Marion Rasche

The film creates a vision of the destruction of the world and warns against its realization.

This film visualizes humanity’s quest to relentlessly pursue goals. In the human fight for progress, the march forward cannot be stopped, even when individual people become weary and die. This animated short is based on a poem by the Chilean filmmaker and poet Juan Forch. Chilean painter Hernando León created the design.

The very first images in the film set unprecedented standards in East German animated film: a Buñuelean eye that fills the entire screen, real-life sequences of fleeing animals and a sound collage running contrary to what is seen on the screen. This also extends to the protagonist of the film, a head on a foot without a body or arms who pads wearily through the depressing surroundings. Upon seeing various figures in the sky, he begins to copy their movements. To his surprise, he himself manages to grow wings and takes to the skies. But his attempt at flight ends in a sobering manner however, as it is revealed that flying creatures are just restricted in their range.

The Mapuche tribe asks their Gods for help in difficult situations, including illness and drought. When the Spanish conquerers on their horses invade their country, the indigenous people think that they are aliens. The Spaniards capture and enslave many of the Mapuche tribe. Lautaro, a young captured native, realizes that these aliens are human beings without any divine power. He learns to use their weapons and organizes a resistance movement against the intruders.

An old widower comes up with a plan to not spend Christmas alone.

A beautiful seagull is injured during a storm, ends up in a forest and joins a family of woodpeckers. She is rejected by the older members, but the young woodpecker falls in love with her. So he leaves the forest at home and takes her to the sea, where the seagulls live. There the alien is also rejected. Now they are both looking for a land where they can be happy undisturbed. Several times we see a lonely seagull soaring over the waves of the sea and a woodpecker knocking on the trees of the nearby forest - before both find each other again in the community.

An enumeration of various ways by which the public might react to a film projection.

A conversation between King Pyrrhus and Kineas about the increasingly terrible campaigns of conquest is illustrated. When world domination is achieved, the earth will be a deserted wasteland, with only Pyrrhus and Kineas remaining. They wonder what they will do then.