Animation for Adults
A selection drawn from the rich and varied history of animation, with an eye to works for general audiences that push their stories and design into bravura realms. This month’s spotlight falls upon two feature-length films by Marcell Jankovics—a purveyor of trippily colorful folk tales who was Hungary’s best-known animator.
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Rocks in My Pockets
Directed by Signe Baumane | 89 mins | 2014
Armed with a surrealist sensibility and a wicked sense of humor, New York-based Latvian animator Signe Baumane has long probed the thorny parts of life as a woman. Here, hand-drawn imagery combines with papier-mache sets and stop-motion techniques in an ... -
Faust
Directed by Jan Švankmajer | 92 mins | 1994
Drawing on a cluster of iterations of the Faust legend but faithful to none, Švankmajer reimagines the tale of a man’s compact with the Devil through flights of dark, deranging fancy. The inimitable Czech surrealist deploys his trademark combination of ... -
Tatsumi
Directed by Eric Khoo | 96 mins | 2011
In the 1950s, a darker and more cinematic strain appeared in Japanese manga, dubbed “gekiga”—a name said to have been coined by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, an artist at the forefront of this edgy and distinctly adult tradition. In this prismatic biographical work, fi... -
Skhizein
Directed by Jérémy Clapin | 13 mins | 2008
“I am exactly 91cm from myself,” frets Henry, the central figure in this Annecy-and Cannes-awarded account of a life uncentered. After being struck by a meteorite, Henry finds that he must negotiate to the material world—sitting in a chair, opening a win... -
Palmipedarium
Directed by Jérémy Clapin | 10 mins | 2012
Clapin followed up his acclaimed short "Skhizein" (2008) with this wordless and unsettlingly ambiguous fable about a boy who encounters a scraggly avian creature while duck hunting with his father. It’s a short whose placid surfaces belie a latent, buddi... -
Backbone Tale
Directed by Jérémy Clapin | 9 mins | 2004
Clapin’s first short is a game of Tetris as much as it is a love story. It centers on a man whose spine bends at a striking right angle: his eyes can gaze only downwards, his hat perched on the back of his head. The appearance of a woman whose back bends ... -
The Wolf House
Directed by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña | 73 mins | 2018
One of the most stunning animated debuts of the past decade, this cracked fairy tale follows a young woman fleeing a cult and settling into a transmogrifying house inhabited by two pigs. Shot frame by frame and melding painted animati...
