Watch 66 Oscar-Nominated-and-Award-Winning Animated Shorts Online, Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada

I recent­ly heard some­one quip that pro­pos­als to cut the Acad­e­my Awards are tan­ta­mount to sug­gest­ing that the NFL trim down the Super Bowl. Cer­tain­ly for many who would rather watch the for­mer any day of the week, even the play-by-play of tech­ni­cal cat­e­gories repays atten­tion. Yet peo­ple who think of the Oscars as a major sport­ing event with big stars and block­busters going head-to-head can still appre­ci­ate the show as more than spec­ta­cle. How else, for exam­ple, would most of us learn about bril­liant ani­mat­ed short films like the Nation­al Film Board of Canada’s Ani­mal Behav­iour, made by hus­band and wife team Ali­son Snow­den and David Fine and nom­i­nat­ed in this year’s Oscars? (See the trail­er above.)

Snow­den and Fine pre­vi­ous­ly won an Oscar in 1995 for Bob’s Birth­day, a hilar­i­ous short about an unhap­py British den­tist. Their lat­est film takes a charm­ing, anthro­po­mor­phic route to the ques­tion Fine pos­es as, “Should what comes nat­u­ral­ly to you be some­thing that you seek to change to please oth­ers, or should oth­ers accept you as you are?”

Group ther­a­py par­tic­i­pants seek­ing accep­tance include Lor­raine, a leech with sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety, Vic­tor, an ape with anger issues, and Cheryl, a pray­ing man­tis, writes the Nation­al Film Board, “who can’t seem to keep a man.”

The NFB informs us that Ani­mal Behav­iour is their 75th Oscar-nom­i­na­tion in the cat­e­go­ry of Ani­mat­ed Short Film, and whether you’re inclined to watch this part of the awards or not, you can get caught up with their exten­sive playlist of 66 Oscar-win­ning and nom­i­nat­ed films on YouTube. (Bob’s Birth­day is not avail­able, at least in the U.S., but you can watch it here.) See Snow­den and Fine’s first film, George and Rose­mary, a sto­ry in which “two gold­en agers prove that pas­sion isn’t reserved for the very young.”


Watch the very impres­sive stop-motion ani­ma­tion of 2007’s Madame Tut­li-Put­li, an “exhil­a­rat­ing exis­ten­tial jour­ney” direct­ed by Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczer­bows­ki. See Chris Landreth’s 2013 Oscar-win­ning com­put­er-ani­mat­ed short, Ryanabout a char­ac­ter “liv­ing every artist’s worst night­mare.”

And see the 2007 Oscar-win­ning exis­ten­tial ani­mat­ed short The Dan­ish Poet, direct­ed by Torill Kove and fea­tur­ing nar­ra­tion by Liv Ull­mann. The offer­ings are vast and var­ied, dis­play­ing the very best of Cana­di­an ani­ma­tion, a nation­al art that usu­al­ly goes unseen and unac­knowl­edged by audi­ences out­side its bor­ders. But after watch­ing sev­er­al of these films you might agree that NFB ani­ma­tion deserves its long his­to­ry of recog­ni­tion at the Oscars. See the com­plete playlist of films here.

Many of these films can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Psy­che­del­ic 1970s Ani­ma­tions of Kei­ichi Tanaa­mi: A Music Video for John Lennon’s “Oh Yoko!,” Sur­re­al Trib­utes to Elvis & Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, and More

Free Ani­mat­ed Films: From Clas­sic to Mod­ern 

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

Watch Black Panther For Free in Theaters, Starting This Friday

FYI. Ear­li­er this week, Dis­ney announced that the Acad­e­my Award-nom­i­nat­ed film Black Pan­ther “will return to the big screen to cel­e­brate Black His­to­ry Month for a one-week engage­ment, Feb­ru­ary 1–7, at 250 par­tic­i­pat­ing AMC The­atres loca­tions. To ensure that the movie is acces­si­ble to all, tick­ets are free for every­one, and there will be two show­ings per day at each par­tic­i­pat­ing the­ater.” To find a list of par­tic­i­pat­ing the­aters, just click here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal Black Pan­ther Ani­mat­ed Series Online: All Six Episodes Now Avail­able Thanks to Mar­vel

Why Mar­vel and Oth­er Hol­ly­wood Films Have Such Bland Music: Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Per­ils of the “Temp Score”

Every Spi­der-Man Movie and TV Show Explained By Kevin Smith

Scenes from Bohemian Rhapsody Compared to Real Life: A 21-Minute Compilation

Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the 2018 bio pic about the British rock band Queen, had its fair share of fac­tu­al inaccuracies–all well doc­u­ment­ed by sites like The Wrap and Screen­Crush. But, here and there, the film paid atten­tion to detail. Wit­ness the scenes from Live Aid, and com­pare them to actu­al footage from 1985. Or sim­ply start at the 9:20 mark of the lengthy com­pi­la­tion above, which duti­ful­ly jux­ta­pos­es scenes from the film with the real life events…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 15, 1985)

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

How Michel Legrand (RIP) Gave the French New Wave a Sound: Revisit the Influential Music He Composed for Jean-Luc Godard & Jacques Demy’s Films

When he died this past week­end, the pro­lif­ic com­pos­er Michel Legrand left behind a large and var­ied body of work, one that won him not just five Gram­my awards but, for the films he scored, three Oscars as well. Though he com­posed the music for more than 200 films and tele­vi­sion shows, many cinephiles will remem­ber him — and gen­er­a­tions of cinephiles to come will know him — as the man who gave the French New Wave a sound. Hav­ing appeared on cam­era as a pianist in Agnès Var­da’s Cleo from 5 to 7 in 1961, he went on to score The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg, the beloved 1964 musi­cal (and a musi­cal with­out any dia­logue spo­ken at all, only sung) direct­ed by Var­da’s hus­band Jacques Demy.

Legrand also com­posed the music for Demy’s next film, the also-musi­cal The Young Girls of Rochefort, in 1967. That same decade, with­out a doubt the head­i­est for La Nou­velle Vague, he worked with no less a cin­e­mat­ic rule-break­er than Jean-Luc Godard on 1962’s Vivre sa vie and 1964’s Bande à part (also known as Band of Out­siders).

“I can’t help won­der­ing whether, since the music is dubbed in, so are the claps, foot-stamps, and fin­ger-snaps,” writes New York­er film crit­ic and Godard schol­ar Richard Brody of the well-known dance scene in the lat­ter, “or whether, for the take used in the film, there was no music play­ing at all, and the trio” — none of them trained dancers — “did their dance to the time of music play­ing in their minds.”

Brody names as “the great­est flour­ish in the sequence” the moment when “the music cuts out, and Godard speaks, in voice-over: ‘Now it’s time to open a sec­ond paren­the­sis, and to describe the emo­tions of the char­ac­ters.’ ” The way the direc­tor’s words inter­rupt the motion of the visu­als, and of Legrand’s score, “dis­tin­guish­es the scene from so many scenes in so many films where so many film­mak­ers are so con­cerned with bring­ing out their char­ac­ters’ emo­tions sole­ly by means of action,” the rea­son for the dull fact that “many movies — and many wrong­ly hailed — give a sense of being con­struct­ed as illus­tra­tions of script ele­ments, the con­nec­tions of dots plant­ed in just the right place to yield a par­tic­u­lar por­trait.”

Legrand did, of course, com­pose for a few such less artis­ti­cal­ly adven­tur­ous films as well, but that just goes to show how wide a vari­ety of cin­e­mat­ic visions his musi­cal aes­thet­ic could accom­mo­date. He scored such mem­o­rable and even influ­en­tial pic­tures as the orig­i­nal The Thomas Crown Affair and Sum­mer of ’42, as well as Orson Welles’ decades-await­ed The Oth­er Side of the Wind, which came out just last year as what Brody calls a “belat­ed mas­ter­piece” and “one of the great last dra­mat­ic fea­tures by any direc­tor.” Legrand’s music could fair­ly be called roman­tic, even sen­ti­men­tal, but like few oth­er com­posers work­ing today, he knew exact­ly what it took — and exact­ly whom to work with — to keep those qual­i­ties from turn­ing sac­cha­rine or banal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

Jacques Demy’s Lyri­cal Mas­ter­piece, The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg

Watch the New Trail­er for Orson Welles’ Lost Film, The Oth­er Side of the Wind: A Glimpse of Footage from the Final­ly Com­plet­ed Film

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

Watch Oscar-Nominated Documentary Universe, the Film that Inspired the Visual Effects of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and Gave the HAL 9000 Computer Its Voice (1960)

Before astro­nauts of the Apol­lo 8 mis­sion took the Earth­rise pho­to in Decem­ber 1968, the world had nev­er seen a clear col­or image of Earth from space. That is if we dis­count the stun­ning space pho­tog­ra­phy screened months ear­li­er to the tune of the “Blue Danube” in Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film “used visu­al effects and imag­i­na­tion (both to a still-impres­sive degree),” as Col­in Mar­shall wrote here in a recent post, to make audi­ences believe that what they saw was indeed our blue mar­ble of a plan­et and oth­er col­or­ful points of inter­est in the solar system—on the way to a jour­ney into unchart­ed, psy­che­del­ic ter­ri­to­ry.

Eight years ear­li­er, film­mak­ers Roman Kroitor and Col­in Low used sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy, “real­is­tic ani­ma­tion,” writes the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, that takes us “into the far regions of space, beyond the reach of the strongest tele­scope, past Moon, Sun, and Milky Way into galax­ies yet unfath­omed.”

Their short doc­u­men­tary, Uni­verse, may not be much remem­bered now—and may have been far out­shone by both real and com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed footage—but in 1961, it claimed a nom­i­na­tion at the 33rd Acad­e­my Awards for Best Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject. “Upon its release in 1960,” notes Liam Lacey at The Globe and Mail, “the Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion ordered 300 copies.”

Anoth­er of the film’s admir­ers also hap­pened to be Kubrick. Biog­ra­ph­er Vin­cent Lobrut­to describes the auteur’s first encounter with Uni­verse:

Kubrick watched the screen with rapt atten­tion while a panora­ma of the galax­ies swirled by, achiev­ing the stan­dard of dynam­ic vision­ary real­ism that he was look­ing for. These images were not flawed by the shod­dy mat­te work, obvi­ous ani­ma­tion and poor minia­tures typ­i­cal­ly found in sci­ence fic­tion films. Uni­verse proved that the cam­era could be a tele­scope to the heav­ens. As the cred­its rolled, Kubrick stud­ied the names of the magi­cians who cre­at­ed the images: Col­in Low, Sid­ney Gold­smith, and Wal­ly Gen­tle­man.

The film was in black and white, not the eye-pop­ping tech­ni­col­or of Kubrick’s mas­ter­piece, but he saw in it exact­ly what he would need when he began work on 2001. “After study­ing Uni­verse for much of 1964,” writes Kubrick schol­ar Michael Ben­son, “ear­ly in the new year Kubrick decid­ed to repli­cate the film’s tech­niques.” He tried to hire Low, who declined because of his work on “his own ambi­tious project: In the Labyrinth,” Lacey writes. He did suc­ceed in hir­ing Wal­ly Gen­tle­man, the spe­cial effects artist who brought Uni­verse’s wiz­ardry to Kubrick­’s film.

Kubrick also hired Uni­verse’s nar­ra­tor, Dou­glas Rain, the Cana­di­an actor who passed away this past Novem­ber but who will live on indef­i­nite­ly into the future as the chill­ing, affect­less voice of the HAL 9000 com­put­er, ances­tor of Siri, Alexa, and the many voic­es of GPS sys­tems every­where. Hear Rain’s cool, detached nar­ra­tion in Uni­verse, above, and see why this extra­or­di­nary film—with the Richard Strauss-like pound­ing tym­pa­ni of Eldon Rathburn’s score—would have inspired Kubrick to make what may rank as the most mes­mer­iz­ing­ly cin­e­mat­ic, dra­mat­i­cal­ly com­pelling, of sci­ence fic­tion space films to this day.

Uni­verse will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made His Mas­ter­pieces: An Intro­duc­tion to His Obses­sive Approach to Film­mak­ing

Stan­ley Kubrick Explains the Mys­te­ri­ous End­ing of 2001: A Space Odyssey in a New­ly Unearthed Inter­view

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

Watch the Meditative Cinepoem “H20”: A Landmark Avant-Garde Art Film from 1929

We all stand to ben­e­fit from a bit of hydrother­a­py, but in these hec­tic, try­ing times, it’s chal­leng­ing to find the time for a bath, let alone come up with the dough for a trop­i­cal vaca­tion or sooth­ing spa expe­ri­ence.

Giv­en the cir­cum­stances, the near­ly hun­dred-year-old exper­i­men­tal film above may be your best option.

In 1929, pho­togra­her and film­mak­er Ralph Stein­er turned his cam­era on a num­ber of watery subjects—hydrants, water­falls, streams, rain­drops dis­turb­ing placid pud­dled sur­faces.…

The result was H20, an 11-and-a-half minute cinepo­em, con­sid­ered by film his­to­ri­ans, The New York Times not­ed in Steiner’s obit, to be “the sec­ond Amer­i­can art film.”

(Have a look at James Sib­ley Wat­son and Melville Webber’s impres­sion­is­tic 1928 adap­ta­tion of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Ush­er if you’re curi­ous about the first.)

Pho­to­play mag­a­zine bestowed its first prize for ama­teur film­mak­ing upon H20, prais­ing Steiner’s pure abstract pat­terns and aston­ish­ing tem­po, and gush­ing that “the pic­ture is bound to attract wide atten­tion and a great deal of dis­cus­sion wher­ev­er it is shown.”

He revis­it­ed the sub­ject two years lat­er with Surf and Sea­weed, above, though his fas­ci­na­tion with move­ment was not lim­it­ed to the nat­ur­al world, as evi­denced by 1930’s Mechan­i­cal Prin­ci­ples.

The hub­bub may have died down a bit in the 90 years since H20’s release, though Steiner’s spir­it lives on in a num­ber of young exper­i­men­tal filmmakers—witness Nor­bert Shieh’s award-win­ning Wash­es, Dave Krunal’s Water­bomb, and Jaden Chen’s A Cup of Water, below.

H2O has been pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty by the Library of Con­gress’ Unit­ed States Nation­al Film Reg­istry. The orig­i­nal piano score in the ver­sion fea­tured on Open Cul­ture was com­posed by William Pear­son.

Down­load a free copy of H20 from the Inter­net archive for use in future try­ing times.

Stein­er’s films will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Avant Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Watch Four Ground­break­ing Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City in Feb­ru­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Mountain Monks: A Vivid Short Documentary on the Monks Who Practice an Ancient, Once-Forbidden Religion in Japan

If you need to get some seri­ous think­ing done, go to the moun­tains. That notion holds across a wide range of cul­tures, but it has a par­tic­u­lar force in Japan, where solo hik­ing, some­times great­ly extend­ed solo hik­ing, has long been a pop­u­lar treat­ment for a wide vari­ety of trou­bles both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al. But no group has tak­en it to quite the extreme as have the Yam­abushi, ascetic moun­tain her­mits who have prac­ticed Shugendō, a hybridiza­tion of ver­sions of eso­teric Bud­dhism, Tao­ism, and Shin­to that goes back to the eighth cen­tu­ry. What sort of lifestyle, one won­ders, would such seri­ous reli­gious ded­i­ca­tion in such a harsh, remote loca­tion pro­duce?

Visu­al jour­nal­ist Fritz Schu­mann, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his doc­u­men­taries on a 1300-year-old Japan­ese hotel and a near­ly extinct Japan­ese print­ing tech­nique, gives us a sense of that in his new short Moun­tain Monks. “Walk­ing bare­foot through rivers, med­i­tat­ing under water­falls and spend­ing the nights on moun­tain­tops — that is the way of the Yam­abushi,” he writes.

“They walk into the for­est to die and be born again.” Their Shugendō teach­ings “peaked in pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing the 17th cen­tu­ry, when Yam­abushi vis­it­ed around 90 per­cent of all vil­lages in north­ern Japan,” and when its monks “were said to have mag­i­cal pow­ers and served as advi­sors to samu­rai and war­lords.” But then, “in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, when Japan opened itself to the west and moved from a feu­dal state towards indus­tri­al­iza­tion, their reli­gion was for­bid­den.”

Though the pro­scrip­tion on Yam­abushi has long since been lift­ed, as a reli­gion it no longer pos­sess­es quite the fol­low­ing it once did. A group of monks has kept its flame alive in secret in iso­la­tion, up in north­ern Japan’s Yam­a­ga­ta pre­fec­ture, and now any­one can sign up for pri­vate cours­es through the offi­cial Yam­abushi­do web site, even for­eign­ers. The sim­ple rig­ors of their dai­ly life may sound appeal­ing indeed to those fed up with whichev­er mod­ern, tech­nol­o­gy-sat­u­rat­ed soci­ety they’ve come from, and Schu­man­n’s film may well con­vince a fair few to look into the expe­ri­ence them­selves. Not to say that he sug­ar-coats it: “The idea,” declares one Yam­abushi mem­ber right at the begin­ning, “is to expe­ri­ence the tor­tures of hell.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hōshi: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Japan­ese Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

A Hyp­not­ic Look at How Japan­ese Samu­rai Swords Are Made

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

Jodie Foster Teaches Filmmaking in Her First Online Course


FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

FYI: Jodie Fos­ter has just rolled out a new online course on film­mak­ing over on Mas­ter­Class. In 18 video lessons, the two-time Oscar-win­ner guides “you through every step of the film­mak­ing process, from sto­ry­board­ing to cast­ing and cam­era cov­er­age.” Accord­ing to Mas­ter­Class, the course comes with “a down­load­able work­book of les­son recaps and access to exclu­sive sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als from Jodie’s archive.” Stu­dents will have “the chance to upload videos to receive feed­back from peers and poten­tial­ly Jodie her­self!” You can enroll in Fos­ter’s new class (which runs $90) here. You can also pay $180 to get an annu­al pass to all of Mas­ter­Class’ cours­es–which includes oth­er film­mak­ing class­es by Ken Burns, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Spike Lee, Wern­er Her­zog and more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing: Fea­tures 30 Video Lessons

Free MIT Course Teach­es You to Watch Movies Like a Crit­ic: Watch Lec­tures from The Film Expe­ri­ence

Colum­bia U. Launch­es a Free Mul­ti­me­dia Glos­sary for Study­ing Cin­e­ma & Film­mak­ing

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