Zagreb Film

What happens when a bunch of young animation artists are given their own animation studio and assigned to create hundreds of animated shorts with complete visual and narrative freedom? The results would be Zagreb Film, which was quite possibly the most exciting cartoon studio in the world during the late-50s and 1960s. Their films remain as fresh and exciting today as they were a half century ago – animated shorts created without creative compromise by artists who wanted to explore the art to its fullest potential. Unbelievably, and quite unfortunately, almost none of the Zagreb library has ever been released onto home video or dvd. But there is a bit of Zagreb online. Hans Bacher has just posted an inspiring series of frame grabs HERE and HERE from some of the studio’s early shorts. And below you can watch Dusan Vukotic’s ERSATZ/SUBSTITUTE (1961), which is one of the studio’s best known shorts.