Pulcinella is the principal character who dreams himself into a wild nightmare of a dream that leads us through an abstract world. Emanuele Luzzati designed the forms and art style, and Giulio Gianini animated and took care of the technical aspect.
Pulcinella is an artistically imaginative and very inspiring short with a lot of free improvisation and a harmonious interaction between music and motion characterise. It was inspired by the Italian opera and the traditional folk theatre Commedia dell'Arte.
Amaël Isnard, Manuel Javelle and Clément Picon directed this strange short, in which madness at the mental institution as the animals drive the monkey doctor crazy making music.
George Dunning, like his contemporaries John Hubley and Norman McLaren, can best be described as an experimentalist, having used every medium to make animated films, including cut-outs, painting on glass, and direct painting onto film as well as more orthodox methods such as cel and paper. But he hahs been marked him as an individual talent for is use of articulated, painted, metal cut-outs. The first films from the NFB animation unit were cut-outs, because of the equipment limitations they faced (all they had was a 35mm title stand with a vertically mounted camera). The first cut-outs were jointed or unjointed and made out of cardboard and soft metal sheets.
Dunning simplified the process and the method of making the joints. He used black thread between the shoulders and the bodies to provide greater flexibility.He needed two assistants, the animators Grant Munro and Robert Verrall, to complete this film. Three Blind Mice tells of horrific factory accidents that befell three mice that work there. It's an educative and bizarre film because this short, using simple cut-out animation and the song "Three--- Blind--- Mice----", illustrates why industrial safety rules must be observed. The nursery rhyme favorites prove no less foolish in the factory than when they provoked reprisal from the farmer's wife. They disobey all the safety rules with dire results.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed was the first full-length animated film and despite being 75 years old, the silhouette animation looks clean, fresh and technically adroit. Lotte Reiniger spent three years making this silent animated film based on the Arabian Nights legends. She worked with animator Bertold Bartosch and background artist Walter Ruttman for three years on the film. A wicked sorcerer tricks Prince Achmed into riding a magical flying horse. The heroic prince is able to subdue the magical horse, which he uses to fly off to many adventures. While travelling, he falls in love with the beautiful Princess Peri Banu and must defeat an army of demons to win her heart. Reiniger made the entire film frame-by-frame with elaborate paper cutouts under a camera. The paper cutouts were jointed using wires and delicately arranged on top of a lightbox, where it was photographed frame by frame. A modern, existential condition is visible in the construction of her silhouettes: fragmented pieces of paper bolted together at various joints, moving mechanically from frame to frame.
A study of natural movement is very important, so that the little figures appear to move just as men and women and animals do. The backgrounds for the characters are cut out with scissors as well and designed to give a unified style to the whole picture. They are cut from layers of transparent paper. The color-tinted film uses a diverse cast of characters, animals and elaborate backgrounds that make an otherwise limited monochromatic experience come alive. And the music adds narrative to the piece, with each character having their own theme. Human gestures, in particular, are wonderfully underplayed, helping the film throughout, as well as rendering several scenes with an ethereal, erotic quality. Lotte Reiniger brings a unique perspective to the look of traditional characters, as she uses intricate Eastern details to show off astoundingly delicate filigree cutting work and an amazing grasp of the way in which shapes work together and of optical illusions. You can buy The Adventures of Prince Achmed dvd and the essay The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
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About
The goal of Mellart is to promote experimental and underground culture in its various visual forms: animation, art, cinema and comics. It's directed by Marco Milone. He is both a chess and a comics journalist (his book Fumetti was one of the finalists of the Franco Fossati Prize), a poet (Geometria del silenzio, Sulle orme della speranza, Nel labirinto del delirio) and a writer (L'eterna condanna ed altri racconti). He was editor of «Inguine mahgazine», «Be Side» and «Solaris», and of the publishing house Cagliostro E-Press. He also plays chess. He's in the national correspondence chess team. His blogs are: Marco Milone Poeta, Beautychess.
dvd and the essay