Parabola is a celebration of film’s ability to create new ways of seeing the forms around us. Creating juxtapositions between light/shadow, stasis/motion, and form/music, this black-and-white short invites us to see the parabolic curve, or “nature’s poetry,” as both invigorating and beguiling.
At an orphanage, the children are sad because they received used defective toys as gifts. Professor Grampy sees the children while passing by in his sled and has an idea on how to give them a merry Christmas.
A young boy obsessed with trains sneaks out to play with the real trains that run just a few feet from the fence around his house. When he falls off of one and is knocked unconscious, he has a dream.
Ali Baba senior and his son Ali Baba live in poverty. One day they happen to see the Forty Thieves enter their cave. After the thieves leave, Ali Baba and his son enter the cave and start to fill their pockets with the treasure they find inside. Alas for them, the Forty Thieves return and they are forced to hide in large jars. But of course they are discovered...
Created in conjunction with Lipton as a soft-sell for its products, Tea Pot Town seems largely inspired by the Sunshine Makers narrative. Just as Sunshine Makers promoted milk - showing cheerful gnomes using it to cheer up their gloomy rivals - Tea Pot Town purported that drinking tea once per day added positivity to life and helped chase away negative thoughts.
As in the nursery rhyme, Simple Simon meets a pieman on his way to the fair and samples his wares. However, when he makes no purchase, the pieman becomes angry, follows Simon to the fair, and makes his stay there miserable.
The inhabitants, including the trees and rocks, of Balloon Land are made entirely of balloons. They come under attack from the evil Pincushion Man. With the help of a quickly inflated army, they manage to fend off the attacker.
Old Mother Hubbard is the laundress for the king, but when she finds her cupboard bare, her dog travels to the palace where he winds up performing for the king.
A group of farm animals run away and form an a cappella quartet. Four animals discover their talent singing together and try to use their newfound quartet to make it through life.
In this classic fable, a hen asks help with chores from other farm animals. None of the animals want to help do work, but they all want to share the fruits of the hen's labor.
Mussorgsky's composition is the soundtrack for this pin-screen animated take on night and wild things. A scarecrow blows down, clouds move by quickly. Beings take shape; a town appears, animals flee, and a horse gallops by. A child looks on. Monsters run and float by: the phantasmagoric is everywhere. A woman's figure tumbles through space. A clash ensues. The horse falls. Goblins take control. The night and its denizens are relentless. Forms appear and become grotesque. Will dawn and calm ever come?