Rozwuzzanie by Leszek Komorowski, Poland. Using pencil animation it depicts a woman rolling up a ball of wool. The lines of the drawing become the wool strand and are wound until even the woman vanishes.
March by Stoyan Dykov, Bulgaria. A sex show comes to town in a caravan. The men sneak out at night to see the show but it turns out to be a ‘What the Butler Saw’ type device.
The Four Wishes by Michel Ocelot, France. Definitely an ‘X’ rated film. Saint Martin grants four wishes to a man and his wife. She wishes her husband was covered with male genitals. Out of spite, he wishes she was covered in female genitals. This is graphically depicted. The man realises how unpractical this is and wishes them all gone. They are then without any genitals. He wishes they were back to normal and that is the four wishes used up. Saint Martin suggests they should wish for brains next time.
Wessennjaja Mucha by H. Wolmer and R. Unt, USSR. A puppet film about a fly, a beetle and a spider. The fly puppet is excellent with a leathery body and hairy legs. Good characterisations parodying human relationships in an insect world.
Lupo the Butcher by Danny Antonucci, Canada. Lupo is based on a distant relative of the director. He uses very colourful language and has a quick fire temper. While he is chopping meat he manages to cut off his finger. He gets angry with himself and chops himself up. Mostly drawn in firm black lines on a white background, the red meat and blood stand out in contrast.
Pithecanthropus Erectus by Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein, Germany. Three men on a mission. The puppets are dressed in long coats and they glide along with no attempt to give them a walking action.
Museum by Petra Dolleman, Holland. A man rides up on a bicycle, parks it and enters a museum. He walks through a series of rooms, each containing one figure drawn in varying brightly coloured modern art styles. As he proceeds he takes on some of the charactistics of the displays. By the time he leaves he is a mass of coloured shapes.
An Inside Job by Aidan Hickey, Ireland. This story of the man who has his gold fillings blasted out by a thief disguised as a dentist went down very well with the audience who ‘ood’ and ‘and’ as his gums were injected and his teeth drilled. Douce Nuit by Martial Wannaz, Switzerland, has attractive backgrounds painted with a spotted texture. The action takes place in a seemingly quiet garden at night – until closer observation reveals the creatures who prey on each other: the frog eats a spider; a ferret eats the frog and so on.
Les Assassins by Frederico Vitali, France. A man and a woman sit eating their soup oblivious to the strange creatures moving around outside their window. Skilful cel animation.
Souvenir by Luc Degryes, Hungary. Animals leave a city and roam across open countryside. They are pursued by a coach containing tourists who take photographs. Drawn with detailed pencil animation and nice action in the running animals.
Cumciulum Vitai by Pavel Koutsky, Czechoslovakia, opens with someone studying a form they have to fill in. Like many animators they find it easier to put their thoughts into pictures rather than words. There are flashbacks to school, college and art school with graphic representations of the lessons learned. Drawn in pencil with some added colour, it has a lively style and amusing ideas.
Club by James Clay, Austria. A plasticine animation of a group of intellectuals sitting around talking. An argument develops and then a fight. One man produces a gun and shoots them all. It has primitive figures with good movement.
Orpheus by Maurizio Forestieri, Italy. Nuns dance to the Can Can. A lively film which is a mixture of Nicole Van Goethem’s Full of Graces and the Dance of the Hours from Disney’s Fantasia.
Girls Night Out by Joanna Quinn, UK. This superbly funny film about Welsh factory girls having a hen party, went down very well with the audience.
A Crushed World by Boyko Kaner, Bulgaria. A puppet film with flat figures made of paper. A prize winner at Annecy ‘87.
Sunny Side Up by Paul Driessen, Holland. A sailor is marooned on an island. It has a great sound-track with sploshes and slurps as the sun rises and the moon falls into the sea, marking the passage of time. A boat arrives to pick up the man but his reflection, seen in the water, is left behind. Then the picture turns upside down and we realise reflection and reality have been reversed.
Bustle by Ivan Tankushev, Bulgaria. A complex story about a monster who frightens the villagers. Later he returns in an air-balloon with some men. It has a very detailed painting style of animation. During a chase sequence the camera tracks through the landscape by re-painting the background for each frame. The plot is obscure, for example, why does the monster throw out an apple which the whole village scrabble after?
Les Miserables by Mara Mattuschka, Austria. Marching can- openers, scissors and other sharp instruments act in a menacing way.