The Quay Brothers

An enigmatic story told in seven chapters, each introduced by an elliptical sentence on a title card. A man is in an apartment. He goes outside where a red tram runs beside a cathedral. He can see religious art. In his apartment and workshop, his nearly colorless life does include a cloth of rich, red brocade. He works amid constructs of straight lines, planks, wires, and scaffolding. He falls from a chair in his flat. He's not dead.

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.

Loosely based on the Mesopotamian "Epic of Gilgamesh", here Gilgamesh is portrayed as a grotesque, Picasso-esque being who uses a tricycle to patrol his box-shaped kingdom that hovers above a dark abyss.

Inside a box full of curio, a puppet who is recently freed from his strings explores a dusty and forlorn commercial area. The explorer becomes ensnared into miniature tailor shop by baby-faced dolls.

A doll interacts with lifeless objects like screws, magnets, spoons and a cereal bowl filled with similar metal objects.

Oscillating hands each hold a pen; a man made of wire has a malevolent look and an oscillating eye as he pokes at a bump on his forehead

A porcelain doll and a sleeping woman. How will they interact through her dreams?

Uses animation to explore anamorphosis, a method to put hidden images within an artwork, by distorting it using the rules of perspective.

A calligrapher creates his own quill pen.

A tear falls from the eyes of a veiled face. A white ball whips around a heart-shaped paddle. A mournful voice sings, "Are we still married?" A child's stuffed rabbit watches, sees someone's legs hanging and shoes jiggling, and sees a girl holding a heart-shaped paddle. A hand seen through a door's glass knocks incessantly; the lock jiggles, the child holds the heart-shaped object and leans against the wall, sometimes moving up and down on the toes of her shoes. The rabbit watches, plays with the ball, tries to keep the door shut. The child raises her face; we see a woman's eyes.

Near an extraordinary chair with many legs, a hand is visible gripping an edge. The hand is weathered, the fingers cracked and scarred. The end of a rifle appears and a shot fires. The bullet is visible whirling through space; it caroms and then goes through a pine cone. A long spoon emerges from a drawer in the chair and stretches toward the hand. The bullet is on the spoon. Later, the hand holds the bullet between two fingers; another shot is fired.

A short black and white animated film with a contemporary musical accompaniment.

A young man goes to a school for servants run by a brother and sister. In the dreamlike and surreal world that he enters, how will his presence impact the people there and possibly even the school itself?

Two men seek to negotiate an agreement of international significance.

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."

As a young boy is send to bed by his mother, a creature seemingly out to get him called The Sandman, lurks in the shadows.

A dog and a doll are both seen masturbating in this short film that also serves as a music video to Sparklehorse's Dog Door.

Steve Martland's Street Songs realized in eerily beautiful animation.

A display at the strange and wonderful artifacts in a collection of medical curiosities.

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

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