250 great animated short films
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| 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.
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| 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
The Circle / O kyklos (Iordanis Ananiadis, Greece, 1981)
Crac (Frédéric Back, Canada, 1981)
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
The Man With No Shadow / L’Homme sans ombre (Georges Schwizgebel,
Canada/Switzerland, 2004)
Restart (Miao Xiaochun , China
© 2012 Lee Price
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