Une nuit sur le mont chauve

About a year ago, I saw a short film from Canada called Le PAYSAGISTE. It was made completely by the pinscreen process where little pinholes were painstakingly made in fabric in order to create an animated picture. I was mesmerized by this film from 1976 and no idea that the film maker had actually NOT created the process and that Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker had perfected the process over 40 years earlier with UNE NUIT SUR LE MONT CHAUVE.

Both films are quite lovely to look at but aren't exactly the style of animation that most people would love. It's extremely artistic but not commercially entertaining to the average audience. In an art museum it would play well, but for a group of kids or average theater goers, it's unlikely they'd enjoy the rather artsy style. I liked it quite a bit, though I admit it isn't something I'd like to see every day.

Lyrical, dark, exceptionally interesting animated film. Occasionally charmingly inarticulate but some very special images here. Inspiring work from an early woman director. Saw it last night as part of the Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893-1941 series playing here in Austin. See it if you get a chance.

Seven years before Disney used Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain in Fantasia, Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker used it in this pinscreen animation short, a surreal classic. The theme of the original composition is a witch's sabbath on the Slavic holiday of St. John's Eve, celebrating the birth of John the Baptist six months before Christ. The extraordinary images that fly by in this animation with such vitality are not simple to interpret, but one gets the sense of devilish forces gathering on a wild night, preceding a battle. One also wonders how in the world these artists managed to create this using their pinscreen board (even given 18 months), as there is such variety in the textures and images, some hazy, some three dimensional, all highly artistic. Disturbing, phantasmagoric, and ultimately peaceful, it had me watching it several times, and wondering if I should give it an even higher rating.

I have seen this film several times. It is my favorite pinscreen animation by Alexander Alexeieff and his wife. It is a stunning piece of work and can be thought of as the ultimate demo for the pinscreen.

I wish the films were in better place or that some megolomaniac would do something similar on one of the remaining pinscreens.

See my notes for "The Nose" (La Nez) to see more information on the pinscreen and the couple who used it.

ever wondered why the BEEP Walt Disney made such a horrific sequence at the end of Fantasia? well, don't hesitate to watch Une Nuit sur le Mont chauve, because everything you thought was scary about that animated Disney sequence will now be altered in a real life short movie. here we see games with the death and corpses and witches more than the devil on the mountain himself. it's quite frightening, to be exact. it surely scared the hell out of me (really). the music and the nonstop animation with puppets go to an extreme corporation together, while they blend in a lot of troubling scout camp teachers and fire woods from the depths of hell. you want to be scared? go watch this short movie, it will change your definition of horror movies completely.