Revisit Episodes of Liquid Television, MTV’s 90s Showcase of Funny, Irreverent & Bizarre Animation

MTV stands for Music Tele­vi­sion, and when the net­work launched in 1981, its almost entire­ly music video-based pro­gram­ming was true to its name. With­in a decade, how­ev­er, its man­date had widened to the point that it had become the nat­ur­al home for prac­ti­cal­ly any excit­ing devel­op­ment in Amer­i­can youth cul­ture. And for many MTV view­ers in the ear­ly nine­teen-nineties, youth­ful or oth­er­wise, noth­ing was quite so excit­ing as Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion, whose every broad­cast con­sti­tut­ed a ver­i­ta­ble fes­ti­val of ani­ma­tion that pushed the medi­um’s bound­aries of pos­si­bil­i­ty — as well, every so often, as its bound­aries of taste.

Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion’s orig­i­nal three-sea­son run began in the sum­mer of 1991 and end­ed in ear­ly 1995. All through­out, its for­mat remained con­sis­tent, round­ing up ten or so shorts, each cre­at­ed by dif­fer­ent artists. Their themes could vary wild­ly, and so could their aes­thet­ics: any giv­en broad­cast might con­tain more or less con­ven­tion­al-look­ing car­toons, but also stick­men, pup­pets, ear­ly com­put­er graph­ics, sub­vert­ed nine­teen-fifties imagery (that main­stay of the Gen‑X sen­si­bil­i­ty), Japan­ese ani­me, and even live action, as in the recur­ring drag-show sit­com “Art School Girls of Doom” or the mul­ti-part adap­ta­tion of Charles Burns’ Dog­boy.

Burns’ is hard­ly the the only name asso­ci­at­ed with Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion that comics and ani­ma­tion fans will rec­og­nize. Oth­ers who gained expo­sure through it include Bill Plymp­ton, John R. Dil­worth, Richard Sala, and Mike Judge, whose series Beav­is and Butthead and fea­ture film Office Space both began as shorts seen on Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion.

But no dis­cus­sion of the show can exclude Peter Chung’s futur­is­tic, qua­si-mys­ti­cal, dia­logue-free Æon Flux, whose epony­mous acro­bat­ic assas­sin became a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non unto her­self. The Æon Flux episodes have been cut out of this 22-video Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion playlist, but you can also find a col­lec­tion of uncut broad­casts at the Inter­net Archive.

The Ton­gal video above cred­its the show’s influ­ence to the insight of the show’s cre­ator Japhet Ash­er, who saw that “the atten­tion span of your aver­age TV view­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly young peo­ple, was get­ting short­er and short­er.” Hence Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion’s mod­el: “If you did­n’t like the cur­rent short, anoth­er one, which would be total­ly dif­fer­ent, would be along in a few min­utes. Fur­ther­more, if a seg­ment was so inex­plic­a­bly bizarre and brain-tick­ling, per­haps an even more com­pelling one would come next.” At the time, this would have been tak­en by some observers — much like MTV itself — as a dis­turb­ing reflec­tion of an addled, over-stim­u­lat­ed younger gen­er­a­tion. But with Youtube still about a decade and a half away, it’s fair to say they had­n’t seen any­thing yet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

When a Young Sofia Cop­po­la & Zoe Cas­savetes Made Their Own TV Show: Revis­it Hi-Octane (1994)

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Behold a Creative Animation of the Bayeux Tapestry

In pre­vi­ous cen­turies, unless you were a mem­ber of the nobil­i­ty, a wealthy reli­gious order, or a mer­chant guild, your chances of spend­ing any sig­nif­i­cant amount of time with a Medieval tapes­try were slim. Though “much pro­duc­tion was rel­a­tive­ly coarse, intend­ed for dec­o­ra­tive pur­pos­es,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the tapes­try still com­mand­ed high prices, just as it com­mand­ed respect for its own­er. And as oth­er dec­o­ra­tive arts of the time pre­served his­tor­i­cal memory—or cer­tain polit­i­cal ver­sions of it, at least—tapestry designs might embody “cel­e­bra­to­ry or pro­pa­gan­dis­tic themes” in their weft and warp.

“Enriched with silk and gilt metal­lic thread,” writes the Met, “such tapes­tries were a cen­tral com­po­nent of the osten­ta­tious mag­nif­i­cence used by pow­er­ful sec­u­lar and reli­gious rulers to broad­cast their wealth and might.” Such is one of the most famous of these works, the Bayeux Tapes­try, which com­mem­o­rates the 1066 vic­to­ry of William the Con­queror at the Bat­tle of Hast­ings. The famous wall hang­ing, housed at the Bayeux Muse­um in Nor­mandy, was “prob­a­bly com­mis­sioned in the 1070s” by Bish­op Odo of Bayeux, William’s half-broth­er, mak­ing it a very ear­ly exam­ple of the form. So the site of a Vic­to­ri­an-era repli­ca writes, and yet “noth­ing known is cer­tain about the tapestry’s ori­gins.” (The first writ­ten record of it dates from 1476.)

While the Bayeux Tapes­try may have been inac­ces­si­ble to most peo­ple for how­ev­er many cen­turies it has exist­ed, you can now stand before it in its home of Bayeux, or see the very con­vinc­ing repli­ca at Britain’s Read­ing Muse­um. (You’ll note in both cas­es that the Bayeux tapes­try is not, in fact, a tapes­try, woven on a loom, but a painstak­ing, hand-stitched embroi­dery.) Or, rather than trav­el­ing, you can watch the video above, an ani­mat­ed ren­di­tion of the tapestry’s sto­ry by film­mak­er David New­ton and sound design­er Marc Syl­van.

Dur­ing the years 1064 to the fate­ful 1066, a fierce rival­ry took shape as the ail­ing King Edward the Con­fes­sor’s advi­sor Harold God­win­son and William the Con­queror vied for the crown. Once Edward died in 1066, Harold seized the throne, prompt­ing William to invade and defeat him at the Bat­tle of Hast­ings. The Tapes­try gives us a graph­ic his­to­ry of this bloody con­test, “a sto­ry,” writes the Bayeux Muse­um, “broad­ly in keep­ing with the accounts of authors of the 11th cen­tu­ry.” “The Tapes­try’s depic­tion of the Bat­tle of Hast­ings,” his­to­ri­an Robert Bartlett tells us, “is the fullest pic­to­r­i­al record of a medieval bat­tle in existence”—and the ani­ma­tion above makes it come alive with sound and move­ment.

Note: The Ani­mat­ed Bayeux Tapes­try above was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a stu­dent project. David New­ton pro­vid­ed the ani­ma­tion, and Marc Syl­van cre­at­ed the orig­i­nal music and sound effects. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bayeux Tapes­try Gets Dig­i­tized: View the Medieval Tapes­try in High Res­o­lu­tion, Down to the Indi­vid­ual Thread

Con­struct Your Own Bayeux Tapes­try with This Free Online App

How the Ornate Tapes­tries from the Age of Louis XIV Were Made (and Are Still Made Today)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

13 Experimental Animations of Osamu Tezuka, “the Godfather of Manga” (1964–1987)

If you enjoy mod­ern Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, you can no doubt name sev­er­al mas­ter­pieces of the form off the top of your head, whether acclaimed series like Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion and Cow­boy Bebop to the work of cin­e­ma auteurs like Satoshi Kon and Hayao Miyaza­ki. What may cross your mind less read­i­ly is how much these and oth­er ani­me pro­duc­tions owe to Astro Boy, or as it was known in Japan, Tet­suwan Ato­mu (“Mighty Atom”). First con­ceived on the page by artist Osamu Tezu­ka, remem­bered today as “the God­fa­ther of Man­ga” (i.e., Japan­ese comics), it became an ani­mat­ed tele­vi­sion series in 1962, a pro­duc­tion over­seen — and fate­ful­ly under-bud­get­ed — by Tezu­ka him­self.

“It was a stu­pid­ly low num­ber,” Tezu­ka lat­er wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy of the per-episode fig­ure he quot­ed to his reluc­tant spon­sors. Yet despite the man­i­fold pro­duc­tion stress­es it caused, it forced — like any severe lim­i­ta­tion — a good deal of cre­ativ­i­ty.

In time, writes Matt Alt in Pure Inven­tion: How Japan Made the Mod­ern World, “the beloved hall­marks of Japan­ese ani­mat­ed fare — the strik­ing of the­atri­cal pos­es, the lin­ger­ing freeze-frames, the lim­it­ed ranges of motion — evolved from des­per­ate cost-sav­ing workarounds into fac­tors that dis­tin­guish ani­me from con­tent pro­duced in oth­er lands.”

When they were first pub­licly screened in Novem­ber of 1962, the first episodes of Astro Boy were accom­pa­nied by a less­er-known Tezu­ka project: Tales from a Cer­tain Street Cor­ner (ある街角の物語), a 40-minute film craft­ed with an “anti-Dis­ney” aes­thet­ic. At Nishika­ta Film Review, Cathy Munroe Hotes describes this as “the first of Tezuka’s jikken ani­ma­tion – or exper­i­men­tal works – which Tezu­ka made for artis­tic rather than com­mer­cial pur­pos­es. Although the ani­ma­tion does employ some unusu­al tech­niques such as a POV shot of a plane tree seed fly­ing to the ground, it is not ‘exper­i­men­tal’ in the usu­al sense of the word.”

The term bet­ter suits some of the oth­er works includ­ed in the playlist at the top of the post, which col­lects clips of a vari­ety of Tezuka’s exper­i­men­tal and qua­si-exper­i­men­tal ani­ma­tions pro­duced between the mid-nine­teen-six­ties and the late eight­ies (many of which can eas­i­ly be seen in full on Youtube), which col­lec­tive­ly exhib­it both imag­i­na­tive pow­er and a sense of humor. “Mem­o­ry” (めもりい), from 1964, mix­es tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion with Mon­ty Python-style cutouts to depict the yearn­ings of a post­war salary­man. The omnibus Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion (展覧会の絵), made a cou­ple of years lat­er, sat­i­rizes mod­ern soci­ety in ten dif­fer­ent ways, each scored with a move­ment of the epony­mous Mus­sorgsky piece.

By the last years of Tezuka’s life, the style of his ani­ma­tion seems to have evolved in sev­er­al direc­tions at once. “Jump­ing” (ジャンピング) from 1984, imag­ines what it would be like to jump ever-more-super­hu­man heights from a first-per­son per­spec­tive; “Push” (プッシュ), from 1987, uses a more con­ven­tion­al­ly car­toon­ish aes­thet­ic to ren­der a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic world dom­i­nat­ed by vend­ing machines. That same year, Tezu­ka — a descen­dant of famed samu­rai Hanzō Hat­tori — also released “Mura­masa” (村正), a nuclear-anni­hi­la­tion alle­go­ry about a haunt­ed sword. The threat posed to Earth by man was also the major theme of Leg­end of the For­est (森の伝説), left unfin­ished by the time of Tezuka’s death in 1989 but lat­er picked up by his son Mako­to: just one of the count­less ani­ma­tors, Japan­ese and oth­er­wise, work­ing under the God­fa­ther’s influ­ence today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the First Episode of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, Of Which Stan­ley Kubrick Became a Big Fan

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Watch the Old­est Japan­ese Ani­me Film, Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (1917)

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions (1917 to 1931)

Watch Fan­tas­magorie, the World’s First Ani­mat­ed Car­toon (1908)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch The Idea, the First Animated Film to Deal with Big, Philosophical Ideas (1932)

A vague sense of dis­qui­et set­tled over Europe in the peri­od between World War I and World War II. As the slow burn of mil­i­tant ultra­na­tion­al­ism min­gled with jin­go­ist pop­ulism, author­i­tar­i­an lead­ers and fas­cist fac­tions found mount­ing sup­port among a cit­i­zen­ry hun­gry for cer­tain­ty. Europe’s grow­ing trep­i­da­tion fos­tered some of the 20th century’s most strik­ing painter­ly, lit­er­ary, and cin­e­mat­ic depic­tions of the total­i­tar­i­an­ism that would soon fol­low. It was almost inevitable that this peri­od would see the birth of the first deeply philo­soph­i­cal ani­mat­ed film, known as The Idea.

The Idea first emerged as a word­less nov­el in 1920, drawn by Frans Masereel. Masereel, a close friend of Dadaist and New Objec­tivist artist George Grosz, had cre­at­ed a stark, black-and-white sto­ry about the indomitable nature of ideas. Employ­ing thick, aggres­sive lines obtained through wood­cut print­ing, Masereel depict­ed a con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal order’s fight against the birth of a new idea, which even­tu­al­ly flour­ished in spite of the establishment’s relent­less attempts to sup­press it.

Set­ting to work in 1930, a Czech film­mak­er named Berthold Bar­tosch spent two years ani­mat­ing The Idea. Bartosch’s visu­al style remained true to Masereel’s harsh, vivid lines. His ver­sion of the sto­ry, how­ev­er, took a decid­ed­ly bleak­er turn—one that was more rem­i­nis­cent of the writ­ings of his com­pa­tri­ot, Franz Kaf­ka. Where­as Masereel believed that the puri­ty of good ideas would over­whelm their oppo­si­tion, Bar­tosch, work­ing a decade clos­er to the Nazis’ ascen­dan­cy, was wary of such ide­al­ism.

Above, you can watch what film his­to­ri­an William Moritz has called “the first ani­mat­ed film cre­at­ed as an art­work with seri­ous, even trag­ic, social and philo­soph­i­cal themes.” Paired with a haunt­ing score com­posed by Arthur Honeg­ger, the 25-minute ani­ma­tion is a pow­er­ful­ly mov­ing med­i­ta­tion on art, strug­gle, puri­ty of thought, and pop­ulist sav­agery that remains untar­nished after eight decades.

You can find oth­er great ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Novem­ber, 2013. It was writ­ten by Ilia Blin­d­er­man. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4 Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Watch Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tion of Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

Watch Fantasmagorie, the World’s First Animated Cartoon (1908)

Try­ing to describe the plot of Fan­tas­magorie, the world’s first ani­mat­ed car­toon, is a fol­ly akin to putting last night’s dream into words:

I was dressed as a clown and then I was in a the­ater, except I was also hid­ing under this lady’s hat, and the guy behind us was pluck­ing out the feath­ers, and I was maybe also a jack in the box? And I had a fish­ing pole that turned into a plant that ripped my head off, but only for a few sec­onds. And then there was a giant cham­pagne bot­tle and an ele­phant, and then, sud­den­ly I was on an oper­at­ing table, and you know how some­times in a dream, it’s like you’re being crushed to death? Except I escaped by blow­ing myself up like a bal­loon and then I hopped onto the back of this horse and then I woke up.

The brain­child of ani­ma­tion pio­neer Émile Cohl (1857 – 1938), the trip­py silent short from 1908 is com­posed of 700 draw­ings, pho­tographed onto neg­a­tive film and dou­ble-exposed.

Clock­ing in at under two min­utes, it’s def­i­nite­ly more divert­ing than lis­ten­ing to your bed mate bum­ble through their sub­con­scious’ lat­est inco­her­ent nar­ra­tive.

The film’s title is an homage to a mid-19th cen­tu­ry vari­ant of the mag­ic lantern, known as the fan­tas­mo­graph, while its play­ful, non­sen­si­cal con­tent is in the spir­it of the Inco­her­ent Move­ment of the 1880s.

Cohl, who cut his teeth on polit­i­cal car­i­ca­ture and Guig­nol pup­pet the­atre, went on to cre­ate over 250 films over the next 15 years, expand­ing his explo­rations to include the realms of live action and stop motion ani­ma­tion.

Above, you can watch a some­what restored ver­sion of the film, fea­tur­ing music by Fabio Napo­dano. To get a feel for the orig­i­nal grainier silent film, watch here.

For the defin­i­tive biog­ra­phy of Emile Cohl, read Emile Cohl, Car­i­ca­ture, and Film by Don­ald Crafton (Notre Dame).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917 to 1931)

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917 to 1931)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City tonight, May 13, for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

 

The 11 Censored Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Cartoons That Haven’t Been Aired Since 1968

For decades and decades, Warn­er Bros.’ Looney Tunes and Mer­rie Melodies car­toons have served as a kind of default chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment. Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived for the­atri­cal exhi­bi­tion in the nine­teen-thir­ties, they were ani­mat­ed to a stan­dard that held its own against the sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions along­side which they would lat­er be broad­cast. Even their clas­si­cal music-laden sound­tracks seemed to sig­nal high­er aspi­ra­tions. But when scru­ti­nized close­ly enough, they turned out not to be as time­less and inof­fen­sive as every­one had assumed. In fact, eleven Looney Tunes and Mer­rie Melodies car­toons have been with­held from syn­di­ca­tion since the nine­teen-six­ties due to their con­tent.

The LSu­per­Son­icQ video above takes a look at the “Cen­sored Eleven,” all of which have been sup­pressed for qual­i­ties like “exag­ger­at­ed fea­tures, racist tones, and out­dat­ed ref­er­ences.” Pro­duced between 1931 and 1944, these car­toons have been described as reflect­ing per­cep­tions wide­ly held by view­ers at the time that have since become unac­cept­able. Take, for exam­ple, the black pro­to-Elmer Fudd in “All This and Rab­bit Stew,” from 1941, a col­lec­tion of “eth­nic stereo­types includ­ing over­sized cloth­ing, a shuf­fle to his move­ment, and mum­bling sen­tences.” In oth­er pro­duc­tions, like “Jun­gle Jit­ters” and “The Isle of Pin­go Pon­go,” the offense is against native islanders, depict­ed there­in as hard-par­ty­ing can­ni­bals.

At first glance, “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs,” from 1943, may resem­ble a grotesque car­ni­val of stereo­types. But as direc­tor Bob Clam­pett lat­er explained, it orig­i­nat­ed when he “was approached in Hol­ly­wood by the cast of an all-black musi­cal off-broad­way pro­duc­tion called Jump For Joy while they were doing some spe­cial per­for­mances in Los Ange­les. They asked me why there weren’t any Warn­er’s car­toons with black char­ac­ters and I did­n’t have any good answer for that ques­tion. So we sat down togeth­er and came up with a par­o­dy of Dis­ney’s Snow White, and ‘Coal Black’ was the result.” These per­form­ers pro­vid­ed the voic­es (cred­it­ed, out of con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion, to Mel Blanc), and Clam­pett paid trib­ute in the char­ac­ter designs to real jazz musi­cians he knew from Cen­tral Avenue.

How­ev­er admirable the inten­tions of “Coal Black” — and how­ev­er mas­ter­ful its ani­ma­tion, which has come in for great praise from his­to­ri­ans of the medi­um — it remains rel­e­gat­ed to the banned-car­toons nether­world. Of course, this does­n’t mean you can’t see it today: like most of the “Cen­sored Eleven,” it’s long been boot­legged, and it even under­went restora­tion for the first annu­al Turn­er Clas­sic Movies Film Fes­ti­val in 2010. Some of these con­tro­ver­sial shorts appear on the Looney Tunes Gold Col­lec­tion Vol­ume: 3 DVDs, intro­duced by Whoopi Gold­berg, who makes the sen­si­ble point that “remov­ing these inex­cus­able images and jokes from this col­lec­tion would be the same as say­ing they nev­er exist­ed.” Grown-ups may be okay with that, but kids — always the most dis­cern­ing audi­ence for Warn­er Bros. car­toons — know when they’re being lied to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock: The School­house Rock Par­o­dy Sat­ur­day Night Live May Have Cen­sored

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Oscar-Winning Animation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” Painted on 29,000 Frames of Glass

Ernest Hemingway’s roman­tic adven­ture of man and mar­lin, The Old Man and the Sea, has per­haps spent more time on high school fresh­man Eng­lish read­ing lists than any oth­er work of fic­tion, which might lead one to think of the nov­el as young adult fic­tion. But beyond the book’s abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate broad themes of per­se­ver­ance, courage, and loss, it has an appeal that also reach­es old, wiz­ened men like Hemingway’s San­ti­a­go and young, imag­i­na­tive boy­ish appren­tices like his Mano­lin. The 1952 novel­la rein­vig­o­rat­ed Hemingway’s career, won him a Pulitzer Prize, and even­tu­al­ly con­tributed to his Nobel win in 1954. And luck­i­ly for all those high school Eng­lish stu­dents, Hemingway’s sto­ry has lent itself to some wor­thy screen adap­ta­tions, includ­ing the 1958 film star­ring Spencer Tra­cy as the inde­fati­ga­ble Span­ish-Cuban fish­er­man and a 1990 ver­sion with the mighty Antho­ny Quinn in the role.

One adap­ta­tion that read­ers of Hem­ing­way might miss is the ani­ma­tion above, a co-pro­duc­tion with Cana­di­an, Russ­ian, and Japan­ese stu­dios cre­at­ed by Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Alek­sander Petrov. Win­ner of a 2000 Acad­e­my Award for ani­mat­ed short, the film has as much appeal to a range of view­ers young and old as Hemingway’s book, and for some of the same reasons—it’s cap­ti­vat­ing­ly vivid depic­tion of life on the sea, with its long peri­ods of inac­tiv­i­ty and short bursts of extreme phys­i­cal exer­tion and con­sid­er­able risk.

Both states pro­vide ample oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­plex char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and rich sto­ry­telling as well as excit­ing white-knuck­le sus­pense. Petro­v’s film illus­trates them all, open­ing with images of San­ti­ago’s sto­ries of his sea­far­ing boy­hood off the coast of Africa and stag­ing the dra­mat­ic con­tests between San­ti­a­go, his “broth­er” the mar­lin, and the sharks who devour his prize.

But the pro­duc­tion here, unlike Hemingway’s spare prose, makes a daz­zling dis­play of its tech­nique. For his The Old Man and the Sea, Petrov—only one of a hand­ful of ani­ma­tors skilled in this art—handpainted over 29,000 frames on glass (with help from his son, Dmitri) using slow-dry­ing oils. Petrov moved the paint with his fin­gers to cap­ture the move­ment in the next shot, and while the mag­i­cal effect resem­bles a mov­ing paint­ing, the shoot­ing itself was very tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced, involv­ing a spe­cial­ly con­struct­ed motion-cap­ture cam­era. Petrov and son began their paint­ing in 1997 and fin­ished two years lat­er, tak­ing to heart some of the lessons of the book, it seems. The film’s cre­ators, how­ev­er, fared bet­ter than The Old Man’s pro­tag­o­nist, rich­ly reward­ed for their strug­gle. In addi­tion to an Oscar, the short won awards from BAFTA, the San Diego Film Fes­ti­val, and a hand­ful of oth­er pres­ti­gious inter­na­tion­al bod­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Faulkner’s Review of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Watch a Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man”

Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er: A Free Yale Course

The Great Gats­by Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain and There’s a New Graph­ic Nov­el

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The First Animation That Hayao Miyazaki Directed on His Own: Watch Footage from the Pilot of Yuki’s Sun (1972)

Hayao Miyaza­ki began his career as an ani­ma­tor in 1963, get­ting in the door at Toei Ani­ma­tion not long before the com­pa­ny ceased to hire reg­u­lar­ly. Miyaza­k­i’s equal­ly retire­ment-resis­tant con­tem­po­rary Tet­suya Chi­ba, already well on his way to fame as a man­ga­ka, or com­ic artist, pub­lished the series Yuki no Taiy­ou, or Yuk­i’s Sun, that same year. But the paths of their work would­n’t cross until 1972, when Yuki no Taiy­ou was adapt­ed into a pilot for a prospec­tive ani­mat­ed series, the very first project Miyaza­ki — who had by that point amassed a good deal of expe­ri­ence as not just a key ani­ma­tor and col­lab­o­ra­tor with Stu­dio Ghi­b­li co-founder-to-be Isao Taka­ha­ta, but also as a man­ga­ka him­self — direct­ed solo.

Despite hav­ing been orphaned as an infant, the tit­u­lar Yuki grows into a high-spir­it­ed tomboy so cheer­ful as to have devel­oped the odd habit of phys­i­cal­ly strik­ing oth­er peo­ple when she gets too hap­py.

And as with so many par­ent­less pro­tag­o­nists in chil­dren’s fic­tion, she has not just a dis­tinc­tive per­son­al­i­ty but also a sto­ry-dri­ving desire to dis­cov­er the truth about her ori­gins — which, it’s inti­mat­ed, may not be ordi­nary, and may indeed be spe­cial. Her search for her moth­er sends her on a quest through moun­tain, val­ley, wood, and, giv­en the set­ting of Japan’s north­ern­most island of Hokkai­do, a great deal of snow (the Japan­ese word for which is a homo­phone of Yuk­i’s name).

Alas, this is a quest tele­vi­sion audi­ences would nev­er see, since the plot for Yuki no Taiy­ou, footage from which you can see in the five-minute teas­er above, did­n’t draw a net­work order for a full series. In some respects, it seems con­cep­tu­al­ly sim­i­lar to Sasur­ai no Shou­jo Nell, or Wan­der­ing Girl Nell, a volu­mi­nous­ly loose adap­ta­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ The Old Curios­i­ty Shop that aired in Japan at the end of the sev­en­ties. By that time, Miyaza­ki had com­plet­ed work on his first ani­mat­ed fea­ture as direc­tor, The Cas­tle of Cagliostro. A few years there­after, he would adapt his own man­ga Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind into a motion pic­ture now wide­ly con­sid­ered the debut of the lav­ish, cap­ti­vat­ing Stu­dio Ghi­b­li style — and whose epony­mous pro­tag­o­nist has more than a lit­tle in com­mon with the adven­tur­ous, nature-lov­ing Yuki.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

The Phi­los­o­phy of Hayao Miyaza­ki: A Video Essay on How the Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Reli­gion Shin­to Suf­fus­es Miyazaki’s Films

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

The Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Cel­e­brat­ed in a Glo­ri­ous Con­cert Arranged by Film Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi

Hayao Miyazaki’s Uni­verse Recre­at­ed in a Won­der­ful CGI Trib­ute

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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