A darkly brilliant stop-motion adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin about a plague of rats that punish townsfolk corrupt with greed. One of Czechoslovakia's most ambitious animation projects of the 1980s, notable for its unusual dark art direction, innovative animation techniques and use of a fictitious language.
Two pieces of meat fall in love.
In stop-motion animation, a wardrobe moves through the countryside. It arrives in a house, a child's voice recites Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," and various objects, such as toys and dolls, move about, disintegrate, and play out archetypal scenes. Like Carroll's verse, the images are at once familiar and unfamiliar. A child's play suit, hanging in the wardrobe, becomes the adventure's protagonist.
A young boy named Max who, after dressing in his wolf costume, wreaks such havoc through his household that he is sent to bed without his supper. Max's bedroom undergoes a mysterious transformation into a jungle environment, and he winds up sailing to an island inhabited by malicious beasts known as the "Wild Things." After successfully intimidating the creatures, Max is hailed as the king of the Wild Things and enjoys a playful romp with his subjects. However, he starts to feel lonely and decides to return home, to the Wild Things' dismay. Upon returning to his bedroom, Max discovers a hot supper waiting for him.
Little Rehor isn't allowed to play with the other boys. His only friend is the girl next door, Luci. Rehor's father is doctor on a boat and he has sent Rehor a package with butterfly larvae. When they hatch he discover a fairy who can do magic tricks.
Three bears come home from a bicycling trip through the woods to find a little girl "all nice and cozy and fast asleep" in Baby Bear's bed.
This distinctive documentary portrait of Prague extolls the beauty, significance and spirit of the ancient city adopting modern way of life. The form and content of the film share a common underlining principle. The author doesn't simply list out the sequence of events, but rather approaches them in a broader context of their historic implications and circumstances. The content of the film covers a large period from the pagan times to these days. The facts are grouped under several general headings (paganry, the spread of Christianity, renaissance, baroq and modern times) with allusions to the modern life of Prague and Praguers that has its roots in those times.
A man breaks into a large, seemingly abandoned old house to plunder the gold received. But the house is really abandoned?
Essay film from Czech director Vojtech Jasný on his home country.
A bachelor named Faun with a Don Juan complex, seized with a hypochondriac's fear of the ineluctable approach of death, enters a race against time's passage. Faun's sexual love is imbued with the narcissistic vanity of a self-satisfied bacchant who even towards old age can't manage to forgo his lifelong pose as an irresistable seducer of women. He desperately searches for meaning in superficial, fleeting sex.
Animators and urban planners both create worlds, but Czech stop motion specialist Jiří Barta's ingenious paper cut-out short punctures the stifling architecture of communist housing. Skilled hands blueprint an apartment tower standardized specifications. Envelopes contain the elements of each home. Family dwellings, bachelor pads, scholarly studies and artist studios: different social configurations are permitted but restrained to the same uniform box. A dystopian revision of the REAR WINDOW scenario, THE DESIGN's darkly comic social critique still has teeth.
The allegorical story of two humanized birds - father and son, who usually walk the earth and fly only in case of danger. The two birds are out for a leisurely stroll, playing music together and taking selfies until a hungry cat attempts to spoil their fun. After several unique and imaginative evasive maneuvers, the birds pelt the cat with apple bombs. The film is one of the jewels of the cartoon: the Czech tradition, Disney anthropomorphism and innovative pre-electronic music score.
