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Spotlight on Cannes

Fandor travels to the French Riviera with 14 laudable films spanning 50 years of the Cannes Film Festival.

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Émile Cohl

Films

Fantasmagoria

Émile Cohl was already 50 by the time he made his first breakthrough work for Gaumont. FANTASMAGORIA's squirmy chalk drawings are infused with the same anarchic spirit which inspired his earlier work as a caricaturist and art provocateur. Pointedly crude, the animation skewers a bourgeois lady at the theater within seconds....
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Fantasmagoria

(1908) 2 min

French Short

Émile Cohl

Émile Cohl was already 50 by the time he made his first breakthrough work for Gaumont. FANTASMAGORIA's...
The Puppet's Nightmare

The nightmare of Émile Cohl’s chalk animation is one of unreliable appearances. Fishermen catch fish which eat them whole. Ladders transform into coils which just as suddenly take the form of angry mustachioed soldiers. The human figure at the receiving end of these transmogrifications is subject to all...
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The Puppet's Nightmare

(1908) 2 min

French Animation

Émile Cohl

The nightmare of Émile Cohl’s chalk animation is one of unreliable appearances....
Drama at the Puppets' House

As the title suggests, DRAMA AT THE PUPPETS’ HOUSE is one of Émile Cohl’s more theatrical animated shorts. The chalked forms are arranged as a cast, with two stick figures vying for the affection of a third and a stern policeman patrolling the frame. Cohl’s sly animation sends up propriety and honor even...
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Drama at the Puppets' House

(1908) 3 min

French Silent

Émile Cohl

As the title suggests, DRAMA AT THE PUPPETS’ HOUSE is one of Émile Cohl’s more...
The Magic Hoop

Émile Cohl mixes live-action and stop-motion animation in this charming evocation of the power of imagination. A magician shapes his cane into a hoop with strange properties for a young girl. Costume changes and city promenades give way towards greater abstraction as the film becomes absorbed by what goes on inside the ring.
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The Magic Hoop

(1908) 5 min

French Family

Émile Cohl

Émile Cohl mixes live-action and stop-motion animation in this charming evocation of the power of...

The Little Soldier Who Became a God

The same mysterious ring of Émile Cohl’s THE MAGIC HOOP reappears here to bring to life a case of toy soldiers (ninety years ahead of TOY STORY). When one is left behind, a strange course of events leads him to a distant tribe. THE LITTLE SOLDIER WHO BECAME A GOD is easily one of the most surreal of Cohl’s...
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The Little Soldier Who Became a God

(1908) 4 min

French Animation

Émile Cohl

The same mysterious ring of Émile Cohl’s THE MAGIC HOOP reappears here to bring...
The Boutdebois Brothers

Émile Cohl combines puppetry and stop-motion animation in this surprisingly graceful rendition of a vaudeville routine. Two miniatures perform on a painted stage, twirling through an uncannily lifelike acrobat routine.
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The Boutdebois Brothers

(1908) 2 min

French Animation

Émile Cohl

Émile Cohl combines puppetry and stop-motion animation in this surprisingly...
Transfigurations

A showman invites patrons to step up to his Kinetoscope-style magic box and glimpse the answers to their most burning questions. Émile Cohl’s irreverent animation takes over from here, painting less than flattering portraits of futures in marriage and business. The only satisfied customer is the one who...
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Transfigurations

(1909) 6 min

French Silent

Émile Cohl

A showman invites patrons to step up to his Kinetoscope-style magic box and...
Let's Be Sporty

Émile Cohl coolly undercuts the nobility of sport in this mischievous series of stop-motion tableaux. Toy figures zoom around on ice skates, lift giant dumbbells and shoot elephants out of the sky.
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Let's Be Sporty

(1909) 5 min

French Animation

Émile Cohl

Émile Cohl coolly undercuts the nobility of sport in this mischievous series of stop-motion tableaux. Toy...

Japanese Fantasy

A surreal stop-motion haiku directed by Émile Cohl featuring dolls and insects, masks and mice.
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Japanese Fantasy

(1909) 1 min

French Animation

Émile Cohl

A surreal stop-motion haiku directed by Émile Cohl featuring dolls and insects,...
The Happy Microbes

Microbes parallel the higher life forms when, under closer "scientific" examination, they've anthropomorphized recognizable traits.
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The Happy Microbes

(1909) 4 min

French Animation

Émile Cohl

Microbes parallel the higher life forms when, under closer "scientific"...
Modern Education

The great men of letters and military conquest pose for history as they would a screen test in Émile Cohl’s irreverent short.
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Modern Education

(1909) 3 min

French Drama

Émile Cohl

The great men of letters and military conquest pose for history as they would a...
The Living Fan

A floating history of women and fans, from Eve on the first hot day to a Parisian lady sitting in her salon.
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The Living Fan

(1909) 4 min

American Drama

Émile Cohl

A floating history of women and fans, from Eve on the first hot day to a Parisian lady sitting in her salon.

Spanish Clair de Lune

A jealous scene at a cantina takes an unexpected turn when the spurned lover’s suicide leap is intercepted by a UFO. Émile Cohl borrows liberally from Georges Méliès’s classic A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902) but his fantasy of celestial redemption is full of irreverent touches.
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Spanish Clair de Lune

(1909) 4 min

French Short

Émile Cohl

A jealous scene at a cantina takes an unexpected turn when the spurned lover’s...
Crowns

A beguiling cycle of variations on the titular theme. Crowns of every type for every situation!
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Crowns

(1909) 6 min

French Silent

Émile Cohl

A beguiling cycle of variations on the titular theme. Crowns of every type for every situation!
Delicate Porcelains

Balletic tableaux of porcelain in history. Something of a cinematic oddity, the notion of a "still life in motion" wasn't all that uncommon in the first decade-and-a-half of filmmaking. Arguably more compelling than an assortment of serpentine dances.
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Delicate Porcelains

(1909) 3 min

French Drama

Émile Cohl

Balletic tableaux of porcelain in history. Something of a cinematic oddity, the...
Monsieur Clown Among the Lilliputians

Monsieur Clown struggles to keep the circus animals in line in this characteristically agile Émile Cohl stop-motion short.
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Monsieur Clown Among the Lilliputians

(1909) 4 min

French Animation

Émile Cohl

Monsieur Clown struggles to keep the circus animals in line in this...

Comic Mutations

Animation in an experimental vein with landladies and fishermen shot through with the impertinent spirit of caricature.
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Comic Mutations

(1909) 3 min

French Silent

Émile Cohl

Animation in an experimental vein with landladies and fishermen shot through with the impertinent spirit...
Matrimonial Shoes

A man and woman in adjoining hotel rooms put out their shoes for a shine. A simple romantic farce transforms into something more surreal when the shoes come alive and step through their own courtship ritual. Émile Cohl’s stop-motion chamber drama manages to be both urbane and magical.
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Matrimonial Shoes

(1909) 6 min

French Animation

Émile Cohl

A man and woman in adjoining hotel rooms put out their shoes for a shine. A...
The Enchanted Spectacles

A parlor full of bon vivants pass around an enchanted pair of spectacles that “reveal the personality and pleasures of the one who wears them.” As always in Émile Cohl’s films, there is a thin line separating everyday reality from fantastic apparitions. The glasses reveal free associated stop-motion images...
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The Enchanted Spectacles

(1909) 5 min

American Animation

Émile Cohl

A parlor full of bon vivants pass around an enchanted pair of spectacles that...
Affairs of the Heart

To the heart’s content. Figuratively and literally.
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Affairs of the Heart

(1909) 4 min

French Animation

Émile Cohl

To the heart’s content. Figuratively and literally.

Floral Frameworks

Émile Cohl’s blossoming animation splits our attention between the ornate geometries of the floral frames and the beguiling portraits nested within them.
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Floral Frameworks

(1910) 5 min

French Short

Émile Cohl

Émile Cohl’s blossoming animation splits our attention between the ornate...
Smile-o-Scope

A clown winds up a peculiar film projector and so commences a deliriously inventive pageant of animated faces evoking childlike wonder in metamorphosis. Émile Cohl incorporates edifying elements like the alphabet and numbers but SMILE-O-SCOPE is several degrees more anarchic than your typical educational film.
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Smile-o-Scope

(1910) 5 min

American Animation

Émile Cohl

A clown winds up a peculiar film projector and so commences a deliriously inventive pageant of animated...

Genres

Recent Reviews

WrensEye

The Boutdebois Brothers

Cute, but dull. Probably amazing for its time.

Affairs of the Heart

It's hard to believe that this inventive animation was produced in 1909!

broadcastinjune

Affairs of the Heart

Simple and sweet.

Lizard

Transfigurations

People who thought morphing was from the computer age are grossly mistalken. This art From earl 1900 ears morphs. No plot really just artistic morphng.

Spanish Clair de Lune

Possibly the first film version of alien abduction. Another unique piece from one of the most original filmmakers.

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