Raoul Servais
Winter Days is a 2003 animated film, directed by Kihachirō Kawamoto. It is based on one of the renku (collaborative linked poems) in the 1684 collection of the same name by the 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō. The creation of the film followed the traditional collaborative nature of the source material – the visuals for each of the 36 stanzas were independently created by 35 different animators. As well as many Japanese animators, Kawamoto assembled leading names of animation from across the world. Each animator was asked to contribute at least 30 seconds to illustrate their stanza, and most of the sequences are under a minute (Yuriy Norshteyn's, though, is nearly two minutes long).
A group of convicts slowly drag their balls and chains through a desolate landscape. One of them discovers a strange structure and decides to climb it.
Nocturnal Butterflies is Servais' serene and melancholic homage to Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux (1897-1994), whose architectural paintings serve as the basis for the mise-en-scène for the film, and whose opaquely gazed women represent the enigmatic, silent witnesses who guard the secrets of the eccentric artist's curious world of precisely rendered, hermetic construction.
Sir Halewyn’s magical song lures girls from afar to his gloomy forest, from where none returns. Based on a medieval song.
A powerful nation has experimented with a new gas, which does not kill or injure the asphyxiated subjects, only puts them in a lethargic and mystical state. X-70 gas bombs will be dropped by mistake over Nebelux and provoke an unexpected mutation of the population of this friendly little country. (miff.com.au)
In a world where people are easily indoctrinated by speech, a reporter wants to know what people think about the actual political situation?
An invading army destroys all color in a harmless town and brings it in a state of depression. Then a jester arrives.
A day in the life of an organ grinder, down on his luck, who wanders the streets of Paris, dreaming of what might be. He can't help but crank out the occasional false note, just often enough to enrage his listeners and discourage any donations. He dreams of playing a large pipe organ. The juke box drowns him out at a cocktail bar, a church organ drowns him out on a street, pinball machines drown him out at Luna Park. The city's neon lights and commercial posters overwhelm his small art. At the end of the day, he captures the tear of a calliope horse - his sole earnings for the day - which may prove magical.
On a November day a man deposits a flower garland for his old car at the junk yard. But the place appears to be a labyrinth in which he gets lost.
In a coastal village a faulty street lantern lands on the rubbish yard. During a storm a fishermen's boat is in trouble. The big lighthouse has fallen asleep, but the street lantern saves the boat.
November 1914, the front in Flanders. In a partially destroyed aid station, the wounded French soldier François is the only one left. He lies on a field bed and has an open wound in the side. Suddenly, he sees the silhouette of a figure with a pointed helmet on its head looming.
