Kermesse fantastique

Vintage stop motion animation. Produced for 'Philips Radio'. Concept developed in 1948 and Released in 1951. In vintage sci-fi setting man jumps into his radio receiver and visits a fantastic fair which means 'kermis' or 'kermesse'. He makes a superb trip, to realizes that is just was a dream. Or wasn't is? Runningtime 10 minutes. To be seen at goo.gl/MkS6TL

Please visit the website dedicated to the historic puppet films as produced by Dutch movie mogul Joop Geesink and his Dollywood studios.

We'll take you back to the '40s and '50s of the previous century, the era of hand-made puppet animation before computers and video-assist. These animated films were of an unequaled craftsmanship, meticulously produced with time-consuming production methods that required highly specialized skill sets. Dollywood...?

The name Dollywood is a wordplay, combining "doll" and "Hollywood". It suggests film tycoons, movie stars and big budgets. This isn't very far from the truth... Located in Amsterdam, Holland, the Dollywood studios produced a steady stream of high-quality corporate puppet films for countries all over Europe, the United States, as well as countries in the Middle East and Africa. For over two decades the Dollywood name was synonymous with classy, state-of-the-art commercials and corporate films, starring a wide range of puppet actors.

The studios no longer exist. If you Google the name Dollywood now, you'll probably wind up at the Dollywood theme park named after its founder, singer Dolly Parton. Other than their name, the film studio and the theme park have nothing in common.

There was a time, when advertisements in movie theatres were simply great. The products were not put in foreground, but the story.This is a fine example, for this kind. Radio industry has been among the first to use sound (and color) in film to make propaganda for their products. In 1927 Telefunken started bringing sound on film to theatres with their "Tanztee", a Mickey Mouse predecessor type of character giving a dance tea party, that only becomes a success after a radio set is brought in. After that this film displays a "naked" radio set, informing that the new 1927 superheterodyne generation features many advantages. In 1927 optical sound on film, as well as radio, were extremely rare, and practically a novelty under development. (Censorship card dates to October 1927) In 1948, when the Fantastic Carnival was released in theatres, color was a very rare thing, and the studio made this little gem in Technicolor. Again, this is the radio industry to feature something new, and use it for propaganda for their product. The advertising message is short. "Philips Radio - Leadership in Technology". Unlike in modern theatres, where the same length (274 meters aka 10 minutes) of advertisements would like you want to boycott the featured products, this actually made you interested in the thing. The film itself features very nice animation, at highest standards of the craft. If you want to watch it, see it on a movie screen in a 1940's IB Technicolor print. The way it was intended to watch.