that in 2010 more people are going to be killed by armed conflict than by diseases!

The visual style is impressive: the contrast between the coloured germs and the black and white scenes give the germs more humanity than mankind. In the animation and the filmmaking there are references to Lyonel Kouro's F.A.E.L.L.

Inkspinster 5

Inkspinster is by Deco. If you want to read Inkspinster 4, click here.

The Hearts of Age (1934)

This is Orson Welles' first film. This film was co-directed by Welles with William Vance and also stars Welles' first wife, Virginia Nicholson, as well as Welles himself.
This silent film is a series of images loosely tied together and is arguably influenced by surrealism. The film begins with a rapid-fire montage sequence of a ringing bell, shot at odd angles and shown in both positive and negative.

The Hearts of Age reveals both a keen eye for composition and montage and substantial familiarity with film art.
The final effect is adequately frightening and disconcerting.
You can buy Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s.

Ann Archer

David Edward Byrd has created posters for Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, the Who & their rock opera Tommy, Traffic, Iron Butterfly, Ravi Shankar and the Grateful Dead.

Komposition in blau (1935)

Colorful geometric figures are set in rhythmic motion. Choreographic cubes, cylinders and columns participate in an exuberant ballet that recalls the patterns created by Busby Berkeley. Within a deep blue environment, one red cube slowly drifts on a reflecting floor. Suddenly there are multiple red cubes drifting and dancing in various formations.

In Komposition in Blau there is a continuing interest in eastern mysticism and western hermetic thought. Fischinger focused the romantic drama in his compositions on mystical, contemplative and speculative-scientific icons, filling his films with non-objective figurations.
Fischinger used tight synchronization between his visual and musical soundtracks as a helpful analogy for audiences who were still somewhat astonished by abstract art. His films became widely misinterpreted as illustrations of music.
Komposition in Blau won a prize in Venice and brought him international fame.
You can buy these: The importance of being Fischinger and Oskar Fischinger: Ten Films (DVD).

Kingpong

by James Barr. His projects: The Monkey Nuts, Marrs Bar and Piggy Bank.

Cold Mountain (2003)

Directed by Anthony Minghella, this Civil War saga addresses romance, friendship and the ravages of war. Based on the Charles Frazier novel, this is a tale of hope and redemption. Cold Mountain captures the horrors of war for both those fighting it and for those left behind.
It tells the story of a wounded Confederate soldier named Inman (Jude Law) who struggles on a perilous journey to get back home to Cold Mountain, N.C. as well as to Ada (Nicole Kidman), the woman he left behind before going off to fight in the Civil War. We watch as the characters begin to unravel their internal tortures and their need to subdue their isolation, to face their regrets and hope for the future. We can also observe the stages of emotional changes in the characters.
The symbolisms, throughout the film, are plentiful and brilliantly ascribed, allowing the audience to connect the dots to the destiny of the couple. Even crows, clearly suggesting doom and destruction, never fail to demonstrate the dark instincts that trouble a man's soul.

On the way home, Imman meets a long line of interesting and colorful characters, while back at home, Ada is learning the ropes of managing her deceased father's farm with Ruby (Renee Zellweger), a scrappy drifter who assists and teaches Ada along the way.
Cold Mountain is beautifully crafted, assembled and absolutely mesmerizing in all aspects of filmmaking techniques and style and the mountains of the movie title are so amazingly and magnificently captured at different camera angles, from scene to scene.
The film was considered a contender for the Best Picture Academy Award for the year 2003, but failed to garner a nomination, although it did earn the nomination for Best Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globes. Despite not being nominated for the Best Picture award, the film did manage to pick up seven nominations, and one win for Zellweger as Best Supporting Actress.
If you watch this movie, you'll watch cinema in its purest form!
You can buy Cold Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition).

Scan 1 and Scan 2

© Dietmar Gottschall

Triangle (1994)

Triangle is a a very conceptual and exotic kind of short animated film in which Erica Russell combined Charlie Hart's African and Brazilian sound track with western drawing. The artist uses pencil, brush painting, chalk, cut paper and air-brush. The drawing is influenced by African art, too.
The passions of young lovers and another woman are expressed throught paint and dance. The triangle shape appears and wrap itself around the female's body and dances with the male. It makes powerful use of music and artwork styles that range from classical drawing to pure abstraction.


The human figures are highly stylised and beautifully simplified. The entire film is based on the stream of movement, derived from three human figures against neutral backgrounds. There's a complex inter-relationships between the geometrical patterns on the screen, and the symmetries of colours Rusell uses.
For its abstract exploration of colour and rhythm, Triangle established Russel's reputation as a natural successor to Len Lye. Russell transforms color, movement and music into a pure sensory experience: the swirling and transforming images of Triangle provided the most compelling images in its rhythmic flow depicting a love triangle.
This animated film was nominated for an Oscar in 1995. In 1996 it received the British Animation Award for Best Film under 15 minutes and also a special award for her contributions to the Craft of Animation.

Inkspinster 4

Inkspinster is by Deco. If you want to read Inkspinster 3, click here.

Sortie D'Usine (1895)

According to many critics and film buffs, the first viewing of Sortie d' Usine takes it rightful place as the biggest shock in movie history: the audience was caught completely off guard and were absolutely dumbstruck. They didn't think that the picture would move!
The first film audiences did not demand to be told stories but found infinite fascination in the mere recording and reproduction of the movement of animate and inanimate objects.

I doubt a modern audience could fully understand the beauty of Leaving the Lumière Factory: what fascinated audiences wasn't the depiction of riveting events but what went on behind the scene.
You'll find yourselves flying into the screen, pulled by the movement of the doors of factory. Two doorways open themselves slightly. And at each moment we cannot be certain what will happen next but we're involved in a process of a spatial change, the opening of the doors.
You can buy The Lumiere Brothers' First Films.

Chinese Insect

Donald Silverstein has worked as illustrator for advertising agencies and publishing companies. He has won awards for advertising illustrations and book illustration. His works has been exhibited at The Detroit Institure of Art as well as galleries in Tokyo and in Paris.

Trembled Blossom

During the past edition of NY fashion week, Prada presented an incredibile short-film, Trembled Blossoms, during a wonderful party to introduce their new collection. This animated movie captures the essence of Prada's Spring/Summer 2008 Collection.
An army of CGI operatives were enlisted to show Prada's alien morphing from a Lalique-like blossom, through a pastel coloured meadow and into a splendid, seductive glade, where she meets Pan. The fashion element is subtle yet cleverly handled. Directed by the performance artist James Luna, animated by Sight Effects and based on James Jean's Nouveau-esque wallpaper seen in the ad campaign, the film is an ambitious narrative fantasy depicting a nude alien's journey through a magical, illustrated forest.

She begins as a sort of pale neuter alien wearing nothing but PRADA heels and then a mysterious character emerges from the trees and clothes her in the stand-out red and blue check sheath dress from the S/S '08 collection. Next, Pan shows her how tropical fish can be transformed into multi-coloured PRADA handbags in the shimmering pool at the heart of the wood. Clothes and accessories that appear by magic!
Illustrator James Jean has posted some of the concept artwork that he created for Trembled Blossom.

Protectobot

by Paper Resistance. His works have been published in many magazines. He's one of the editors of Inguine Mahgazine.

Vormittagsspuk (1928)

Ghost Before Breakfast was produced for the International Music Festival at Baden-Baden with a score by Paul Hindemith. The film came out in 1927-1928, so it was conducted from a rolling score. But the Nazi regime saw this film as a form of degenerative art, so it destroyed the sound version.
Hats flying, guys with suits climbing ladders, etc. It's a very rhythmical story of the rebellion of everyday objects against daily routine.

Ghost Before Breakfast is different from previous films by Richter. For the first time, he makes a narrative film characterized by a subtly absurd humour, instead of attempting to make music through images. However, there is a great rhythm to this film: cut outs and the repetition of actions give to this film order and chaos.
This short is also considered a lesson in stop-motion cinema for its many interesting special effects and inventive visual tricks, although the animation of the hats did not succeed.

Untitled, from the series Withinnan, 2007

by Michael Kwiecinski

Coldcut - Just For the Kick (2006)

Lucy Izzard won the BBC's New Talent New Animation competition in 2005 with her Tea Total. This short film was screened at Antenna in London and attracted the attention of UK audio visual legends Coldcut, who asked Lucy to make a video for them.

She didn't have a huge amount of time to get it done, so she enlisted two fellow animators, Matt Latchford and Lucy Sullivan, from her Illustration/Animation course at London’s Kingston University. They formed an art collective together under the name Smuggling Peanuts.


It took the trio two weeks to come up with all the ideas in the video and then three weeks of hard work completing the entirely hand drawn animation on laptops in each other’s flats.

Coldcut - Just For the Kick is a pop video in which there is a clear key element: the quest of young people for popularity. You can find many references to the 70's and 80's generation. Their desire to be photographed, to be watched while they "exhibit" themselves is evident. There's also a sense of anger and alienation in this video. Can people survive this kind of life?

Inkspinster 3

Inkspinster is by Deco. If you want to read Inkspinster 2, click here.

Autism Is a World (2004)

Autism Is a World, a co-production of CNN Productions and State of the Art Inc., is a candid and compelling look into the mind of Sue Rubin, a 26-year-old Los Angeles woman living with autism. The film has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
Gerardine Wurzburg chose to make this film to bring people into the world of autism. Autism is a world so difficult to explain to someone who is not autistic.

This short film is written by Sue Rubin herself. At the age of thirteen, she learned to express herself through a computer keyboard, otherwise known as facilitated communication, revealing that she was in fact highly intelligent. She went on to study history, specializing in Latin American History at Whittier College and to write speeches about her life with autism.
Autism Is a World explores Sue's world, her writings and the remarkable friendships she created while in college.
As the film moves to its conclusion, it comes to a wrenching emotional climax. Sue shares her final thoughts as the film concludes. Her words are simple: “The last thing I want to clarify is that no matter how much social interaction one has, one will never be free of autism. The tendencies to be and act in certain ways may subside but I will always be autistic.”

Because, because...

Stefan Leyh .

Selected Exhibitions
2008 »relocated #3«, Filipp Rosbach, Leipzig
2007 »Unter Löwen«, Sächsische Staatskanzlei, Dresden
2006 »im nu«, Dresden
»Grand Ouvert«, Filipp Rosbach, Leipzig
»Il mondo reale«, Laden für Nichts, Leipzig
2005 »624 miles«, Oslo
»Spuk«, Kustodie Leipzig
2003-2007 Jahresausstellungen der HfBK Dresden

It's So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House (1979)

Paul Fierlinger has been a professional independent animator since 1958, when he made his first TV commercial in Prague. Since then he has produced roughly 1000 films of varying lengths, including the Teeny Little Super Guy series for Sesame Street. He received an Oscar nomination in 1979 for his short, It's So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House.



This animated film is based on a novella by Harry Allard.



The wolf in this tale is a fully humanized character. He has made some grave mistakes in his life that have put him on the wrong side of the law. An old man advertises for a companion to take care of his animals and is answered by a fuzzy stranger named Cuthbert Devine. The wolf behaves well and becomes a trusted friend. Then comes the revelation of the wolf's criminal past through an article in the newspaper. The wolf is devastated.
It's a nice tale about racial and unfair prejudice. The story is humorous but I find the message about the redemption through good works a bit too do goody.

Reclaim Public Space

Pietari Posti

Russian Ark (Русский ковчег, 2002)

Russian Ark opens with a black screen and the voice of an unnamed man explaining that he's just regaining consciousness after some mysterious accident. Unseen by the audience and voiced by the director, he wanders through the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various time periods in the city's three-hundred-year history. He is accompanied by a companion, "the European", who represents the nineteenth-century traveller the Marquis de Custine and who is visible to the audience. The fourth wall is repeatedly broken and re-erected; at times the narrator-director and the companion interact freely with the other performers and at other times, they go completely unnoticed.

The film contains Aleksander Sokurov's visual meditations on the history of the Russian people and the lives of their descendants today, an amazing voyage through war, revolution and social upheaval, which has left in its wake all the landmarks of a great culture. Like the biblical Ark, the Hermitage (Winter Palace) has steered a difficult course through the adverse currents of time and tide. A treasure-house of life and art, it is also a testament to the buoyancy of the human spirit.
The Hermitage is to be seen in a new and revealing light in a forthcoming film. In the popular imagination the Hermitage is a living entity, a fabric that breathes Russian history and culture. Generations of the Romanov family actually lived, loved and, in some cases, died in a place they called 'home' for all its rare splendour.
The film was recorded in uncompressed high definition video using a Sony HDW-F900. The information was not recorded and compressed to tape as usual, but uncompressed onto a hard disk which could hold 100 minutes. Four attempts were made to complete the shot; the first three had to be interrupted due to technical faults, but the fourth attempt was completed successfully.
Russian Art is a purely cinematic movie which allows us to take a trip throughout the museum and throughout the history of Russia's last three hundred years.
You can buy Russian Ark: The Masterworks Edition.

(b)ananartista è un pinguino

(B)ananartista Is A Penguin is by (b)ananartista (orgasmo sbuff) , an Italian multimedia artist, painter, illustrator, videomarker, performer, poet, songwriter, musician, sculptor, shaman, designer and living museum.

Rainbow Dance (1936)

After A Colour Box, Len Lye made another abstract advertisement, Rainbow Dance, for the Post Office Savings Bank with this surreal, innovative film.
Due to the pressures of working within a documentary environment, Lye incorporate more concrete images in this and in the next films but the commercial messages continue to be always subsidiary to Lye's experiments with music, colour and movement and are added at the conclusion as an apparent after-thought.
Rainbow Dance employs shot footage and overlays it with a number of abstract colour effects.
The main image is a silhouetted figure in the film, enacted by dancer Rupert Doone. Light transformed the surrounding mise-en-scène into a colourful, shifting landscape, aided by the use of deregistration effects and stencil patterns to produce the colour echoes that appear throughout the film.

In Rainbow Dance, Lye experimented with the new colour separation processes such as Technicolor: he used a black and white footage coloured by manipulating the three red, green and blue matrices of the Gasparcolor 3-colour separation system, as had Oskar Fischinger in his 1930 advertising film, Circles. After this process, the animated film looked like a cubist painting or a collage by Matisse. Lye manipulated the celluloid through different levels of exposure. When shooting the original footage, he then used black and white sets, which allowed him to adjust the colours later in a controlled way.
Abstract and semi-abstract shapes surrounding the figure, constantly moving and changing, create a a mass of complex and jumbled movements.
The advanced effects, visual motifs and music that Lye used on this short film can be seen as a precursor to today's music videos and as the first experiment towards a new kind of cinematic reality.
You can buy the books Len Lye and Len Lye and the problem of popular films and the vhs Rhythms.