The Drop

Stop Look and Listen

January 1967 •English

Stop Look and Listen is a 1967 sort comedy film written, directed by and starring Len Janson and Chuck Menville. It was mostly filmed in Griffith Park in pixilation [stop-motion photography].The film generates comedy by contrasting the safe and dangerous styles of two drivers who drive in the way made famous by Harold Lloyd: by sitting in the street and seeming to move their bodies as though they were automobiles. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Live Action.

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.

По дороге с облаками

December 1984 •Russian

Chatterbox

December 1980 •Russian

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.

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.

Bourreau d'enfant

October 2011 •French

Three Men in a Tub

March 1938 •English

Alfalfa and the gang build their own "speedboat" powered by ducks, and challenge Waldo to a race for the hand of Darla.

Wholly Smoke

August 1938 •English

A neighborhood bully convinces Porky to take a puff from his cigar, causing Porky to hallucinate a smoke-man named Nick O. Teen, along with a musical number done by cigars, cigarettes and pipes in the likeness of the 3 Stooges, etc.

Walt Disney's Standard Parade for 1939

January 1939 •English

A live action black-and-white prolog tells the story of how Walt Disney came to Hollywood with $300, was rejected by all the major studios, but went on to tremendous success, many awards, and a thriving studio. Titles then ask what this means to the Standard Oil Salesman, and a parade of Disney characters gives us the answer, featuring Mickey as drum major, Minnie carrying a banner, and the 7 Dwarfs carrying the letters "STANDARD" (Dopey gets stuck with the last two): Apparently the various ads for Standard will be featuring Disney characters in the coming year.

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.

Zombiefication

August 2010 •German

The ultimate manual when it comes to the proper handling of the living dead. Recommended behavioural patterns in case of imminent Zombie epidemics are explained in comprehensible steps and vividly executed.

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.

Swing, Monkey, Swing

September 1937 •English

A scarce and seldom seen cartoon from 1937 with excellent hot jazz and containing caricatures of Cab Calloway, Ted Lewis and Bessie Smith.

La marchetta

March 2013 •Italian

Bloomer Smokes Opium

October 1913 •Italian

A series of trick film hallucinations and scary doubling effects result when Patachon smokes an opium cigarette.

Ashes of Doom

January 1970 •English

A chain-smoking woman has an encounter with a vampire.

Achooo Mr. Kerrooschev

September 1960 •English

A cut-out of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sails over newspaper articles as they take place. Combines live photography and collage animation in one film.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

April 2005 •English

One of the most exciting and memorable stories in the history of the World Trade Towers is that of Philippe Petit, a French man who walked a tightrope between the massive monuments in 1974. Narrated by Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal, this is an animated adaptation of the lyrical Caldecott Award-winning book by Mordecai Gerstein. Directed and animated by Michael Sporn, with music by Michael Bacon (of the Bacon Brothers).