The Thief and the Cobbler (1993)

This film is based upon the ancient Arabian character of Nasruddin, a figure from the classic texts of '1001 Arabian Nights'. The Thief and the Cobbler is esotic and extravagant. The sheer beauty and subtlety of the simplest details are breathtaking. Generally, The Thief and the Cobbler remind me of the finest mimics of Buster Keaton.
The scenes are very intricate and it's all hand-drawn and painted cel animation. The Thief and the Cobbler is the best animated long film I've ever seen!
I hate Warner Bros for having stopped the work of Richard William.



Williams conceived the project (as a nearly silent movie) as early as 1964 but he started this ambitious animated film only in 1968 together with Art Babbit, Grim Natwick, Ken Harris, Emery Hawkins and other great animators. The film was originally self financed by Williams with money coming in from his animated commercials.
The film was gaining notoriety in the animation world as a masterpiece in the making, with over a decade of part-time attention devoted to it but it really did need some serious funding. In the late 70s, Saudi Prince Mohammed Faisil agreed to finance the film's most spectacular sequence 'The War Room'. After winning an academy award for Roger Rabbit, Williams got the film financed externally so it could be completed. I can imagine Williams' excitement: eventually each and every element which could be animated would be animated!
But he was a perfectionist and took time to work and work, often without sleep, more often without pay. Unfortunately, Williams took such a long time to make the film that Warner began to fear that their work would be stolen by Disney’s Aladdin (1992). This turned out to be a bad decision because after going over the budget the investors got nervous and pulled the film from him and had it completed by someone else. The film had about 10 to 15 min left to complete when it was taken out of Williams hands. Instead of just completing the film, the person in charge of the completion decided to re-work the film to make it more mainstream: Fred Calvert not only added dialogues and songs but replaced much of the original scenes and changed the editing.
You can buy The Thief And The Cobbler.

The Adventures of Ashley

You can read Faith Erin Hick 's other comics on his website.

Meow (1982)

Meow is a funny political tale which won the Jury's Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.



Marcos Magalhãe show us the effects of american cultural invasion. The story is simple and essential, the animation too.
He also makes Animando , a documentary about various animation tecniques.

Dum Dum Girls

Andrea Campanella is the founder member of the magazine CUT UP. His works: IL GRANDE FLOYD, ''Storia di Ermanno'', "Dum Dum Girls" '. He has been a curator of various film conferences.

Black and White High School (2003)

Charles Chadwick explores the existential potentials of non-narrative cinema and experimental music. Despite its title, this short isn't about racism but is a loose footage exploration of sexuality and infantilization.



There are repetitive patterns and visual motifs (above all the recurrence of two colors: red and blue), which explore the relationship between teenagers and sex and drugs. These arguments are depicted in the clinical and biological sense.
There are seven intermittent animated sequences, dispersed throughout the film, which illustrate the human body.

Passage of the Olympic Flame to Paris

By Vincent Rif.

The Heart Collector (2006)

The Heart Collector is a Vancouver Film School 2D animation. Featuring various surreal and metaphorical scenes of a man searching for the confidence to interact with those around him, Michael Fallik explores the harsh realities of mood disorders through his sound design.



A man with no heart rips out the hearts of lovers in order to make himself one of his own.
This short has been screened in many international festivals and was elected Best of 2006 by Channel Frederator.

Untiled (Parking Lot)

by Philip Ullrich.

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

The Great Train Robbery, often lauded as one of the first movies to include a linear narrative within its running time, came out of the Edison company over a hundred years ago, following their experiments in the previous decades with shorter topical pieces such as cockfighting, dancers and other limited scenarios.
This short is the most popular and commercially successful film of the pre-nickelodeon era and established the notion that film could be a commercially-viable medium.
In the film's fourteen scenes, a narrative story with multiple plot lines tells the story of a train holdup with six-shooters. The steam locomotive always provides a point of reference from different filming perspectives.
The precursor to the western film genre is based on an 1896 story by Scott Marble. The plot was inspired by a true event that occurred on August 29, 1900, when four members of George Leroy Parker's (Butch Cassidy) 'Hole in the Wall' gang halted the No. 3 train on the Union Pacific Railroad tracks toward Table Rock, Wyoming. The bandits forced the conductor to uncouple the passenger cars from the rest of the train and then blew up the safe in the mail car to escape with about $5,000 in cash.

The clerk at the train station is assaulted and left tied by four men, who then rob the train, threaten the operator, take all the money and shoot a passenger while trying to escape. A little girl discovers the clerk tied and gives notice to the sheriff, who at once goes along with his men hunting the bandits.
The action of each scene is told with only one shot. Almost every shot is a static, long shot, confining the action to the perspective of the camera at eye level. Edwin S. Porter used a number of innovative techniques, many of them for the first time, including parallel editing, minor camera movement, location shooting and less stage-bound camera placement. Jump-cuts or cross-cuts were a new, sophisticated editing technique, showing two separate lines of action or events happening continuously at identical times but in different places. Tension and excitement is achieved by moving the players, rather than moving the camera angles.
Even shots that approximate the point of view of a character within the fiction and which are now associated with the externalization of thoughts and emotions, are there more to provide visual pleasure than narrative information.
You can read the script.
You can buy Great Train Robbery - 100th Anniversay.

Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles 2

Neil Swaab writes and draws Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles.

Kataku (1979)

Kihachiro Kawamoto is a pioneer in the neglected field of stop motion puppet animation. He takes inspiration from his fortuitous meeting with the Czech maestro Jiri Trinka and from the Russian Ladislaw Starewicz. He was impressed by how Trinka's and Strarewicz's puppets truly began to take on a life of their own. But today, Kawamoto's puppets are so beautiful and expressive he can't envy his masters.



Kawamoto turned to Japan's aesthetic traditions for his subject matter.
House of Flame is based on the Noh play ‘Motomezuka - the Seeker’s Mound’, which tells the story of a young woman named Unai-Otome who is loved by two men. Not knowing which to choose, in anguish, she chooses death. And although her intentions are pure, not even the grave brings the respite she longed for from her earthly dilemma.
The short is haunting and poetic, at the same time. It narrates of passion and loss.



House of Flame isn't a pure stop motion. It's melded with more conventional 2d techniques, such as the painted matte foregrounds of flames and water as the young maiden finds herself plunged into the very depths of hell itself, both masking out and balancing the colour composition across the frame.
You can buy The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto (1968-1979) and The Book of the Dead.

Bird's Mentor

Michael Knapp. He's working at Blue Sky Studios as the Art Director on the third Ice Age movie. He previously worked as a designer on the animated films Robots, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Horton Hears A Who and spent a few months art directing the Academy Award nominated short No Time For Nuts. His work can be found in Spectrum 12 and 13 as well as the Society of Illustrators Annuals 48 and 49.

Une Histoire Vertebrale (2006)

Blackbone Tale is realized by Jeremy Clapin in collaboration with Spirit Productions, with the support of Centre de la Premiere Oeuvre (GOBELINS). It's a high result of mixing 2d and 3d: the characters are made in 3d cellshading and the remains in 2d.
This silent mute is pure poetry.


A man alone, with his peculiar physique: he has his head held low, looking down at the ground.
Clapin needs only few minutes to show you the emotional state of this man: his loneliness and his quest for a human being like him. A profound analysis of alienation and frustation of people: man needs to live with other men.

Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles

Neil Swaab is a freelance illustrator and book designer whose clients include HarperCollins, The Utne Reader, The Village Voice, Storage Magazine, Plenty Magazine and a ton of alt-weekly papers and other trade publications. He is also the illustrator of Yet Another NASTYbook by Barry Yourgrau. In addition, Neil is an instructor at Parsons, the New School for Design, where he teaches in the Illustration department. He writes and draws Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles.