PROGRAMME 2011

Towards a Canon Of Shorts

Plays:
24/10 - 21.00 Slottsbiografen
30/10 - 15.00 Slottsbiografen

TALE OF TALES

”Go to sleep, or the wolf will carry you into the woods”. A Russian lullaby stirs forgotten memories and brings the past back to life. This is a mood piece told in a non-narrative style by free association using classical music and 30’s jazz tunes and employing varoius animation techniques including puppets, cut-outs and traditional cell animation. Yuri Nurstein is one of the most influential Russian animators and Skazka skazok is regarded by many as the best animated film of all time.

THE SOVIET UNION 1979. Animation. No dialogue. 26 min. DIRECTION: Yuri Nurstein

FINNISH FRUSTRATIONS

After returning back home to Finland from the United States where she had been studying for four years in New York (Bachelor of Arts, Major in Film), Eila Kaarresalo-Kasari was shocked by the frustrating way the Finnish woman was spending her life.

FINLAND 1969. Fiction. Finnish dialogue, English subtitles. 7 min. DIRECTION: Eila Kaarresalo-Kasari

THE RED BALLOON

This is one of the most beloved children’s films of all time, but it’s most definitely not just a kid’s movie. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable, yet the world’s harsh realities finally interfere. With its glorious palette and allegorical purity the film won the Palm D’Or in Cannes and the Academy Award for best short film

FRANCE 1956. Fiction. French dialogue, English subtitles. 34 min. DIRECTION: Albert Lamorisse

NIGHT AND FOG

Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, filmmaker Alain Resnais documented the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz. One of the first cinematic reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust, Night and Fog contrasts the stillness of the abandoned camps’ quiet, empty buildings with haunting wartime footage. With Night and Fog, Resnais investigates the cyclical nature of man’s violence toward man and presents the unsettling suggestion that such horrors could come again.

FRANCE 1955. Documentary. French dialogue, English subtitles. 32 min. DIRECTION: Alain Resnais.