Animating the Classics

Cartoon-blogging, essay 8 of 21 blog entries on
250 great animated short films

The Unicorn in the Garden (1953), directed by William T. Hurtz.

The eighth essay, “Animating the Classics,” is published in full at Press Play at IndieWire.  The primary focus of the essay is on The Unicorn in the Garden (William T. Hurtz, 1953) which was adapted from the classic James Thurber short story and Achilles (Barry Purves, 1995) which was adapted from Greek legends and Homer’s The Iliad.

The inimitable American humorist James Thurber once proposed that Walt Disney should animate Homer’s Odyssey.  “(Disney’s) Odyssey can be, I am sure, a far, far greater thing than even his epic of the three little pigs,” Thurber wrote in 1934.

               Continue reading here…

This series of 21 essays is inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.

© 2012 Lee Price

Animating the Quest

Cartoon-blogging, essay 7 of 21 blog entries on
250 great animated short films

Hedgehog in the Fog (1975), directed by Yuriy Norshteyn.

A deliberate movement from Point A to Point B.  That’s the quest in a nutshell.  Point B is the goal — the purpose of the movement is ostensibly to achieve the goal.  And did I mention there may be monsters between Points A and B?  In fact, there’s a very good chance of it.

In the immortal quest-promising words of Carl Denham in King Kong (1933), “It’s money and adventure and fame.  It’s the thrill of a lifetime and a long sea voyage that starts at six o’clock tomorrow morning.” 

One more thing about Point B…  The object achieved at Point B may not be the real point of the quest.  Even though the hero or heroine may remain unaware of this, the real goal is personal transformation.  If the hero completes the journey by returning to Point A, the hero returns a changed person.

The quest goes way back in time.  Composed nearly 3,000 years ago, Homer’s Odyssey is a classic quest.  Way before that, there’s even a chance that long-forgotten quest stories lurk behind the beautiful cave paintings left by our prehistoric ancestors.  The quest is in our blood — it’s part of our DNA.  So naturally, as the age of movies dawned, the first generation of filmmakers turned to the quest for inspiration.

The epic nature of quests may fit better with the feature film than the short.  Many animated features are quest stories.  Lotte Reiniger’s amazing animated feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1927) is centered on the quest for a magic lamp.  Disney’s Pinocchio (1940) follows the title character as he searches for transformation.  Pinocchio is on a rite-of-passage quest — the wooden puppet equivalent of the Native American vision quest that transforms a boy into a man.  The oeuvres of Disney, Pixar, and Studio Ghibli are filled with similar quests.

But short animated films aren’t entirely out of the picture.  There’s a lot that a skilled animator can achieve with a quest theme in a very short period of time.

Captain Grogg’s Wonderful Journey / Kapten Groggs underbara resa (1916):  Technically, Captain Grogg’s Wonderful Journey is more of a parody of a quest than a quest proper.  The hard-drinking and cantankerous Captain Grogg sets off on a picaresque adventure where anything can happen.  He flirts with a mermaid at sea, has his ship marooned by a whale, gets chased by a lion, joins up with the island natives, and romances a native princess on the island shore by the light of the full moon.

Victor Bergdahl’s animation is extraordinarily fluid and detailed for 1916.  This was the first of 13 popular Captain Grogg shorts that he made between 1916 and 1922.  This first one sets the tone for the rest.  The adventures are all in fun and nothing is really at stake, even when Grogg finds himself devoured by a lion.  The visual treatment of the natives is exaggerated in a racist manner, but the film has no qualms with a fairy-tale happy ending uniting the Swedish Grogg and the black island native.  It’s a quest in the footsteps of the real-life quest of impressionist artist Paul Gauguin, whose Point B turned out to be Tahiti.  Fade out on Gauguin under a full moon with a Polynesian beauty.

Hedgehog in the Fog / Yozhik v tumane (1975):  Yuriy Norshteyn’s Hedgehog in the Fog is a miniature (hedgehog-sized) masterpiece.  The imagery is haunting and the animation is dazzling.  The story is a quest, reduced to its most basic ingredients.  Following a vision of a white horse, our hedgehog hero descends into the fog.  A series of adventurous encounters ultimately leads him home, but with a transformed view of himself and the world.  The hedgehog has returned from a vision quest.

While Hedgehog in the Fog closely follows the structure of a classic quest narrative, the adventures themselves remain wonderfully elusive.  We never learn what the creature is that carries the hedgehog on its back through the water.  Animals like elephants, dogs, and bats mysteriously appear and then sink back into the fog.  The white horse functions as a symbol — and it is an inspired quest goal — but the meaning of the horse remains unexplained.  The hedgehog’s search for understanding takes place in a fog.

The ending is surpassingly beautiful.  The hedgehog returns home for a joyful reunion with his bear cub friend, yet the film closes with the hedgehog alone with his thoughts, forever changed by his quest.  Although small in scope and muted in tone, Hedgehog in the Fog is one of the most authentic portrayals of the quest ever captured on film.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Hedgehog in the Fog is available for purchase on The Complete Works of Yuri Norstein.

Death and the Mother (1988):  Ruth Lingford’s Death and the Mother is a classic quest tale adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Story of a Mother.”  After a personified Death takes a sick child from its home, the mother sets off on a quest to retrieve her child.  Along the way, the mother undergoes a series of terrible and wound-inflicting adventures.  A thorn bush tears her skin and her eyes fall into the water as she cries by the side of a river, leaving her sightless.  Reduced to a ragged blind beggar by the time she catches up with Death, she courageously makes her demand.  The end of her quest turns out to be a sad wisdom.

Lingford’s treatment of the story is based on traditional woodcuts.  Everything is conveyed visually, with no dialogue to break the mood — we do not hear the mother’s cries and sobs.  Partly because of this approach, the film avoids falling into the extreme sentimentality that would be natural to the story.  Instead, we get to marvel at the artistry of this primal world and appreciate the classic elements of the quest, as they fall into place one by one.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Death and the Mother is available for purchase on The Best of British Animation Awards, Vol. 2.

Here’s a sampling of a few other films with quest elements from our list of 250 great animated short films.  These are some of the greatest tales of adventure on our list, but the quest narrative always suggests there is deeper meaning behind the chases, battles, and rescues.  Ultimately, wisdom must emerge from the experience.  From the safety of the campfire, the hedgehog will peer into the darkness beyond, haunted by his vision of the white horse.  “How is she, there… in the fog?”

What’s Opera, Doc? (Chuck Jones, USA, 1957) 

Little Tadpoles Search for Mama / Xiao ke dou zhao ma ma (Wei Te, China, 1960) 

The Ash-Lad and the Good Helpers / Askeladden og de gode hjelperne (Ivo Caprino, Norway, 1961) 

Dojoji Temple (Kihachiro Kawamoto, Japan, 1976) 

There Once Was a Dog / Zhil-byl pyos (Eduard Nazarov, USSR, 1982) 

The Monk and the Fish / Le moine et le poisson (Michael Dudok de Wit, France, 1994) 

The Old Man and the Sea (Aleksandr Petrov, Russia, 1999) 

Brothers Bearhearts / Vennad Karusüdamed (Riho Unt, Estonia, 2005) 

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello (Anthony Lucas, Australia, 2005) 

The Danish Poet (Torill Kove, Norway/Canada, 2006) 

The Legend of Shangri-La (Chen Ming, China, 2006) 

Peter & the Wolf (Suzie Templeton, UK, 2006) 

The Tale of How (The Blackheart Gang: Ree Treweek, Jannes Hendrikz & Markus Wormstorm, South Africa, 2006) 

My Childhood Mystery Tree (Natalia Mirzoyan, Russia, 2008) 

© 2012 Lee Price

Animating Work and Labor

Cartoon-blogging, essay 6 of 21 blog entries on
250 great animated short films

Clock Cleaners (1938), directed by Ben Sharpsteen.

This is the sixth of 21 essays inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.

In both short films and long, the lead characters are usually attractive, healthy, and relatively free of the demands of work.  If they do work, they’re likely to be soldiers, policemen, criminals, or prostitutes.  Rounding out this cinematic snapshot of society, there are the lawyers, doctors, and performers.  The bit roles go to the nurses, waiters, cab drivers, librarians, accountants, etc. who come from the ranks of the remaining 90% of the population, performing jobs that apparently aren’t sufficiently glamorous for the big screen.

The list of “work and labor” animated shorts at the conclusion of this entry is a desperate attempt to identify a few outliers that genuinely depict characters working for a living.  For the most part, I discounted the films with the stock characters mentioned above, but that left slim pickings.  The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company “B” (1941) snuck in because it shows soldiers engaged in everyday work, The Tender Game (1958) slipped in despite the hero immediately abandoning his job when romance beckons, and Ballerina on the Boat (1969) made the list not for the ballerina (there’s no indication that she dances for a paycheck) but for the working men on the ship.  With its portrait of the clerk Bob Cratchit, A Christmas Carol (1971) actually stands out as one of the best depictions of the working class on our list!  Pretty sad…

And that’s why I want to share a word of praise for Mickey Mouse, the hardest-working cartoon character in the movies.  Mickey started out piloting a steamboat and went on to pump gas, wash windows, sell hot dogs at a carnival, drive a train, fight fires, deliver groceries, operate a steam shovel, and many more respectable yet common occupations.  As the Disney animators found themselves emphasizing Mickey’s superb work ethic, their star mouse unfortunately dropped into the category of “responsible adult” when other cartoon characters were present.  As a result, sidekicks Goofy and Donald became the fun characters, stealing much of Mickey’s initial popularity.  When Disney got around to filming Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983), our ever-dependable mouse naturally took the role of Bob Cratchit, the quintessential guy who does all the work and never gets the credit.

So happy belated Labor Day!  I’ll give this handful of movies all the more credit for acknowledging that most of us have to get up and go to work every day.

Clock Cleaners (1938):  This is working-class Mickey at his peak.  A classic Disney cartoon, Clock Cleaners is set in the everyday urban work world, with Mickey, Goofy, and Donald Duck reporting to duty on a clock face perched dizzyingly high above the city.  Naturally, this is a setup designed to generate thrills in the tradition of those famous building-climbing stunts of Harold Lloyd in silents like Safety Last (1923).  And it has another forerunner in the wonderful Popeye cartoon A Dream Walking (1934) which shifted the Lloyd gags from the real world to the cartoon world, with Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Bluto mixing thrills with comedy at skyscraper heights.

If it weren’t for the cartoons, slapstick comedy of this kind would have been largely abandoned in Hollywood’s transition to sound.  Producers looked to Broadway dialogue writers for verbal wit, largely abandoning the art of slapstick comedy.  But Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and other masters continued to inspire short cartoons like Clock Cleaners, where timing and pantomime counted for everything.  Fortunately, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy (and their fabulously talented animators—Disney still had some of its finest working on shorts at that time) had skill and charisma to rival their silent forebears.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Clock Cleaners is available for purchase on Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Living Color.

Three Monks / San ge heshang (1982):  Three Monks would be an ideal choice for a video to show at a staff meeting focused on team building.  These monks may not have particularly demanding jobs, but their work environment is very familiar office terrain.  Our three prayerful protagonists hold grudges and resentments, jealously guard their turf, sneakily enjoy the discomfort of their co-workers, and even sabotage each other’s work.  Thanks to the skill of director Xu Jingda (A Da), all of this is communicated swiftly and charmingly.  We find the three monks endearing even as they behave poorly.

The lesson for that staff meeting comes at the end when creative teamwork wins the day.  Even monks can be friends.  And if harmony can even be established at a monastery, there’s hope for work places everywhere.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Three Monks is available for purchase.

This Way Up (2008):  Now here’s a cinematically under-represented profession:  funeral director!  And no one could represent the undertaking profession more ably than the two determined casket bearers in Adam Foulke’s and Alan Smith’s This Way Up.  Like a modern-day Tex Avery cartoon (see King-Size Canary and Bad Luck Blackie for reference), the gags become increasingly wild and outlandish as the short progresses.  The stoicism and practicality of our two heroes offer a perfect counterpoint to the black comedy.

While the gags are creepier than you’d ever get in a classic Disney cartoon, This Way Up sets up a similar type of situation to those that were handled with aplomb by Mickey, Goofy, and Donald back in the 1930s.  Can’t you picture Mickey and Goofy carrying the coffin, circa 1936, in a short called something like Mickey’s Funeral Service?  Yet even though different times deserve different heroes, it’s nice to see that unflagging professionalism and good old-fashioned depression-era work ethic are still with us today.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! This Way Up is available for purchase on the Best of Animation 4 DVD.

Here’s a list of some other films from our list that touch upon themes of work and labor.  I wish this list was longer, but these were the best I could find!

Steamboat Willie (Walt Disney, USA, 1928) 

The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company “B” (Walter Lantz, USA, 1941) 

One Froggy Evening (Chuck Jones, USA, 1955) 

The Tender Game (John Hubley, USA, 1958) 

The Hand / Ruka (Jirí Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1966) 

Ballerina on the Boat / Balerina na korable (Lev Atamanov, USSR, 1969) 

A Christmas Carol (Richard Williams, USA, 1971) 

Crane Feathers / Zhuravlinye per'ya (Ideya Garanina, USSR, 1977) 

Fisheye / Riblje oko (Josko Marusic, Yugoslavia, 1980) 

The Cow / Korova (Aleksandr Petrov, USSR, 1989) 

More (Mark Osborne, USA, 1998)

The Old Man and the Sea (Aleksandr Petrov, Russia, 1999) 

Black Soul / Âme noire (Martine Chartrand, Canada, 2001) 

Harvie Krumpet (Adam Elliot, Australia, 2003) 

The Danish Poet (Torill Kove, Norway/Canada, 2006) 

Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor / Kafuka: Inaka isha (Koji Yamamura, Japan, 2007)

© 2012 Lee Price

Animating War and Violence

Cartoon-blogging, essay 5 of 21 blog entries on
250 great animated short films

Tulips Shall Grow (1942), directed by George Pal.

This is the fifth of 21 essays inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.

Ferdinand the Bull is in.  Tom and Jerry are out. 

To be more specific… The very sweet Disney short Ferdinand the Bull (1938) made it on this entry’s sample list of animated short films that deal with themes of war and violence.  But the two Tom and Jerry cartoons that made our big list (The Night Before Christmas and The Cat Concerto) aren’t here.  Much as I enjoy the orgies of destruction in Tom and Jerry cartoons, I watch them knowing the shenanigans are ultimately all in fun and no one gets hurt.  The violence isn’t real.  In Ferdinand the Bull, the threatened violence is very real and must be addressed.  Therefore, the bull gets in.

Our list of 250 great animated films has a respectable selection of World War II propaganda cartoons, anti-war message films, and meditations on the roots of violence.  While cartoons have certainly been made that present war as an exciting adventure, none of them made our list.  Even our propaganda selections, like Blitz Wolf and Der Fuehrer’s Face, express profound discomfort with violence.  Hitler is the violent one;  in this context, Donald Duck is the voice of reason and peace.

For me, the scenes that linger in the memory are the haunting ones that show the aftermath of the violence.  In the marvelous Story of a Certain Street Corner (1962), the viewer’s eye searches the ruins of a bombed-out city hoping for signs that our principal characters have survived.  We see immense loss, as well as glimmers of hope for the future.  Yuriy Norshteyn’s brilliant Tale of Tales (1979) is even sadder.  The women dance with their men who fade off the screen.  Notifications of their deaths fly like birds to their waiting loved ones.  A powerful anti-war message is delivered without ever showing soldiers in conflict.

Tulips Shall Grow (1942):  The Holland setting looks enchanting in the opening, brought to storybook life with neat rows of flowers, picturesque windmills, and young lovers.  Then the Screwballs attack and things quickly get real ugly.

For all its childlike simplicity, Tulips Shall Grow had to be a personal statement for its director, George Pal.  He had just completed working six years in the Netherlands, mastering the art of puppet animation.  America beckoned and Pal accepted an offer from Paramount Studios, leaving the Netherlands with his wife and son just months before the Nazis invaded in May 1940.  The Screwballs in Tulips Shall Grow are Nazis.  Their monstrous presence befouls the formerly beautiful countryside.

Adding an additional layer of interest for me, one of my heroes—Ray Harryhausen—worked as a model animator on this film.  Harryhausen, who went on to become the animator and special effects wizard behind movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), was just 18 when he began his Hollywood career in the new George Pal Puppetoon studio at Paramount.  He made ten shorts with Pal before enlisting in the U.S. Army, where he eventually wound up working in Frank Capra’s Special Service Division film unit.  While the wood puppets of the George Pal films frustrated the artist in Harryhausen (who really wanted to do King Kong-style animation), he concedes that the experience was very valuable for him and the films were “elegant in their own way.”

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Tulips Shall Grow is available for purchase on The Puppetoon Movie DVD.

King-Size Canary (1947):  One of classic Hollywood’s wildest directors, Tex Avery is represented by two films on our war and violence list.  Avery’s Blitz Wolf mercilessly satirizes Hitler and King-Size Canary is a very funny—and frighteningly prescient—stand-in for the impending US-Soviet arms race and its "mutually assured destruction" philosophy.  Avery was at his best with such extreme material, fashioning endless sight gags that threaten to escalate into complete madness.  In fact, the end of King-Size Canary escalates the situation just about as far as you can take it.

Avery was the least sentimental of the great Hollywood cartoon directors.  Everything was forward motion with him; everything was over-the-top and exaggerated to the max.  You didn’t go to Avery for a romantic love story.  But if you were in the mood for a hot-blooded take-no-prisoners gag-packed cartoon, he was your man.  We’ve got four Avery classics on our list—Blitz Wolf, Red Hot Riding Hood, King-Size Canary, and Bad Luck Blackie.  That’s more than anyone else except for Chuck Jones (who somehow netted five).

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! King-Size Canary is available for purchase on the Command Decision (1949) DVD.

Balance (1989):  With Balance, twin brothers Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein hit on an inspired metaphor to examine human nature and the roots of violence and warfare.  Five strange, faceless individuals co-exist on a floating platform.  Even though they know they must keep the platform balanced, the curiosity and greed of the figures inevitably unleash cold-blooded havoc.

Despite the bleakness of the setting and the pessimism of the story, Balance is strangely exhilarating.  The choreography of the characters’ movements within the limited space is brilliantly timed—at times, it’s almost like watching a Gene Kelly dance routine.  And even though the nature of these characters remains mysterious, their gestures of threat and fear make it clear that these creatures are all-too-human.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Balance is available for purchase on The World’s Greatest Animation DVD.

Here’s a list of some other films from our list that touch upon themes of war and violence.  It’s not a fun group of films this time (Education for Death has to be the most depressing of all Disney shorts) but these are movies loaded with genuine insight into human nature.

Ferdinand the Bull (Dick Rickard, USA, 1938) 

Peace on Earth (Hugh Harman, USA, 1939) 

The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company “B” (Walter Lantz, USA, 1941) 

Blitz Wolf (Tex Avery, USA, 1942)

Der Fuehrer’s Face (Jack Kinney, USA, 1942) 

Education For Death (Clyde Geronimi, USA, 1943) 

Neighbours (Norman McLaren, Canada, 1952)

Story of a Certain Street Corner / Aru machikado no monogatari (Eiichi Yamamoto & Yusaku Sakamoto, Japan, 1962)

The Thieving Magpie / La gazza ladra (Emanuele Luzzati and Giulio Gianini, Italy, 1964) 

The Roll-Call / Apel (Ryszard Czekala, Poland, 1971) 

Tale of Tales / Skazka skazok (Yuriy Norshteyn, USSR, 1979) 

Tyll the Giant / Suur Tõll (Rein Raamat, USSR, 1980) 

Memories of War (Pierre Hébert, Canada, 1983) 

Grasshoppers / Cavallette (Bruno Bozzetto, Italy, 1990) 

The Restaurant of Many Orders / Chumon no ooi ryori-ten (Tadanari Okamoto, Japan, 1993) 

Felix in Exile (William Kentridge, South Africa, 1994) 

Achilles (Barry Purves, UK, 1995) 

Rocks / Das Rad (Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel & Heidi Wittlinger, Germany, 2003) 

Voices of a Distant Star / Hoshi no koe (Makoto Shinkai, Japan, 2003)

© 2012 Lee Price

Animating Love and Courtship

Cartoon-blogging, essay 4 of 21 blog entries on
250 great animated short films

The Little Soldier (1947), directed by Paul Grimault.

This is the fourth of 21 essays inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.

“They’re kissing again.  Do we have to read the kissing parts?”

The grandson in The Princess Bride (1987)

Yes, we have to read the kissing parts.

I unashamedly love the idea of love.  When watching movies, I want my love stories to end in either of two ways:  1)  with a kiss or...  2)  with both lovers dead or tragically separated.  For me, Shakespeare got it right with his comedies—ending in wedding scenes—and with the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.  Those are the models for me.

Courtship is a slightly different matter.  Courtship is the mechanics while love is the magic.  With courtship, you get the comedy of mix-ups, bad timing, and awkwardness, as well as moments of unexpected grace.  Romantic comedies find laughs in courtship along the route to love.  Did I mention that I like romantic comedies?  Yeah, I’m confessing that I’m a guy who likes chick flicks.

Courtship is a fairly easy subject for animated short films.  Explorations of love are a little tougher.  Nevertheless, our panel of seven animation enthusiasts uncovered a nice assortment of animated short films that handle romance with a sensitivity that you’ll find in few feature films.  As just one example, the portrait of a marriage that runs through the background of Frédéric Back’s wonderful short film Crac (1981) swiftly captures a lifetime’s worth of love and loss—and it’s not even the primary subject of the film!  (Note:  The real subject is a chair.)

For the three films that I’m highlighting, two take the Shakespearean comedy approach (ending in bliss) and the third travels the Romeo and Juliet route.  I can guarantee this:  They are all extremely romantic.

The Tender Game (1958):  Three years after John and Faith (Elliott) Hubley married, they jointly made The Tender Game, one of the sweetest celebrations of courtship ever filmed.  Initially trained at Disney, John Hubley was one of a small group of animators who revolutionized American animation through his spare and stylized animation style at UPA, a new animation studio, in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  His distinctive stamp was on the early Mr. Magoo shorts, Gerald McBoing-Boing, and Rooty Toot Toot.  But he lost his job at the studio in 1952, blacklisted when he refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings. 

John and Faith teamed up personally and professionally in 1955, eventually collaborating on 22 independently-produced films (and four children).  The Tender Game was their fourth film.  In it, they reduce character to the movement of a few lines and squiggles.  But simple shapes have rarely been so eloquent—these artful lovers flirt with wit and passion.  Accompanied by the Oscar Peterson Trio, singer Ella Fitzgerald establishes a wistful mood in the opening minutes before the two characters meet and fall for each other, drawing the viewer into a courtship brimming with joy.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! The Tender Game is available for purchase on Art and Jazz in Animation.

The Little Soldier / Le petit soldat (1947):  Hans Christian Andersen’s story of “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” has been animated many times but never as romantically as in this French version.  Director Paul Grimault and his screenwriter Jacques Prévert made several changes to the original Andersen tale.  The soldier becomes an acrobat, the ballerina becomes a proactive and resourceful heroine, and a frozen-river climax is borrowed from the old D.W. Griffith silent classic Way Down East.  In the background, Grimault and Prévert place a somber French landscape in ruins, bombed out and desolate.  But the biggest change of all is that love triumphs in the final fade-out.

I’m fascinated by the participation of the great Jacques Prévert in this production.  Prévert was both a popular poet and screenwriter.  Before and during World War II, he served as the main screenwriter for Marcel Carné, a leading figure in the French film industry.  They made nine movies together, including Children of Paradise (1945), a romantic masterpiece set in the 19th century theater scene of Paris.  With The Little Soldier, Prévert found a welcome new collaborator in animator Paul Grimault.  Although The Little Soldier has no dialogue, the charm and compassion of the adaptation are hallmarks of Prévert’s work.  Prévert and Grimault continued to work together until Prévert’s death in 1977.  When Grimault attended the premiere of their last collaboration, The King and the Mockingbird, in 1980, he reserved an empty seat next to him in remembrance of Prévert. 

Voices of a Distant Star / Hoshi no koe (2003):  Voices of a Distant Star is an anime with giant robots, aliens, and spectacular explosions.  But these typical anime elements are secondary to the real event which is a love story that will tear your heart out.  I don’t cry that easily, but Voices of a Distant Star devastates me.

This short anime is the virtuoso work of a single person—director Makoto Shinkai.  I love the way he meets all genre expectations while keeping them entirely subordinate to the emotional powerhouse love story.  His central theme of communication over interstellar distance reminds me of Ray Bradbury at his most insightful and poignant.

I’ve watched Voices of a Distant Star three times now and it’s become stronger and more emotionally affecting with each viewing.  In this way, it reminds me of one of my favorite books, The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg.  I loved The Polar Express from the first time I read it and so decided to share it as a read-aloud with my children every Christmas Eve.  But after the first couple of times, I could no longer get through it without choking up at the end.  Well…  that’s the way I think it’s going to be with Voices of a Distant Star.  I’m not sure how many more times I’ll be able to get through it.

Link to English dub of Voices of a Distant Star on veoh.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Voices of a Distant Star is available for purchase at Amazon and other dealers.

Here’s a list of some other films from our list that touch upon themes of love and courtship.  Not all are romantic—some cast a jaundiced eye on the dating scene—but all repay close attention.

Who Killed Cock Robin? (David Hand, USA, 1935) 

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (Chuck Jones, USA, 1965)

My Green Crocodile / Moy zelenyy krokodil (Vadim Kurchevskiy, USSR, 1966) 

Café Bar (Alison De Vere, UK, 1974) 

Boy and Girl / Malchik i devochka (Rozaliya Zelma, USSR, 1978) 

Poor Lisa / Bednaya Liza (Ideya Garanina, USSR, 1978) 

Crac (Frédéric Back, Canada, 1981) 

George and Rosemary (David Fine & Alison Snowden, Canada, 1987) 

Knick Knack (John Lasseter, USA, 1989) 

Achilles (Barry Purves, UK, 1995) 

A Summer Night Rendez-vous / Au premier dimanche d’août (Florence Miailhe, France, 2002) 

Destino (Dominique Monfery, France/USA, 2003) 

The Danish Poet (Torill Kove, Norway/Canada, 2006) 

My Love / Moya lyubov (Aleksandr Petrov, Russia, 2006) 

Invention of Love (Andrey Shushkov, Russia, 2010) 

The Silence Beneath the Bark / Le silence sous l'écorce (Joanna Lurie, France, 2010)

© 2012 Lee Price

Animating Time and Memory

Cartoon-blogging, essay 3 of 21 blog entries on
250 great animated short films

Glassy Ocean (1998), directed by Shigeru Tamura.

This is the third of 21 essays inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.

The House of Small Cubes, Rowing Across the Atlantic, and Glassy Ocean:  For exploring the subject of time and memory, I’ve chosen to highlight these three films not only because they’re favorites of mine but also because each of them creatively plays with a common metaphor—time as water.

Time is a stream, a river, it flows into a larger ocean that is vast beyond our comprehension.  Time slips like water through our fingers;  you can’t hold on to it.  It’s such an accessible image that the metaphor has become a cliché, yet gifted animators keep finding new and inspired variations to play on the theme.  Memory is like a deep sea diving descent into the depths.  Decades of marriage are like a marathon rowboat crossing of an ocean.  If time in motion is like flowing water, would frozen time appear like… glass?

Taking a count of the animated short films on our list that touch on themes of time and memory, I’m struck by the respectable percentage of our 250 shorts that wrestle with this subject.  Maybe it’s because most memories are of short duration—quick yet freighted with meaning like a good animated short.  We retrieve memories, even treasure them, only to see them slip away as we return to the real world and time implacably carries us forward.

The subject of time and memory is inevitably tinged with loss.

The House of Small Cubes / La Maison en Petits Cubes / Tsumiki no ie (2008):  The opening setup might fool you into thinking this is a film about global warming.  The seas are rising.  An old man has added story upon story to his house, endeavoring to keep his living space above the rising waters.  When the water laps across his floor, he climbs to the roof to build his next room.  The result is that he lives in a tower, with only one small room peeking out above sea level.

It’s only when he dons scuba gear and descends to the rooms below that we realize this concept is an audacious metaphor for time.  As he descends from room to room, he recalls his past.  The images are haunting.

Vividly imagined by director Kunio Katô, The House of Small Cubes is an exquisitely-pitched masterpiece on memory and loss.  As we glimpse images of the old man’s wife and family in earlier and happier days, an overwhelming sense of loneliness pervades the film.  The final clink is sublime.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! The House of Small Cubes is available for purchase on Piecesof Love, Volume 1.

Rowing Across the Atlantic / La Traversée de l’Atlantique à la rame (1978):  Like The House of Small Cubes , Jean François Laguionie’s Rowing Across the Atlantic examines a married couple over time.  However very unlike Kunio Katô’s short, the portrait in Rowing Across the Atlantic is cynical and bleak.  Being a hopeless sentimentalist, I'm naturally more fond of The House of Small Cubes than Rowing Across the Atlantic.  Nevertheless, I have to admit to being awed by the audacious metaphor of marriage as a marathon voyage in a small boat across a seemingly endless sea.  The ocean currents are our metaphor for time.

The beginning is rather sweet (weddings tend to be and I assume we’re supposed to interpret the public launching of the rowboat as a metaphor for the wedding ceremony) but any hope of a happy-ever-after tale is crushed in a singularly grotesque scene of black comedy featuring—of all things—the Titanic.  Where The House of Small Cubes remembers small domestic moments of bliss, Rowing Across the Atlantic highlights the pettiness and selfishness of the boat’s two occupants.  I love the way the couple spends most of their time with their backs to each other, no longer speaking.  Time drifts them forward as their lives go nowhere.

Glassy Ocean / Kujira no Chouyaku (1998):  While The House of Small Cubes and Rowing Across the Atlantic depict their characters moving through time in a relatively conventional way, Glassy Ocean takes the water metaphor in an entirely different direction.  After a brief conventional prologue, it shifts into an extended exploration of our world reimagined as a surreal landscape where time moves at a glacial pace.  In this alternative time frame, the surface of the ocean is rendered glassy-solid enough to sustain the weight of a mysterious people who catch flying fish that appear suspended in air and build fires on the waves.  The images of a whale breaching the water in deep slow motion constitute one of the most magical sequences in modern film.

There’s not much of a plot—just the suggestion that life is filled with beauties and complexities that we fail to appreciate in our rushed lives.  An artist wants to capture the image of the breaching whale suspended in air above the glassy ocean.  He sets his easel up beneath the whale, seizing the opportunity to make art out of the moment.  In bringing this concept to life, director Shigeru Tamura is such an artist himself.  Primarily known in Japan for his children’s books, Tamura occasionally ventures into animation, exploring other strange worlds in the short Ursa Minor Blue (1993) and the anime series A Piece of Phantasmagoria (1995).  His vision is extraordinary.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Glassy Ocean is available for purchase as a Region 2 DVD.

Here’s a list of some other films from our list that touch upon themes of time and memory.  It’s an unusually challenging, and often poignant, selection of shorts.

Frank Film (Caroline & Frank Mouris, USA, 1973) 

The Street (Caroline Leaf, Canada, 1976) 

Tale of Tales / Skazka skazok (Yuriy Norshteyn, USSR, 1979) 

Milk of Amnesia (Jeffrey Noyes Scher, USA, 1992) 

Repete (Michaela Pavlátová, Czech Republic, 1995)

Father and Daughter (Michael Dudok de Wit, UK/Belgium/Netherlands, 2000) 

Black Soul / Âme noire (Martine Chartrand, Canada, 2001) 

Voices of a Distant Star / Hoshi no koe (Makoto Shinkai, Japan, 2003) 

The Dream of an Old Oak / Quercus (Vuk Jevremovic, Germany, 2004) 

Ryan (Chris Landreth, Canada, 2004)

The Legend of Shangri-La (Chen Ming, China, 2006) 

My Love / Moya lyubov (Aleksandr Petrov, Russia, 2006)

Printed Rainbow (Gitanjali Rao, India, 2006) 

Orgesticulanismus (Mathieu Labaye, Belgium, 2008) 

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (William Joyce & Brandon Oldenburg, USA, 2011)

© 2012 Lee Price

Animating Our Place in the Universe

Cartoon-blogging, essay 2 of 21 blog entries on
250 great animated short films

The Bead Game (1977), directed by Ishu Patel.

This is the second of 21 essays based on a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.

Restrictions can trigger creativity.  Naturally, the biggest restriction on an animated short film is length.  By definition, an animated short film has to be short.

When you only have ten minutes to make your case, it has to be daunting to tackle major philosophical questions like…

          What is man’s place in the universe?

          Is there a larger meaning to our lives?

          Why must there be suffering in the world?

These are the themes loved by ambitious mavericks like Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Carl Dreyer, and Terrence Malick—directors who slowly and gracefully unfold their ruminations on the screen.  They are artists.  They can’t be rushed.  Two hours is often too short for them.

Duck Amuck (1953), directed by
Chuck Jones.

Directors of animated short films don’t have that luxury.  Chuck Jones has seven minutes to put Daffy Duck through existential hell in Duck Amuck and the rush is on from the first shot.  Thirty gags later, the short is over, the audience is exhausted from laughter, and—as a side bonus—some pretty interesting philosophical thoughts have been broached. 

Working at their peaks, Jones and numerous others of his peers have fearlessly tackled the tough questions in short bursts of dizzying animated genius.  It turns out you can say quite a bit in seven minutes.

Powers of Ten (1968):  Two animated short films were released in 1968 that challenged viewers to consider their relationship to both the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of an atom’s nucleus.  These are big concepts—but one’s that lend themselves surprisingly well to a purely visual presentation.  Created independently of each other, Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames and Cosmic Zoom by Eva Szasz consider infinity from a very human perspective.

Both Powers of Ten and Cosmic Zoom were inspired by “Cosmic View,” a 1957 illustrated essay by Kees Boeke, a Dutch educator.  Many years later, NASA returned for their take on Boeke’s essay with the IMAX film Cosmic Voyage (1996) and even more recently there was a 2012 iOS app remake of Powers of Ten called Cosmic Eye.  Only Powers of Ten made our list but all are impressive achievements (and readily accessible on YouTube).

A formidable husband-and-wife partnership, Charles and Bernice Alexandra “Ray” Eames are probably better known for their innovative modern architecture and furniture than their films, but it was in their nature to explore any creative format that presented itself.  The concept of Boeke’s essay must have appealed to their sense of design, with its streamlined visual approach to a vast subject.  The Eames completed their first version of Powers of Ten in 1968 and then returned to update it in 1977 (the version now in general release).  Two decades later, its importance in film history was acknowledged with its selection to the National Film Registry in 1998.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Powers of Ten is available for purchase on The Films of Charles and Ray Eames, Volume1: Powers of Ten.

Jumping (1984):  Like Powers of Ten, Tezuka Osamu’s Jumping starts small then steadily expands the frame.  But Jumping’s attitude is very different from the scientific stance of Powers of Ten.  Osamu’s vision is edgy and ironic, sharp-edged with dark humor.  Instead of a graceful trip outward to the edges of the universe, Tezuka bounces his film merrily into hell.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! Jumping is available for purchase on The Astonishing Work of Tezuka Osamu.

The Bead Game (1977):  An astonishing visual delight from opening to close, Ishu Patel’s The Bead Game (1977) finds beauty in unusually harsh material.  Swiftly tracing the evolution of life on earth, the film’s subject could be pared down to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s description of “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”  Life in The Bead Game is a constant stream of devouring, climaxing with escalating human violence and the development of atomic weapons.  But the visual and aural tone of the film belies the seeming pessimism of the subject matter.  The animation grants us the ability to perceive beauty and patterns everywhere.  The final effect is strikingly ambivalent—perhaps it’s meant as a God’s eye view of a world deemed good, even while being undeniably red in tooth and claw.  With its remarkable closing shot, The Bead Game certainly suggests that a formal beauty underlies all.

Support the artists and the art of the animated short film! The Bead Game is available for purchase through the National Film Board of Canada.

From our list of 250 great animated short films, here’s a selection of some other films that boldly tackle philosophy’s most daunting questions.  It’s a formidable selection, filled with movies designed to provoke thoughtful meditation.

Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, USA, 1953) 

Butterfly / Babochka (Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, USSR, 1972) 

The Sand Castle / Le château de sable (Co Hoedeman, Canada, 1977) 

The Circle / O kyklos (Iordanis Ananiadis, Greece, 1981) 

Crac (Frédéric Back, Canada, 1981) 

Paradise (Ishu Patel, Canada, 1985) 

The Man Who Planted Trees / L’homme qui plantait des arbres (Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987) 

Feelings of Mountains and Waters / Shan shui qing (Wei Te, China, 1988) 

Balance (Christoph Lauenstein & Wolfgang Lauenstein, West Germany, 1989) 

Grasshoppers / Cavallette (Bruno Bozzetto, Italy, 1990) 

Manipulation (Daniel Greaves, UK, 1991) 

The Monk and the Fish / Le moine et le poisson (Michael Dudok de Wit, France, 1994) 

Quest (Tyron Montgomery, Germany, 1996) 

Glassy Ocean / Kujira no Chouyaku (Shigeru Tamura, Japan, 1998) 

Adagio / Adazhio (Garry Bardin, Russia, 2000) 

Black Soul / Âme noire (Martine Chartrand, Canada, 2001) 

Rocks / Das Rad (Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel & Heidi Wittlinger, Germany, 2003) 

The Dream of an Old Oak / Quercus (Vuk Jevremovic, Germany, 2004) 

The Man With No Shadow / L’Homme sans ombre (Georges Schwizgebel, Canada/Switzerland, 2004) 

Restart (Miao Xiaochun, China, 2010) 

© 2012 Lee Price

250 Great Animated Short Films

Cartoon-blogging, essay 1 of 21 blog entries on
250 great animated short films

Brothers Bearhearts (2005), directed by Riho Unt.

Over the next two months, I propose to celebrate one of the great art forms to emerge during the past century:  the animated short film.

Working with a panel of seven self-confessed admirers of animated shorts (and assisted by other regulars at the IMDb Classic Film message board), I recently led the development of a list of 250 great animated shorts.

We’re not claiming these 250 films are necessarily the “best” and we made no attempt at ranking them.  Our goal was simply to select some of the greatest for celebration.  As a guide for making our selections, I asked my fellow panelists to make an effort to keep the list chronologically balanced (with a representative sampling of shorts from each decade), geographically diverse, and with a reasonable proportion of female to male directors.  Our definition of a short film was 40 minutes or less, and we worked without a set definition of what constitutes an animated film.

My sincere thanks to the six panelists who joined with me to create the list:  Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco (jdidaco), Waldemar Hepstein (Rollo Treadway), Bill Kamberger (bkamberger), Robert Reynolds (Iltdesq), and Sulo Vatanen (sulinjal).  The names in parentheses are our IMDb monikers (mine is lee-109).

So here’s the list.  See what you think!  And then stick around for the next 20 essays as 21 Essays celebrates the art of the animated short film.

250 GREAT ANIMATED SHORT FILMS

The Early Years (1895-1919)

Little Nemo (1911), directed by Winsor McCay.

Around a Bathing Hut / Autour d’une cabine (Émile Reynaud, France, 1895) 

The Electric Hotel / El hotel eléctrico (Segundo de Chomón, Spain, 1908) 

Fantasmagorie (Émile Cohl, France, 1908) 

Little Nemo / Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics (Winsor McCay, USA, 1911) 

The Cameraman’s Revenge / Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora (Wladyslaw Starewicz, Russia, 1912) 

How a Mosquito Operates (Winsor McCay, USA, 1912) 

Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McCay, USA, 1914) 

Captain Grogg’s Wonderful Journey / Kapten Groggs underbara resa (Victor Bergdahl, Sweden, 1916) 

The 1920s

Felix in Hollywood (1923), directed by Otto Messmer.

The Frogs Who Wanted a King / Les grenouilles qui demandent un roi (Wladyslaw Starewicz, France, 1922)

Felix In Hollywood (Otto Messmer, USA, 1923) 

Opus III (Walter Ruttmann, Germany, 1924) 

Symphonie diagonale (Viking Eggeling, Germany, 1924) 

Now You Tell One (Charley Bowers, USA, 1926) 

Spiritual Constructions / Seelische Konstruktionen (Oskar Fischinger, Germany, 1927)

Steamboat Willie (Walt Disney, USA, 1928) 

Ghosts Before Breakfast / Vormittagsspuk (Hans Richter, 1928) 

Hell’s Bells (Ub Iwerks, US, 1929) 

The Skeleton Dance (Walt Disney, USA, 1929) 

The Stolen Lump / Kobu-Tori (Chuzo Aoji and Yasuji Murata, Japan, 1929) 

The 1930s

A Dream Walking (1934), directed by Dave Fleischer.

The Idea / L’idée (Berthold Bartosch, 1932) 

Night on Bald Mountain / Une nuit sur le mont chauve (Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker, France, 1933) 

Snow-White (Dave Fleischer, USA, 1933) 

Three Little Pigs (Burt Gillett, USA, 1933) 

A Dream Walking (Dave Fleischer, USA, 1934) 

The Mascot / Fétiche (Wladyslaw Starewicz, 1934) 

The Joy of Living / La joie de vivre (Anthony Gross & Hector Hoppin, France, 1934) 

The Band Concert (Wilfred Jackson, USA, 1935) 

Papageno (Lotte Reiniger, Germany, 1935) 

Who Killed Cock Robin? (David Hand, USA, 1935) 

Rainbow Dance (Len Lye, UK, 1936) 

Escape (Mary Ellen Bute, USA, 1937) 

The Little Match Girl (Arthur Davis, USA, 1937) 

The Old Mill (Wilfred Jackson, USA, 1937) 

Clock Cleaners (Ben Sharpsteen, USA, 1938) 

Ferdinand the Bull (Dick Rickard, USA, 1938) 

Porky in Wackyland (Bob Clampett, USA, 1938) 

Peace on Earth (Hugh Harman, USA, 1939) 

The 1940s

High Diving Hare (1949), directed by Friz Freleng.

Mr. Duck Steps Out (Jack King, USA, 1940) 

The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company “B” (Walter Lantz, USA, 1941) 

The Night Before Christmas (Joseph Barbera & William Hanna, USA, 1941) 

Rhapsody In Rivets (Friz Freleng, USA, 1941) 

Blitz Wolf (Tex Avery, USA, 1942)

Der Fuehrer’s Face (Jack Kinney, USA, 1942) 

Tulips Shall Grow (George Pal, USA, 1942) 

Donald’s Tire Trouble (Dick Lundy, USA, 1943) 

Education For Death (Clyde Geronimi, USA, 1943) 

Porky Pig’s Feat (Frank Tashlin, USA, 1943) 

Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery, USA, 1943) 

Weatherbeaten Melody / Scherzo - Verwitterte Melodie (Hans Fischerkoesen, Germany, 1943) 

The Adventures of Baron Münchhausen / Abenteuer des Freiherrn. von Münchhausen: Eine Winterreise (Hans Held, Germany, 1944) 

The Chimney Thief / Le voleur de paratonnerres (Paul Grimault, France, 1944) 

Daffy Doodles (Robert McKimson, USA, 1946) 

Kitty Kornered (Robert Clampett, USA, 1946) 

The Cat Concerto (Joseph Barbera & William Hanna, USA, 1947) 

King-Size Canary (Tex Avery, USA, 1947) 

The Little Soldier / Le petit soldat (Paul Grimault, France, 1947) 

Motion Painting No. 1 (Oskar Fischinger, USA, 1947) 

Bad Luck Blackie (Tex Avery, USA, 1949) 

Begone Dull Care (Norman McLaren, Canada, 1949) 

High Diving Hare (Friz Freleng, USA, 1949) 

Inspiration / Inspirace (Karel Zeman, Czechoslovakia, 1949) 

The 1950s

Gerald McBoing Boing (1951), directed by Robert Cannon.

Rabbit of Seville (Chuck Jones, USA, 1950) 

Gerald McBoing Boing (Robert Cannon, USA, 1951) 

Rooty Toot Toot (John Hubley, USA, 1951) 

Neighbours (Norman McLaren, Canada, 1952) 

Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, USA, 1953) 

The Tell-Tale Heart (Ted Parmelee, USA, 1953) 

Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom (Ward Kimball & Charles A. Nichols, USA, 1953) 

The Unicorn in the Garden (William T. Hurtz, USA, 1953) 

One Froggy Evening (Chuck Jones, USA, 1955) 

What’s Opera, Doc? (Chuck Jones, USA, 1957) 

Free Radicals (Len Lye, UK, 1958) 

House / Dom (Walerian Borowczyk & Jan Lenica, Poland, 1958) 

The Tender Game (John Hubley, USA, 1958) 

The Lion and the Song / Lev a písnicka (Bretislav Pojar, Czechoslovakia, 1959) 

The 1960s

Labirynt (1963), directed by Jan Lenica.

Little Tadpoles Search for Mama / Xiao ke dou zhao ma ma (Wei Te, China, 1960) 

The Ash-Lad and the Good Helpers / Askeladden og de gode hjelperne (Ivo Caprino, Norway, 1961) 

Surogat / Ersatz (Dusan Vukotic, Yugoslavia, 1961) 

Story of a Certain Street Corner / Aru machikado no monogatari (Eiichi Yamamoto & Yusaku Sakamoto, Japan, 1962) 

Labirynt (Jan Lenica, Poland, 1963) 

Le nez / The Nose (Alexander Alexeieff & Claire Parker, France, 1963)

The Hangman (Paul Julian & Les Goldman, USA, 1964) 

The Thieving Magpie / La gazza ladra (Emanuele Luzzati and Giulio Gianini, Italy, 1964) 

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (Chuck Jones, USA, 1965)

Gymnopédies (Larry Jordan, USA, 1965) 

The Hand / Ruka (Jirí Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1966) 

My Green Crocodile / Moy zelenyy krokodil (Vadim Kurchevskiy, USSR, 1966) 

The Seventh Father in the House / Sjuende far i huset (Ivo Caprino, Norway, 1966) 

The Snowman / Snehulák (Hermína Týrlová, Czechoslovakia, 1966) 

Curiosity / Znatizelja (Borivoj Dovnikovic, Yugoslavia, 1967) 

Life in a Tin / Una vita in scatola (Bruno Bozzetto, Italy, 1967) 

The Mitten / Varezhka (Roman Kachanov, USSR, 1967) 

Ball of Yarn / Klubok (Nikolai Serebryakov, USSR, 1968) 

Pas de deux (Norman McLaren, Canada, 1968) 

Storytime (Terry Gilliam, UK, 1968) 

Ballerina on the Boat / Balerina na korable (Lev Atamanov, USSR, 1969) 

Walking / En marchant (Ryan Larkin, Canada, 1969) 

Schody (Stairs) (Stefan Schabenbeck, Poland, 1969) 

The 1970s

Crane Feathers (1977), directed by Ideya Garanina.

Film, Film, Film (Fyodor Khitruk, USSR, 1970) 

Is It Always Right To Be Right? (Lee Mishkin, USA, 1970) 

Pixillation (Lillian Schwartz, USA, 1970) 

The Roll-Call / Apel (Ryszard Czekala, Poland, 1971) 

The Battle of Kerzhenets / Secha pri Kerzhentse (Ivan Ivanov-Vano & Yuriy Norshteyn, 1971) 

A Christmas Carol (Richard Williams, USA, 1971) 

Evolution (Michael Mills, Canada, 1971) 

How a Sausage Dog Works / Jak dziala jamniczek (Julian Józef Antonisz, Poland, 1971) 

The Selfish Giant (Peter Sander, Canada, 1971) 

Butterfly / Babochka (Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, USSR, 1972) 

Tchou-Tchou (Co Hoedeman, Canada, 1972) 

Coeur de secours (Piotr Kamler, France, 1973) 

Frank Film (Caroline & Frank Mouris, USA, 1973) 

Heavy-Light (Adam Beckett, USA, 1973) 

Café Bar (Alison De Vere, UK, 1974) 

Closed Mondays (Will Vinton, USA, 1974) 

The Diary / Dnevnik (Nedeljko Dragic, Yugoslavia, 1974) 

Fuji (Robert Breer, USA, 1974) 

Great (Isambard Kingdom Brunel) (Bob Godfrey, UK, 1975) 

Hedgehog in the Fog / Yozhik v tumane (Yuriy Norshteyn, USSR, 1975) 

Dojoji Temple (Kihachiro Kawamoto, Japan, 1976) 

Mindscape / Le paysagiste (Jacques Drouin, Canada, 1976) 

The Street (Caroline Leaf, Canada, 1976) 

The Bead Game (Ishu Patel, Canada, 1977) 

Crane Feathers / Zhuravlinye per'ya (Ideya Garanina, USSR, 1977) 

David (Paul Driessen, Netherlands, 1977) 

The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (Caroline Leaf, Canada, 1977) 

Powers of Ten (Charles & Ray Eames, USA, 1977) 

The Sand Castle / Le château de sable (Co Hoedeman, Canada, 1977) 

Boy and Girl / Malchik i devochka (Rozaliya Zelma, USSR, 1978) 

Poor Lisa / Bednaya Liza (Ideya Garanina, USSR, 1978) 

Rowing Across the Atlantic / La Traversée de l'Atlantique à la rame (Jean François Laguionie, France, 1978) 

Satiemania (Zdenko Gasparovic, Yugoslavia, 1978) 

Asparagus (Suzan Pitt, USA, 1979) 

Every Child (Eugene Fedorenko, Canada, 1979) 

Harpya (Raoul Servais, Belgium, 1979) 

House of Flame / Kataku (Kihachiro Kawamoto, Japan, 1979) 

Tale of Tales / Skazka skazok (Yuriy Norshteyn, USSR, 1979) 

The 1980s

Balance (1989), directed by Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein.

Fisheye / Riblje oko (Josko Marusic, Yugoslavia, 1980) 

The Three Inventors / Les 3 inventeurs (Michel Ocelot, France, 1980) 

Tyll the Giant / Suur Tõll (Rein Raamat, USSR, 1980) 

Who Will Comfort Toffle? / Vem skall trösta knyttet? (Johan Hagelbäck, Sweden, 1980) 

The Circle / O kyklos (Iordanis Ananiadis, Greece, 1981) 

The Fly / A Légy (Ferenc Rófusz, Hungary, 1981) 

The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Mark Hall, UK, 1981) 

Skyscraper / Neboder (Josko Marusic, Yugoslavia, 1981) 

Tango (Zbigniew Rybczynski, Poland, 1981) 

Crac (Frédéric Back, Canada, 1981) 

Block / Blok (Hieronim Neumann, Poland, 1982) 

Dimensions of Dialogue / Moznosti dialogu (Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1982) 

Ex Libris (Garik Seko, Czechoslovakia, 1982) 

The Snowman (Dianne Jackson, UK, 1982) 

There Once Was a Dog / Zhil-byl pyos (Eduard Nazarov, USSR, 1982) 

Three Monks / San ge heshang (Jingda Xu (A Da), China, 1982) 

The Vanished World of Gloves / Zaniklý svet rukavic (Jirí Barta, Czechoslovakia, 1982) 

Esperalia (Jerzy Kalina, Poland, 1983) 

Memories of War (Pierre Hébert, Canada, 1983) 

Anna & Bella (Børge Ring, Netherlands, 1984) 

The Dark Side of the Moon / Obratnaya storona luny (Aleksandr Tatarskiy, USSR, 1984) 

Film-Wipe-Film (Paul Glabicki, USA, 1984) 

Jumping (Osamu Tezuka, Japan, 1984) 

There Will Come Soft Rains / Budet laskovyy dozhd (Nozim To'laho'jayev, USSR, 1984) 

Paradise (Ishu Patel, Canada, 1985) 

The Big Snit (Richard Condie, Canada, 1986) 

Door / Dver (Nina Shorina, USSR, 1986) 

George and Rosemary (David Fine & Alison Snowden, Canada, 1987) 

How Wang-Fo Was Saved / Comment Wang-Fo fut sauvé (René Laloux, France, 1987) 

Lodgers of an Old House / Zhiltsy starogo doma (Alexei Karev, USSR, 1987) 

The Man Who Planted Trees / L’homme qui plantait des arbres (Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987) 

Street of Crocodiles (Stephen & Timothy Quay, UK, 1987) 

Your Face (Bill Plympton, USA, 1987) 

The Cat Came Back (Cordell Barker, Canada, 1988) 

Death and the Mother (Ruth Lingford, UK, 1988) 

Face Like a Frog (Sally Cruikshank, USA, 1988) 

Feelings of Mountains and Waters / Shan shui qing (Wei Te, China, 1988) 

Pas à deux (Monique Renault & Gerrit van Dijk, Netherlands, 1988) 

Prometheus’ Garden (Bruce Bickford, USA, 1988) 

The Public Voice / Den offentlige røst (Lejf Marcussen, Denmark, 1988) 

Walls / Sciany (Piotr Dumala, Poland, 1988) 

Balance (Christoph Lauenstein & Wolfgang Lauenstein, West Germany, 1989) 

The Cow / Korova (Aleksandr Petrov, USSR, 1989) 

Darkness/Light/Darkness / Tma/Svetlo/Tma (Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1989) 

The Hill Farm (Mark Baker, UK, 1989) 

Knick Knack (John Lasseter, USA, 1989) 

Mind the Steps! / Vigyázat, lépcsö! (István Orosz, Hungary, 1989) 

The 1990s

The Wrong Trousers (1993), directed by Nick Park.

Grasshoppers / Cavallette (Bruno Bozzetto, Italy, 1990) 

Manipulation (Daniel Greaves, UK, 1991) 

The Sandman (Paul Berry, UK, 1991) 

Strings (Wendy Tilby, Canada, 1991) 

When the Leaves Have Fallen Down from the Oak / Az opadá listí z dubu (Vlasta Pospísilová, Czechoslovakia, 1991) 

Franz Kafka (Piotr Dumala, Poland, 1992) 

Hotell E (Priit Pärn, Estonia, 1992) 

Milk of Amnesia (Jeffrey Noyes Scher, USA, 1992) 

Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase (Joan C. Gratz, USA, 1992) 

The Restaurant of Many Orders / Chumon no ooi ryori-ten (Tadanari Okamoto, Japan, 1993) 

The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park, UK, 1993) 

Carmen Trilogy (Carmen Torero, Carmen Habanera, Carmen Suite) (Aleksandra Korejwo, Poland, 1994 – 1996) 

Felix in Exile (William Kentridge, South Africa, 1994) 

The Monk and the Fish / Le moine et le poisson (Michael Dudok de Wit, France, 1994) 

Triangle (Erica Russell, UK, 1994) 

Achilles (Barry Purves, UK, 1995) 

Repete (Michaela Pavlátová, Czech Republic, 1995)

Famous Paintings / Beroemde schilderijen (Maarten Koopman, Netherlands, 1996) 

Genre (Don Hertzfeldt, USA, 1996) 

Quest (Tyron Montgomery, Germany, 1996) 

Christmas / Rozhdestvo (Mikhail Aldashin, Russia, 1997) 

Glassy Ocean / Kujira no Chouyaku (Shigeru Tamura, Japan, 1998) 

More (Mark Osborne, USA, 1998) 

The Old Lady and the Pigeons / La vieille dame et les pigeons (Sylvain Chomet, France, 1998) 

The Old Man and the Sea (Aleksandr Petrov, Russia, 1999) 

The 2000s

Black Soul (2000), directed by Martine Chartrand.

Adagio / Adazhio (Garry Bardin, Russia, 2000) 

At the Ends of the Earth / Au bout du Monde (Konstantin Bronzit, France, 2000) 

Le chapeau (Michèle Cournoyer, Canada, 2000) 

Father and Daughter (Michael Dudok de Wit, UK/Belgium/Netherlands, 2000) 

Tuning the Instruments / Strojenie instrumentów (Jerzy Kucia, Poland, 2000) 

Aria (Pjotr Sapegin, Canada/Norway, 2001) 

Black Soul / Âme noire (Martine Chartrand, Canada, 2001) 

Cat Soup / Nekojiru-so (Tatsuo Sato, Japan, 2001) 

Down to the Bone / Hasta los huesos (René Castillo, Mexico, 2002) 

Dream Work (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2002) 

A Summer Night Rendez-vous / Au premier dimanche d’août (Florence Miailhe, France, 2002) 

Destino (Dominique Monfery, France/USA, 2003) 

Fast Film (Virgil Widrich, Austria/Germany/Luxembourg, 2003) 

Harvie Krumpet (Adam Elliot, Australia, 2003) 

Rocks / Das Rad (Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel & Heidi Wittlinger, Germany, 2003) 

Voices of a Distant Star / Hoshi no koe (Makoto Shinkai, Japan, 2003) 

The Dream of an Old Oak / Quercus (Vuk Jevremovic, Germany, 2004) 

The Man With No Shadow / L’Homme sans ombre (Georges Schwizgebel, Canada/Switzerland, 2004) 

Ryan (Chris Landreth, Canada, 2004)

Brothers Bearhearts / Vennad Karusüdamed (Riho Unt, Estonia, 2005) 

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello (Anthony Lucas, Australia, 2005) 

The Danish Poet (Torill Kove, Norway/Canada, 2006) 

Dreams and Desires (Joanna Quinn, UK, 2006) 

The Legend of Shangri-La (Chen Ming, China, 2006) 

My Love / Moya lyubov (Aleksandr Petrov, Russia, 2006) 

Never Like the First Time! / Aldrig som första gången! (Jonas Odell, Sweden, 2006) 

Peter & the Wolf (Suzie Templeton, UK, 2006) 

Printed Rainbow (Gitanjali Rao, India, 2006) 

The Tale of How (The Blackheart Gang: Ree Treweek, Jannes Hendrikz & Markus Wormstorm, South Africa, 2006) 

Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor / Kafuka: Inaka isha (Koji Yamamura, Japan, 2007) 

False Aging (Lewis Klahr, USA, 2008) 

The House of Small Cubes / La Maison en Petits Cubes / Tsumiki no ie (Kunio Katô, Japan, 2008) 

My Childhood Mystery Tree (Natalia Mirzoyan, Russia, 2008) 

Orgesticulanismus (Mathieu Labaye, Belgium, 2008) 

Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin, France, 2008) 

This Way Up (Adam Foulkes & Alan Smith, UK, 2008) 

Quimby the Mouse (Chris Ware, USA, 2009) 

Invention of Love (Andrey Shushkov, Russia, 2010) 

Pandane to Tamago-hime (Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 2010) 

Restart (Miao Xiaochun, China, 2010) 

The Silence Beneath the Bark / Le silence sous l'écorce (Joanna Lurie, France, 2010)

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (William Joyce & Brandon Oldenburg, USA, 2011)

© 2012 Lee Price