Georges Schwizgebel

A cat and mouse chase through five different animation techniques.

A father is riding with his son through the forest. The sick child thinks he sees the Erlking, who both charms and frightens him. Based on Goethe's poem "Erlkönig" and the music of Franz Schubert and Franz Liszt.

This is the story about a boy not like the others that dreams about finding his place in the world.

A work of visual art that borrows from music the principles of the fugue, with the sudden flight of a man to his hotel room as its main theme. Where he dreams.

While on an airplane, a traveller's spirit plunges into a dream world. Here, under the influence of the unknown, the logic of his desires prevails, and a romantic saga takes shape.

By the magic of a wish, Dorian Gray retains his grace and youth forever. Only his painted portrait will age. Shielded by an apparent innocence, he commits his crimes with impunity... ultimately leading to his downfall.

Between a wave’s rhythm and the breath of a young woman in her sleep, some animated paintings go on modifying each other.

A waltz played with an accordion starts a short story about the running time.

A man exchanges his shadow for wealth, then, disappointed with the result, he has to be content with the seven-league boots, which will help him to find his way.

The film begins with a part of the title disappearing through a cut in its center, cutting through the middle and producing a movement from right to left, revealing a room occupied by a child and her black maid. This is followed by an uninterrupted series of animated images, a kind of fleeting moment or painting that continually transforms, until it becomes a copy of Edouard Manet’s Olympia (1863). The second part begins with the title’s next part, which disappears just like the first one, setting in motion a reverse movement, from left to right, where images related to the first part, out of focus or from other points of view, arrive, ending with the reproduction of Félix Vallotton’s La Blanche et la Noire (1913).

‘La course à l’abîme’ is a depiction of the final ride into hell from ‘La Damnation de Faust’ (1846) by Hector Berlioz.

The story of Cinderella is modernised. Cinderella dreams of clouds and ends up fleeing by plane with her Prince Charming. The image is animated simultaneously at various speeds (decor, moving elements, characters) in connection with the sound tape played by Georges Schwizgebel on the piano. It is an intelligent variation on a well-known story with which the viewer can identify

With the complicity of a painter, an elderly man recovers youth and manages to wander through paintings.

The slow construction of an image, to the rhythm of steps, ends when the monster meets his Bride.

A descrition of a game between two teams where one of the teams change the rules.

Loosely following the Greek myth of the Flight of Icarus, Georges Schwizgebel opens his directional career with Le vol d'lcare, a short animation of LED lights.

The story of a young deer deceived by appearances, or how a good deed in haste can be the cause of a tragedy.

The very first independent film by animator Georges Schwizgebel, which was made in 1969 as an episode in the anthology film "Patchwork". Along with Schwizgebel, "Patchwork" included the talents of filmmakers Claude Luyet, Daniel Suter, Gerald Poussin and Manuel Otero. "Pirouette" combines a simple drawing of a figure with photographs, cut-outs from magazines and samples of cloth. A prominent motif of this collage mix is a drawn male face slightly inspired by pop-art.

A bicycle ride through the streets of Shanghai between spring and summer 1984, from the suburbs to the center of the city.

The return of three Anglicizied natives people to their county or the beginning of a meeting with the modern world that will destroy them.

Twenty animators from the U.S., Switzerland, Poland and China express their friendship with and love of animation in a series of animated variations on the standard countdown.

In his 40-year career since his first "author's film", "Le vol d'Icare" (1974), Schwizgebel has made hardly more than 15 short and medium-length films, mostly using the technique of animated acrylic painting. The brushstrokes and color effects give his works an incredible poetry. Virtually wordless and often accompanied by a piece of music, they are characterized by the stillness of painting and the constant movement of a camera: an eye that wanders and moves around the image itself, which is therefore constantly changing. Schwizgebel plays with repetitions, circles and references (especially to the areas of film and painting). He has created an exciting work that is worth discovering in the form of this collection - all at once and in chronological order.

A visual and musical game which builds and destroys itself according to the vivacious rhythm of Serge Prokofiev’s Scherzo to Piano Concerto No. 2.