Swing, Monkey, Swing

Bambi Meets Godzilla

July 1969 •English

Bambi is nibbling the grass, unaware of the upcoming encounter with Godzilla. Who will win when they finally meet? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.

Mad God: Part 1

January 2014 •English

Mad God is a fully practical stop-motion film set in a Miltonesque world of monsters, mad scientists, and war pigs.

Danemon Ban: The Monster Exterminator

January 1935 •Japanese

The boozy mercenary of the title, based on the actual historical figure of Naoyuki Ban (1567-1615), attempts to rid a haunted castle of spooks.

How Animated Cartoons Are Made

September 1919 •English

Wallace Carlson walks viewers through the production of an animated short at Bray Studios.

Teeny-Tiny and the Witch Woman

May 1980 •Czech

A deliciously scary story about a boy who outsmarts an old witch-woman before she can have him and his brothers for dinner.

No Fish

November 2006 •English

Animation short by Baoying Liu.

Farmer Al Falfa's Ape Girl

August 1932 •English

The Farmer is abducted by a capering Jungle Goddess. As pre-Code as a Terrytoon ever got. Most animation is by Frank Moser; with him are Art Babbitt, Jerry Shields, Bill Tytla and others.

Experimental Animation

January 1933 •English

Len Lye scraped together enough funding and borrowed equipment to produce a two-minute short featuring his self-made monkey, singing and dancing to 'Peanut Vendor', a 1931 jazz hit for Red Nichols. The two foot high monkey had bolted, moveable joints and some 50 interchangeable mouths to convey the singing. To get the movements right, Lye filmed his new wife, Jane, a prize-winning rumba dancer.

Elephants Dream

March 2006 •English

Elephants Dream is the story of two strange characters exploring a capricious and seemingly infinite machine. The elder, Proog, acts as a tour-guide and protector, happily showing off the sights and dangers of the machine to his initially curious but increasingly skeptical protege Emo. As their journey unfolds we discover signs that the machine is not all Proog thinks it is, and his guiding takes on a more desperate aspect. Elephants Dream is a story about communication and fiction, made purposefully open-ended as the world’s first 3D animated “Open movie”. The film itself is released under the Creative Commons license, along with the entirety of the production files used to make it (roughly 7 Gigabytes of data). The software used to make the movie is the free/open source animation suite Blender along with other open source software, thus allowing the movie to be remade, remixed and re-purposed with only a computer and the data on the DVD or download.

The Window

November 2012 •Korean

Sergeant Jeong Cheol-min's squad are in a renovated stock room with no window. The squad members are well known to be a hardworking group until Councellor Hong Yeong-soo comes in and starts causing trouble. Hong Yeong-soo seems to have difficulties adjusting to this environment. Things in the army changes rapidly, Jeong Cheol-min and his crew find themselves under attack perceived as the aggressors.

По дороге с облаками

December 1984 •Russian

Chatterbox

December 1980 •Russian

The Paintjackers

January 1959 •Russian

When the clock strikes twelve in a toy store a bunch of paint tubes come to life.

The Little Witch

January 1991 •Russian

The youngest witch is preparing for the magical exam.

Ivashka from the Palace of Pioneers

February 1981 •Russian

Animation film about boy Ivashka's adventures in the country of fairy tales.

Big Buck Bunny

April 2008 •English

Follow a day of the life of Big Buck Bunny when he meets three bullying rodents: Frank, Rinky, and Gamera. The rodents amuse themselves by harassing helpless creatures by throwing fruits, nuts and rocks at them. After the deaths of two of Bunny's favorite butterflies, and an offensive attack on Bunny himself, Bunny sets aside his gentle nature and orchestrates a complex plan for revenge.

Clay or The Origin of Species

January 1964 •English

Traces the rise of life on earth from primordial ooze to the present.

Rhinoceros

February 1964 •German

Based on Eugene Ionesco’s play, this is an animated film warning that by conforming to patterns and living en masse, people will become rhinoceroses.

A Place in the Sun

November 1960 •Czech

Oscar nominated animated short film from Czechoslovakia, 1960. Two characters fight over their claim to a small sunny spot on a beach.

Feral

September 2012 •

A wild boy is found in the woods by a solitary hunter and brought back to civilization. Alienated by a strange new environment, the boy tries to adapt by using the same strategies that kept him safe in the forest.