Frédéric Back was born in 1924 in France, where he studied drawing and lithography. He was lured to Canada by Jack London's stories and Clarence Gagnon's paintings, as well as correspondence with a Canadian pen-pal. Back moved to Canada in 1948, married his pen-pal Ghylaine Paquin, and was hired by Radio Canada at the birth of their television network to create still images for display on and to promote moving pictures. The drawings lead to experiments with animations, which lead to a series of animated shorts, starting with the wordless short Abracadabra (9:23, YT) in 1970. You can read and see more about Frédéric Back on his extensive website, and see more animations inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Sep 25, 2011 - 6 comments

Instant Cinema is a comprehensive platform for experimental film, video and computer art, making the best audio-visual work of artists of all generations available to a worldwide audience. Not a tonne in the archive just yet--it's still in rough beta--but still some nice viewing. For instance: Balance Study, or Trying.
posted by dobbs on May 11, 2011 - 5 comments

The Beauty of Pixar and 25 Years of Pixar Animation. (MLYT) (Via and Via)
posted by zarq on Mar 30, 2011 - 23 comments

"We gathered our favorite cutting-edge content creators from across the internet and gave each of them a deceptively simple mission -- tell a short story in an innovative way." Showtime presents: Short Stories. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Dec 20, 2010 - 4 comments

The Oscar-nominated "Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello" is an "adventurous tale of a navigator’s journey to save his ailing wife set in a beautiful world of Victorian science-fiction" and one the many fine film shorts and videos available to watch at shortof theweek.com - a site dedicated to "finding those few [video] gems amongst the enormous heap of garbage they're buried in..." [more inside]
posted by taz on Mar 9, 2009 - 7 comments

Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls (1936), with cameos by Bela Lugosi, John Wayne & Terrence Stamp. This is a Hammer Film.
posted by miss lynnster on Aug 11, 2007 - 16 comments

New York Magazine's top five shorts from the Tribeca Film Festival, presented in full, including the 25-minute documentary "Someone Else's War," about third-world contract employees in Iraq. A bit more inside. [via Nerve's Screengrab]
posted by mediareport on Apr 29, 2007 - 6 comments

"Best Animated Short" is the Oscar category that (arguably) gets the least love. But why? They're often the most accessible, usually coming in at less than 10 minutes in length. Thus, for you consideration, here are direct links to three of the five 2007 nominees: "Maestro", "No Time For Nuts", and "The Danish Poet" (via).
posted by JPowers on Jan 24, 2007 - 14 comments

Norman McLaren's Masterpiece with music by Oscar Peterson. Each frame of this short was scratched directly onto the film in order to be in perfect synch with the pre-recorded soundtrack. This has been discussed before here and more generally here but I haven't seen this online until now. More on Norman McLaren.
posted by ob on Sep 6, 2006 - 34 comments

CON-CAN Movie Festival is an online international short film festival connecting creators and viewers all around the world. (Win/Mac compatible)." Thirty international short films available in the screening room.
posted by dobbs on Jul 12, 2006 - 1 comment

Heiterkeit (12 meg quicktime movie) is an utterly charming German music video about all the other fun things you can do lying down. (Yes, it's entirely safe for work, unless your workplace forbids quirky charm.) If you enjoy it, check out Transsylvanische Verwandte(12 meg quicktime movie), another work by the same director. For a look behind the scenes of both films, there's this making-of video. (The making of video is a realplayer file, and it's in German--but I don't speak German, and I got the general idea.) Via Antville.
posted by yankeefog on Oct 28, 2005 - 12 comments

If you won a hamburger for every ten seconds of a feature film, you'd be a hamburger millionaire.
posted by bigbadem on Apr 12, 2005 - 4 comments