In this short animation Damien Hess attempts to connect with the tragedy of the First World War, a conflict that helped define Canada. In this film he uses imagery of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial monument in northern France to summon up names, faces and shadows that are fading from our memory. This film was made as part of the third edition of the NFB's Hothouse apprenticeship.
Biplane battles over France in World War I between Bugs and Baron (Yosemite) Sam Von Shamm.
Porky tries to feed his chickens, but some ducks steal the corn he puts out, then declare war. The battle rages, with the ducks against the chickens, sometimes in wing-to-wing combat, but also aerial attacks, and Porky finally turning the tide with his machine gun improvised from a wringer washer and a bag of corn. But the ducks still get the last laugh.
The night before the offensive, a soldier hides in the bottom of an underground. Outside, the war shakes the ground and the man prepares himself with the inescapable... In this stop motion animated film, the bodies of the soldiers become again matter, alloy of earth and steel, curdled in death for eternity.
A young boy in a sailor suit plays with three dolls, representing German soldiers. He slowly nods off and in his dreams they come alive.
The story of one shepherd's single-handed quest to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the French Alps throughout the first half of the 20th century.
A combination of Lightning Sketches along with stop-motion animation illustrate England's reactions and responses in World War One.
Adapting Jaroslav Hasek's raucous satirical novel, and also bringing Josef Lada's equally famous illustrations to garrulous puppet life, posed Trnka one of his biggest creative challenges. Trnka himself felt that the final episode was the most artistically successful, but there's much to enjoy in all three, not least the way that the lackadaisical layabout Svejk's own self-serving anecdotes are realized through cut-out animation.
The true story of the most decorated dog in American military history -- Sgt. Stubby -- and the enduring bonds he forged with his brothers-in-arms in the trenches of World War I.
First World War animated propaganda short, extolling Britain's naval history and mocking the German navy.
The story of how Aurora Mardiganian (1901-94), a survivor of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire (1915-17), became a Hollywood silent film star.
Lightning sketch propaganda stirs outrage about Reims bombing, and features a British bulldog eating the German sausage.
A soldier impatient for his discharge from the army after the armistice ending World War I goes absent without leave and is faced with the consequences of his actions.
An average soldier is caught up in the cogs of an inhuman war machine during the First World War.
This animated short by Claude Cloutier is a pictorial account of an attack on Canadian soldiers during WWI. On the edge of the battlefield, recruits are dreading the order to attack. At the signal, a young soldier leaps into a hell of fire and blood where the earth engulfs both the living and the dead. Blending archival images and Cloutier’s hypnotizing brushstroke, the film is a dazzling illustration of the futility of war.
This short animated film is about Wop May, one of Canada's leading bush pilots in the 1920s.