Stille Nacht V: Dog Door

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life

Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?

The Falls

Told in the form of a mock documentary in 92 short parts, nineteen million people are left obsessed with birds and flight following a strange occurrence. A documentarian analyses the lives of all the survivors whose surnames begin with FALL to uncover the truth behind the event.

Stille Nacht IV: Can't Go Wrong Without You

Short animated film featuring the song "Can't Go Wrong Without You" by His Name Is Alive.

The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer

In Prague, a professorial puppet, with metal pincers for hands and an open book for a hat, takes a boy as a pupil. First, the professor empties fluff and toys from the child's head, leaving him without the top of his head for most of the film. The professor then teaches the lad about illusions and perspectives, the pursuit of an object through exploring a bank of drawers, divining an object, and the migration of forms. The child then brings out a box with a tarantula in it: the professor puts his "hands" into the box and describes what he feels. The boy receives a final lesson about animation and film making; then the professor gives him a brain and his own open-book hat.

Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies

Stop-motion animated short film in which, among other things, a man made of wire looks malevolent.

Street of Crocodiles

A puppet, newly released from his strings, explores the sinister room in which he finds himself.

In Absentia

A woman sits alone on a chair at a table in a room on one of the top floors of an asylum. Bright spot lights dot the night, sometimes shining on her window. She sharpens pencils and writes on a page in a copy book. The pencil point often breaks under her fingers' force. She places broken points outside the window on the sill. A satanic figure is somewhere nearby, animated but of straw or clay, not flesh. She finishes her writing, tears the paper from the pad, folds it, places it in an envelope, and slips it through a slot. Is she writing to her husband? "Sweetheart, come."

Alice in Not So Wonderland

The story of Alice in Wonderland, explored in the stop-motion world of the Quay brothers.

Stille Nacht I: Dramolet

A magnet moves on a floor. A moth beats against a window. A doll child watches the magnet; threads of metal filings gather around the magnet.

The Sandman

One of several collaborative dance films by the Brothers Quay & (dancer, choreographer) William Tuckett. Little enough info around on line, but there's briefly by way of Wikipedia entry. Adapted rather loosely from the works of the E.T.A. Hoffman. Familiar Quays' tropes, much in evidence: automata, trompe l'oeil effects, etc. No credit on the sound design (which is fairly elaborate), tho' that is possibly Larry Sider.

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes

Dark fairytale about a demonic doctor who abducts a beautiful opera singer with designs on transforming her into a mechanical nightingale.

This Unnameable Little Broom

Stop-motion animated short film in which a puppet on a trike captures a puppet bird-man.

Quay

In 2015, Christopher Nolan curated a selection of short films by the surrealist animators the Quay Brothers to be distributed as a touring 35mm presentation. The three films—"In Absentia" (2000), "The Comb" (1991) and "Street of Crocodiles" (1986)—were accompanied by this brief portrait of the brothers at work in their London studio.

Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married?

Stop-motion animated short film with a white ball, a rabbit, and a girl, and a voice singing "Are We Still Married".

Wonderwood: Comme des garçons

A bird acts as an alchemist in an enchanted forest, selecting different kinds of wood to combine them in a parquet floor.

The Doll's Breath

Afraid of losing his wife, Horatio creates a replica he calls Hortensia. But things don't go as planned... Shot on 35mm and propelled by an impressive score by Michèle Bokanowski, the Quay Brothers evoke an intense drama of jealousy, betrayal and murder, revolving around a window dresser's obsession for a life-sized doll.