The Mascot, Pioneering Stop Animation Film, by Wladyslaw Starewicz


The Mascot is a 1934 film by the Russian animator Wladyslaw Starewicz. The film pioneered a number of stop animation techniques, making it a seminal film in the history of animation. About Starewicz’s film, the great animator Terry Gilliam wrote:

His work is absolutely breathtaking, surreal, inventive and extraordinary, encompassing everything that Jan Svankmajer, Walerian Borowczyk and the Quay Brothers [see below] would do subsequently…. It is important, before you journey through all these mind-bending worlds, to remember that it was all done years ago, by someone most of us have forgotten about now. This is where it all began.

You can find The Mascot in the Animation section of our big collection of Free Movies Online.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.