Head

A library patron with a really bad cough irritates another patron, who decides to retaliate.

Funny collage of sea, sun and ice. A show from the beach with skiers, tigers, mermaids and much more.

Based on a correspondence between Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha and the filmmaker, this portrait was made for an exhibition at the MAM (Museum of Modern Art) in Rio de Janeiro. Ione Saldanha (1919-2001) was a contemporary of Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, and Vieira da Silva, all of whom were her friends. She abandoned painting on canvas for more sculptural supports like batten and bamboos which she shaped with color. Matisse was constantly present in her mind and work for inspiration.

Inspired by Eadweard Muybridge's series of photographs entitled "Running Man", Griffin creates a whimsical animated poem, using a variety of graphic styles.

"The film is a travelogue of sorts. In 1960 my family lived in Brazil when my father discovered his sister and brother in Moscow, who he hadn't seen for 40 years, were still alive. Since they couldn't leave the USSR we went to visit them regularly for about 15 years. At the time I had my 8mm then a super 8 camera with which I filmed the family, our outings, picnics, markets and their homes… I decided to use this material, which was not very interesting per se, by mixing it with Soviet found-footage of the same period (1960's, 1970's, 1980's). I used feature films, propaganda footage, newsreels, etc. The result is a kind of Khruschev-era mix with a collage of Soviet music and a voice-over of my memories of the Cold War period."

All the members of an old men's club are large phalluses.

A soldier, returning home from war, chances upon a stranger who offers to buy his violin. The stranger is none other than the devil.

The story of the legendary wits who lunched daily at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City during the 1920s. The core of the so-called Round Table group included short story and poetry writer Dorothy Parker; comic actor and writer Robert Benchley; The New Yorker founder Harold Ross; columnist and social reformer Heywood Broun; critic Alexander Woollcott; and playwrights George S. Kaufman, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber and Robert Sherwood.

A young orphan who lives with her grandmother in a large Virginian home infatuates herself with the voices of Joan d'Arc. Her French nanny seeks out the help of a rich suitor to take her and the orphan away when she realizes that the grandmother cannot offer the orphan the love that she needs.

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.

Using a 1945 Charlie Parker song, American indie animator, George Griffin greets us with a dizzying dance of torn Pop Art images. Shreds of consumer culture flash before us, swayed and absorbed by the tempo and power of Parker's horn.

"Super 8 reels of Paris catwalks I shot in 1979/1980 were supposed to become an experimental short meditation on couture culture. Its authority has unraveled some since and Deleuze’s definition of style: 'creating a foreign language in one’s own language,' encouraged me to loosen the threads of this pursuit. To ponder how fashion and style are interwoven but also influenced by individual flare and whimsy, I stitched together Coco Chanel, Courrèges, Cole Porter and Kaiser Karl with vintage film moments. Then, as now, to grasp the whole cloth of this interface involves finding, but also Losing the Thread…"

Edible animation. Silhouettes of black beans creating mandala patterns with frenzied percussion on track.

Fantastical, larger-than-life puppetry and rambunctiously playful choreography is framed against an Edenic backdrop of Vermont farm country in George Griffin and DeeDee Halleck’s luminous, lyrical short film, which documents the 1974 edition of the Bread and Puppet Theater’s annual Domestic Resurrection Circus, taking place soon after the company’s relocation from downtown Manhattan to the rural New England enclave where it remains headquartered to this day.

USA, 1981, colour, sound, 7 min.

The man just wants a piece of candy. The candy machine just wants a piece of the man. A cartoon employing a novel xerox technique to combine animation and live action.