Product Description

Studio: Kino International Release Date: 09/12/2006

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49897 in DVD
• Brand: Kino Video
• Released on: 2006-09-12
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 147 minutes

Customer Reviews

INFORMATION NOW! (Review to follow)
Since Amazon doesn't seem to know what it's got this is straight from the horses mouth... Review after release


Includes the legendary animated film The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Revered as one of the world's most significant figures in animation, Czech filmmaker Jiri Barta has made a career fashioning stunningly gothic worlds of horror and fantasy that are infused with sublime humor and intense moral examinations. Mixing the aesthetic traditions of such artists as Gaudi, Kafka, Poe, Fritz Lang, The Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer, Barta's films are wondrous creations that go far beyond mere children's tales.

His early paper cut-out extravaganzas-Disc Jockey (1980) and The Design (1981)-give way to the object ballet of A Ballad about Green Wood (1983), in which logs celebrate the eternal renaissance of spring. Old mannequins spend their cracked and broken lives In the Club of the Laid Off (1989), and myriad styles of handwear spring to life as a brief history of international cinema in the award-winning The Vanished World of Gloves (1982). Barta's international reputation was cemented with The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1985), a very un-Disney adaptation of the classic German fairytale in which carved wooden puppets in a gothic cubist town are plagued by live rats. Considered one of the greatest works of puppet animation, it recalls the dark medieval epics of Ingmar Bergman. His only live action film, The Last Theft (1987), is a jewel thief/vampire flick shot in the style of 1970s European exploitation cinema.

Working mostly from the prestigious animation studio founded by the legendary Jiri Trnka, Barta's works have been criminally overlooked in the U.S. Kimstim is proud to present all eight of Jiri Barta's films, available for the first time together on one DVD.

* A Ballad About Green Wood
11 minutes, color, 1983
* The Club of the Laid Off
25 minutes, color, 1989
* The Design
6 minutes, color, , 1981
* Disc Jockey
10 minutes, color, 1980
* The Last Theft
* 21 minutes, color, 1987
* The Pied Piper of Hamelin
55 minutes, color, 1985
* Riddles For a Candy
8 minutes, color, 1978
* The Vanished World of Gloves
16 minutes, color, 1982

Critical Acclaim

"Extraordinary... Barta creates a gothic never-was world caught somewhere between Gaudí and Kafka, Caligari and Svankmajer."- TIME OUT

Some of the best stop animation EVER
What it is that makes Czech animators so brilliant? There was Jiri Trnka, back in the day, Jan Svankmajer redefining the medium, and now Jiri Barta. This collection simply must be on the shelves of anyone who truly enjoys stop animation.

The eight pieces presented range from six minutes to 55. All of them are clever and well done, even if 'The Last Theft' and 'Disc Jockey' aren't really stop animation. The two longest pieces deserve the most attention, however. I had seen 'The Club of the Laid Off' before. It presents a crumbling warehouse where unwanted mannikins are sent to be forgotten, but take lives of their own. The forced cheer painted onto their immobile faces amid decay, their own included, cast a creepy spell over the whole twenty-five minutes, as did their deliberate and inaccurate humanity - they were, after all, created to display human clothes. Even their anatomically-innacurate nudity reinforced their pathetic poverty. Their ineffectual tries at normalcy just displayed a poverty of soul, too, opening the question of which creations deserve to have souls.

The best by far was the "Pied Piper of Hamelin." At nearly an hour, this sustained effort in stop-animation is an achievement in sheer endurance if nothing else - at 25 or 30 hand-crafted frames per second, an hour is a long time. But it offers more than that. The Pied Piper plot looms darker than any other I've seen. Without being "adult" in any way, this is certainly not one for the kiddies. But, even if the plotting and characterization didn't meet the highest standards already, the crafting of puppets and sets would still make this one of the best on record. The puppets might look equally at home as gargoyles on a medieval cathedral, as demons from a seventeenth century woodcut, or as wood-carving in a tradition of craftmanship that still exists in modern Germany. If anything, the sets surpass the puppets in evoking a European city of the 1600s, and still carry a rubbery surreality that positions this town firmly in dreamland. I don't know what's usually considered the best in stop animation, but if it's not this, then someone had better have very good evidence to back up their claim.

-- wiredweird

cinema's heart is here
this is an amazing film done in stop-motion animation,and is like many of jan svankmajer's works in form and content.any avant-garde film addict or lover of animation should give it a look.amazing!