First Americans (Part I): And Their Gods

An animated short outlining the problems with alcohol consumption.

This film illustrates the basic facts of human reproduction shown through the lives of a young farm couple with one child.

Animals on a farm lead a revolution against the farmers to put their destiny in their own hands. However this revolution eats their own children and they cannot avoid corruption.

Uses animated and live-action sequences to provide a factual analysis of the looming water shortage in industrialized countries, and the ecological hazards implied for the world as the problem reaches a crisis stage.

"Stapp was one of the greatest animators working in the 1950-1975 era, using stylized, often pointillist abstract imagery, in a floating world sometimes surrealist, at other times reminiscent of Japanese "ukiyo-e" illustration. His spectacular 'Symmetry' is his greatest film, a fantasy of dancing images breaking apart, spinning, and converging." -Academic Film Archive of North America

This outstanding cartoon successfully combines a social message with unique color animation, provocative commentary and a distinguished musical score.

Sent by the U.S. government as a participant in the Marshall Plan with a specific mission to assist the French in re-gearing their animation studios, Stapp discovered a Europe much-decimated by war, but in further danger of annihilation by nuclear weapons. Returning to the U.S., he produced this alarming-yet-hopeful film, replete with its lonely, Tanguy-inspired landscapes peopled with static figures casting long shadows across charcoal-colored plains. While taking the risk of leaning a bit toward didacticism, Stapp managed to urgently convey the thought that world destruction was not necessarily inevitable, provided that people embrace, rather than reject their cultural and racial differences. ‘Picture’ is a unique document resulting from the sometimes dreamy, sometimes nightmarish vision of the artist in a war-torn land, with the spectre of death hovering ever-so-slightly ahead.

This funny animated short, a cynical look at the excesses of commercialism in city and town planning, was produced at Ohio State University.

Stapp's pointillist style here has matured since the first of the series, done in 1969. Here, he also makes extensive use of parallel images converging and diverging on the multi-plane camera.

A three-minute fantasy of butterflies and dragonflies cavorting amongst the pussywillows, Japanese-inspired animation accompanied by two variations on keyboard works by the Baroque composer.