I recently stumbled upon the work of Polish director Julian Józef Antonisz (1941-1987), a previously unknown (to me) master of the camera-less animation technique. Like most people, when I think of camera-less animation, the type of films that immediately pop to mind are by filmmakers like Len Lye and Norman McLaren. It’s a revelation to discover Antonisz who has such a refreshingly unique take on the technique. A well known figure of the Polish animation scene, Antonisz made dozens of films between 1967 and 1986, including the anarchic Dada-infused How a Sausage Dog Works which can be viewed below. YouTube also offers us his first film, Phobia (1967).

Antonisz is a largely unknown figure in the West, but if the nearly 100,000 views on YouTube and dozens of comments in Polish are any indication, his work seems to be better recognized in his native Poland. I discovered a rough English translation of the film courtesy of YouTube user Wodzu and have posted it below the film, though chances are it’ll simply add to your confusion.

Translation
[min:sec]
[00:04] this is how a simple electrical mechanical “hitter-knocker” works
[00:18] this is how a cherry-”kapacitron”(???) works
[00:23] this is how a dyfusional pimbdziaula works
[00:30] this is how a electro-”cabbager” works
[00:38] this is how a steel-koziówka(???) works
[00:45] this is how a safety pin works
[00:49] and other very very-complex inventions
[00:59] and how does a dachshund work?
[01:06] this is how a dachshund works
[02:26] dachshunds have a head
[02:34] a middle
[02:39] and rear part of body
[02:44] inside he have intestine
[02:47] eventually, everything that lives, have some intestines inside
[02:57] dachshund have 3 emotional states
[03:05] he can be angry
[03:11] furious
[03:20] and he can be sad, sorrowful
[03:27] he can be joyful, happy
[03:32] he can be happy
[03:41] [song] …because i’m afraid of emotions, here and there
[03:45] he can be cheerful
[04:00] EWARYST (it’s very strange and funny first name)
[05:02] don’t destroy a dachshund! because it is very complicated mechanism. even a computer is a piece of cake, compared to dachshund
[05:29] don’t destroy the kitty!
[05:38] don’t destroy the pike!
[05:50] don’t destroy the “zurawka”!
[06:12] because these are animals which we need to live
[06:21] rather try to model ourselfs on a nature
[06:30] let’s build quiet muscle-power engine!
[06:41] small estimate
[06:53] one butterfly’ eye is built from thousands of biological photo-diodes
[07:05] the cost of one german photo-diode type FG-70 is 75zl
[07:15] times 20.000 = 1.500.000
[07:28] times 2 eyes…
[07:33] 3.000.000
[07:34] when we destroy one butterfly, we destroy very high class device with biological value
[07:45] 30 million zlotych! (yes, she should have said 3 milion zl, but director of this film asked caretaker of block of flats where he lived for giving her voice to film, that’s why announcer sometimes has problems with the reading ;) )
[07:54] don’t destroy the dachshund!!!

If you have any desire to watch and own some of the best animated shorts of the last twenty years, Acme Filmworks has just released 18 DVD compilations of these films - available individually or in three box sets.

The filmmakers on these sets are a virtual who’s-who of the best contemporary independent animators: Cordell Barker, Borge Ring, Mark Baker, John Dilworth and on and on. The shorts collected include Bill Plympton’s THE FAN AND THE FLOWER, Gaelle Denis’ CITY PARADISE, Marv Newland’s ANIJAM, Virgil Widrich’s FAST FILM, Chris Landreth’s RYAN, Michael Dudok de Wit’s FATHER AND DAUGHTER, Paul Driessen’s 3 MISSES, Wendy Tilby & Amanda Forbis’ WHEN THE DAY BREAKS, Koji Yamamura’s MT. HEAD, Richard Condie’s THE BIG SNIT and Joanna’s Quinn’s GIRL’S NIGHT OUT, amongst many others.

You can buy them on individual DVDs (containing three shorts each) for $5.00 or you can obtain all 54 shorts in three box sets for $30 $90 bucks. An incredible bargain if you ask me. The DVDs are only available through AWN’s www.filmporium.com and the AWN Store.

NFB director Théodore Ushev writes to let me know that his gorgeous Constructivist-flavored short Tower Bawher is now viewable for free on the NFB website for at least a couple of weeks thanks to their World Animation Day celebration. Check it out HERE. Ushev’s work also appears on the Brew as the illustrations for Chris Robinson’s column “Alone, Stinking and Unafraid.”

Cold Rush is a new French student film created by Mikael Lynen, Simon Corbaux, Tristan Urbin and Rémi Certhoux at the Supinfocom school. My enthusiasm for the film was slightly dampened by the plodding pace of storytelling and unsatisfying ending, but the short has a lot going for it including a grand cinematic vision and a well-conceived near-monochromatic production design. As a piece of student CG, it’s undeniably impressive, and from a technical standpoint trumps many professional CG productions. Watch the film HERE (57mb QuickTime file) and read more behind-the-scenes details at CGSociety.com.

(Thanks, Tim Bjorklund)

YouTuber Phil Gray, who uploaded this rare Tex Avery documentary a while back, has posted more difficult-to-find pieces of animation online: the British animated shorts Automania 2000 (1963) and Pan-Tele-Tron (1957). As films, Automania is clearly the stronger of the two and the only one which I can recommend, but there are some fun design elements in the industrial short Pan-Tele-Tron which might make it worth a glance as well.

Automania 2000 (1963)
studio: Halas & Batchelor
directed by John Halas

Pan-Tele-Tron (1957)
A Pearl & Dean Production
directed by Digby Turpin

It’s an encouraging sign for the development of CG animation that we are increasingly seeing young artists creating computer work that is non-photoreal and more evocative than descriptive. A prime example of this is a piece we wrote about a while back: RGBXYZ by David O’Reilly. A more recent bit of stylized CG that came my way is the short Elk Cloner by student filmmaker Jason Fletcher, aka Isoceles, who created it at SAIC. Even after reading the artist statement and supporting documentation (Elk Cloner was an early computer virus that infected the Apple II), I can’t say I have much of a clue of what it’s about. But is a piece worth recommending, and features an original filmmaking voice combined with a refreshingly abstract approach to CGI.

(Thanks Steve Moore)

Independent animator Jeff Scher (who won the New Media prize in Ottawa on Sunday for his TimesSelect piece L’eau Life) made another little film of note, Lost and Found, by tracing over several bits of Fleischer, Van Beuren and Felix animation. I love stuff like this. It’s fun, and takes nothing away from the original works (and may encourage artier types to take a closer look at classic cartoons).

Here’s a contest for the super-nerds in our readership (and I use the tern super-nerds in the most affectionate way - I’m one, too). Whoever is first to name all the clips rotoscoped in Lost and Found will win a brand new DVD collection: Felix the Cat: The Complete 1958-1959 Series. I will select the winner (at my discretion) from comments recieved today (9/25). Winner will be announced on Wednesday.