Classic animated short from 1979 which is funny and creepy in equal measure. Harpya won the Palme d’Or for best short film at Cannes that year and in its own small way could be seen as continuing the Belgian taste for Symbolism and Surrealism.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Bruges-la-Morte
• Short films by Walerian Borowczyk
• Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux
Thank you so much for finding this – and for your excellent website, which has helped me to recall lots of visual memories and inspire me. Harpya was shown on tv, probably BBC2 in around 1979 and I also remember Channel 4 having a most interesting Animation Week, too. I recall content and images but not titles, its only by stumbling across fortunate postings like this that my patience is born out! Thanks again.
thank you very much for sharing this. I am now a fan of this film maker and very into this visual style. keep sharing these beautiful finds and producing brilliant art/design.
Hi Sue. I saw the film on both those occasions as well, the latter being from the era when C4 was worth watching; for a while they were big supporters of animation.
Anyone who likes the look of this should probably try and see Taxandria (linked above). I still haven’t seen it myself but it seems to be filmed using the same techniques.
Nothing to do with this (apart from some faint surrealism), but I just came back from a week in Prague where I discovered a very interesting photographer called Jiri Stach.
I found some (limited) informations about him there:
http://www.galerienovysvet.cz/jirsta_en.htm
I thought you might like his pictures…
Thanks, Nathalie. I think I may have seen some of those before, one or two seem vaguely familiar. The old photo print style with the degraded borders is very reminiscent of similar work by Joel-Peter Witkin.