The Gruesome Twosome

Cockroach(ja)

My name is a “cockroach”. I was called that from childhood.

The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer(en)

In Prague, a professorial puppet, with metal pincers for hands and an open book for a hat, takes a boy as a pupil. First, the professor empties fluff and toys from the child's head, leaving him without the top of his head for most of the film. The professor then teaches the lad about illusions and perspectives, the pursuit of an object through exploring a bank of drawers, divining an object, and the migration of forms. The child then brings out a box with a tarantula in it: the professor puts his "hands" into the box and describes what he feels. The boy receives a final lesson about animation and film making; then the professor gives him a brain and his own open-book hat.

This Unnameable Little Broom(en)

Stop-motion animated short film in which a puppet on a trike captures a puppet bird-man.

Street of Crocodiles(en)

A puppet, newly released from his strings, explores the sinister room in which he finds himself.

Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies(en)

Stop-motion animated short film in which, among other things, a man made of wire looks malevolent.

The Comb(en)

A porcelain doll’s explorations of a dreamer’s imagination.

The Toll Collector(en)

A parable about a thwarted dream. A narrator tells us about a young woman who wants, more than anything, to be a ballerina. Thanks to animation, we see the problem: her legs make up about three-quarters of her height. She sees the impossibility of her dream and moves to a house on an isolated hill where she lives by herself, lonely, practicing her art, and then, in near despair, taking up knitting. Madness seems close at hand, but is there anything that can bring hope and pull her from her solitary, circumscribed life?

Por una maleza.(es)

My Stuffed Granny(en)

Times are hard for little Sofia, as the Greek recession is taking its toll. With her Father out of work, they rely solely on Greedy Grumpy Granny's pension. Desperate times call for desperate measures; to what extremes will they go, when Granny is no more?

E(en)

In the unearthly world of E, hand-made meets hi-tech as characters appear to consume one another with their own, trafficked likenesses. Constructing her work entirely from laser-printed film stills (approximately 770 in total) lifted from Niklaus Schilling’s 1972 horror film, Nachtschatten, Zemlianski rips, layers, and paints these images with pastels and charcoal, then scans them back together into a bracing animation set to the eponymous song (“E”) by the Berlin-based band, Comb. (Lauren Berliner/Greg Cohen)

Burp(en)

Computer and clay; dedicated to the Amazon rain forest. The first animated short to combine 3D computer animated characters with clay animation. As seen on MTV's Liquid Television.

Oh Dad II(en)

A sand-and-chain-animated young writer fears for our world.

The Automatic Moving Company(fr)

Hired to move house for a patron, furniture, appliances and cutlery pack up and move on their own, headed up by a team of baskets. Often confused with Cohl's film Le Mobilier fidèle (1910).

Deadtime Stories Documentary(en)

A documentary on the work of experimental British animator David Anderson.

The Tape of Karma(en)

A gorehound named Marvin orders a lot of splatter movies for a movie marathon with his fellow gorehounds. He ends up ordering so much that he has trouble keeping up with orders. Come the day of the marathon, him and his friends watch gore and grime until very late at night. Just when they think the marathon is over, Marvin rediscovers one tape that he forgot all about... He quickly calls his buddies back over to watch it, and they soon discover that the tape is something far more ominous than they could have ever suspected.

Black Doll(es)

Prisoners, two sisters share their life in a strange place. The mundane routine, along curiosity, will bring Prita to break the boundaries of the secure place.

The Enchanted Bell(cs)

After a magic bell from Tibet is stolen, a little girl and an elephant undertake a dangerous journey to bring the bell home.

My Art is Not Dead(en)

A poor artist accidentally discovers the use of blood to paint his works and now he's on the search for the perfect color.

Sandman(en)

Characters morph into objects and each other in this stop motion animation made with sand.

It's a SpongeBob Christmas!(en)

At Christmastime in Bikini Bottom, everyone's excited except Plankton, who always gets a lump of coal from Santa. But he vows this year he'll finally get his wish – the Krabby Patty formula! And it won't be by being good. He's gonna make everyone in Bikini Bottom bad!