This a 2004 animation directed by Tomek Baginski. Soldiers are pushed to their deaths and photographed. You know, kind of like the way it all works in the real world.
Category Archives: Animation
1955 Urban Renewal Animation: Man of Action
In 1955 The American Council to Improve Our Neighborhoods produced this animation to encourage people to get together and work hard to rebuild and clean up impoverished neighborhoods and slums. Its focus on individual effort, painting old garage doors, and forming groups seems hopelessly naive, but it does at least make an effort to encourage people. The production actually has quite an impressive audio track and I think that’s Ray Walston voicing the Devil. The film calls itself: ‘a film dedicated to the purpose of better living in homes and neighborhoods for… All Americans.’
Blik: Animation by Bastiaan Schravendeel
Bastiaan Schravendeel, who is part of Polder Animation, directed this touching film about a boy who falls in love with and older girl who is a neighbor. The faceless characters do it all with body language.
Via Short of the Week.
A Short Vision: 1956 Animated Nuclear Apocalypse
In 1956 Peter and Joan Foldes made this animation about nuclear doomsday that caused quite an outcry after Ed Sullivan presented it to unsuspecting viewers and their children on his evening show. Io9 has more about the broadcast.
Be Quiet: Animation by Henry Zhang
Henry Zhang, who is studying at the UCLA Animation Workshop, made this perfectly charming animation about a little bird that just wants some damn peace and quiet so it can sing. For goodness sake, how hard can it be? Well, I guess it’s just a noisy world.
Killing the Net: A Film by Duncan Elms
This short film by Duncan Elms explores the danger of an Internet that can be shut down quite easily by governments that want to suppress free expression or crack down on popular movements toward freedom. The recent experience of Egyptians trying to stage a revolution and spread information about it amongst themselves and to the world should be very informative. The Mubarak government was able to turn off Internet access throughout the nation. Even in the U.S., President Obama has sought the power to switch off the Internet if he declares an emergency. That effort has since been watered down, but it is clear that the U.S. government does in fact seek a method for shutting down the Internet. The continued treatment of China, a nation that monitors every single word typed into a web site, as even remotely civilized is an embarrassment to the entire world. Those people won’t even allow a person to think freely, much less post freely on the web. There must be a way to maintain worldwide access to the Internet that is beyond the control of any national government, including the United States government.