An Animated Cinema History and Mouth Rock

Last week, The Animation Show, the love child festival of Don Hertzfeldt and Mike Judge, posted a list of the Top 10 Animated Shorts on You Tube, all of which are worth a watch.

But one real standout on their list will most likely never be released in the U.S., because clearing the copyrights will be darn near impossible. It's the incomparable Fast Film, from Austrian animator Virgil Widrich, which condenses the history of cinema into an amazing 14 minute animated joy ride. The process of making the film is almost as exciting as watching it, film images were printed on paper and origamied all to hell, then animated in hand-made style and fed into the computer to be layered. The result is hypnotizing - when I first saw this at the Toronto Film Festival in 2003 the audience was visibly stunned. Watch the internet video version for a taste, then watch your local festival and museum archive screenings to see if it makes an appearance, or rush to order the the DVD. You've got to see this on the big screen to see all the amazing nuances.
You Tube     Quicktime (40MB)

Shout out is due to The Morning News' Video Digest blogger Sarah Hepola, who also commented on Fast Film. Her weekly post is a great read, and often points readers to Beware of the Blog. This week she turned me on to an a cappella rock jam by The Incredible Mouth Band (a clever parody of Scottish psychedelic folkies The Incredible String Band), which has had me singing "guitaaaar sooolo shreddingshreddingshreddingshredding" all morning.
You Tube     Quicktime (4MB)
This video is actually by another animator, David Firth, whose shorts at Fat-Pie are worth a peek. Of course, the IMB is no match for the straight-edge hard-core of Jud Jud, but they never made a video. Or used an "organ".

Comments

[David]

Hi,
The correct link to the DVD is:
http://www.shortfilm.com/shop/product_info.php/cPath/22_35/products_id/5

David

[Kenzo (lastever.org / kenzodb.com)]

I'm not sure what you consider "released," but I originally saw the (amazing) Fast Film at the 2003 Cinematexas festival in Austin. Also note that higher quality video of it can be found online if you look really hard.

[Craig]

I'll pretty much be going "Bass Bass Bass Bass Bass.." for the next couple of weeks.