Animated Hero Classics: Maccabees

Banner of Youth(pl)

A short film advertising the newspaper Sztandar Młodych (The Banner of Youth), noteworthy for its abstract elements painted directly onto film stock. An attempt at showing the complexity of the world in a capsule, the film reflects the new policy of the openness to the West during the Thaw of the late 1950s in Poland.

Réflexion(es)

Mysteries of the Unseen World(en)

Mysteries of the Unseen World transports audiences to places on this planet that they have never been before, to see things that are beyond their normal vision, yet literally right in front of their eyes. Mysteries of the Unseen World reveals phenomena that can't be seen with the naked eye, taking audiences into earthly worlds secreted away in different dimensions of time and scale. Viewers experience events that unfold too slowly for human perception

Enter Hamlet(en)

Enter Hamlet is a collage of images in cartoon form of a word put in balloon in each jump-cut scene as that word is said by the narrator Maurice Evans during his “To be or not to be…” soliloquy recording.

Pony Place(nl)

Grandmother Koba has to take care of her grandchild Emma's digital horse farm.

The Gulls(sv)

Arne Sucksdorff’s short documentary observes gulls raiding nests and stealing eggs with ruthless persistence. Though presented as pure nature study, the film was widely read as an allegory of Nazism—a symbolic parable of predation and violence during wartime. Sucksdorff himself denied such intent, but remarked that “a film that is not open to interpretation is a dead film.”

The Enchanted Spectacles(fr)

A parlor full of bon vivants pass around an enchanted pair of spectacles that “reveal the personality and pleasures of the one who wears them.”

Let's Be Sporty(fr)

This subject portrays in a vivid manner the operations of a puppet in his efforts to see the sights.

Japanese Fantasy(fr)

This subject presents a remarkably clever series of illusions in which a Japanese lantern, several dolls, chickens, mice and grasshoppers play a very prominent part.

Floral Frameworks(fr)

There have been numerous studies of plants and flowers presented to the public, but none which exhibit the perfection of stereoscopic detail. The various plants have been photographed against black backgrounds and are carefully colored. In addition, the various groups were made to revolve during the time of exposure and thus show a succession of lights and shadows which produces the relief which adds so greatly to a picture. (Moving Picture World)

La Coupe(en)

When Fannie offers her father to cut his hair, he accepts. Alain knows that his daughter will do it carefully and thoroughly, as usual. But an outside incident change their plans and confront the precariousness of this shared moment. The cut tells the story of a father and a daughter, between proximity and detachment, for the moment of an haircut. -Written by Colonelle films

The Master of a Fashionable Game(fr)

The film presents a drawing room meeting of enthusiastic puzzle workers. One gentleman has a new way of solving his puzzle. He puts a handkerchief over the game and immediately the picture is made. Under the handkerchief, we see how, piece by piece, it is put into one finished picture. His success makes him an object of envy, however, and the gentleman meets with considerable trouble before the party is over. (Moving Picture World)

Drugs Are Like That(en)

[…] Though the highs and lows of human experience are all here, it's often the gimcrack set design and fashion chops in these vintage clunkers that really wow – the pot-holder sweater vests, ponytails decorated with yarn, hippies with crumb-catching moustaches, banana-seat bikes and a hard rain of Quaaludes and amphetamines to illustrate the dangers of drug addiction. It is hard to believe anyone would buy the goofball cause-and-effect of that pill-popper's weather pattern in "Drugs Are Like That". Co-produced by the Miami Junior League and narrated by Anita Bryant in this cheery little hand-slapper, a kid stealing cookies from a cookie jar is implied to be headed down a bad road to Bowery bum rolls and LSD parties. (from: http://clatl.com/atlanta/av-geeks-greatest-hits-lessons-learned/Content?oid=1268313)

The Sailor and the Seagull(en)

The Sailor and the Seagull was released by the U.S. Navy in 1949 with a simple goal: encouraging servicemen to re-enlist. In the film, a disgruntled sailor named McGinty complains about the raw deal he believes he is receiving by serving in the Navy. As luck would have it, a seagull comes to release him from service so that he can experience the freedom of civilian life. McGinty soon learns, however, that civilian life means less freedom and less money than he had imagined and quickly jumps at the chance to re-enlist. (cont. http://blogs.archives.gov/unwritten-record/2013/09/26/sailor-and-the-seagull/)

We Can't Live Without Cosmos(ru)

Two cosmonauts, two friends, try to do their best in their everyday training life to make their common dream a reality. But this story is not only about the dream.

Swimming Paradise(nl)

Two ten-year-old girls go to a subtropical swimming paradise. They look forward to the wave pool and the chute, but are distracted by other, older swimmers. Like teenage girls with real breasts in the bubble bath, and big boys blocking the chute or taking their goggles. The little girls gradually seem to realise the days of their carefree childhood are numbered.

The Hideout(en)

A young girl's life is thrown upside down when she is molested by her favorite teacher. Through the support of her best friend, she finds the strength to tell her mother.

LHR(en)

A colour anamorphic musical look at London's Heathrow airport over 24-hours in November 1971. The subject was shot entirely at Heathrow airport without recording any direct sound. LHR's many layered tracks were all compiled, recorded and laid in post-production.

i.Mirror by China Tracy(en)

Cao Fei recorded her experiences within the online social platform Second Life. The result is a wistful, surreal vision of an alternative reality sprung from the pop culture fantasies and hyper-consumerism of contemporary urban China, while also trying to transcend its real-life limitations. It can be seen as an answer to the challenge posed by River Elegy: how to envision a new Chinese destiny founded on principles of individuality, creativity, discovery, and freedom. The film also reflects the contemporary condition of the virtual supplanting our experience of the real.

Yearbook(en)

A man is hired to compile the definitive history of human existence before the planet is blown up by aliens.