This is the yuotube trailer to the 1965 silent animation 'The Hand'. I saw this film in the early 1970s, when BBC childrens televsion showed international contributions and even made programmes for the deaf and arty, 'Vision On'. The BBC showed films that came from behind the Iron Curtain, if the aesthetic passed what they were happy to show. Children in the UK were not conditioned by the work of Disney, or the speed and editing of the MGM and Warner Bros cartoons, though they too were shown. What Jiří Trnka showed in this film was how politics did not have to be for grown ups only - any child who had a hobby and the space to practice it in would recognise the message here. Please see the full length version of the film here.
The brief description of the film in Czech says:
ReplyDeleteTrnka’s final film is a sad fable about a powerless harlequin and an all-powerful hand. The harlequin’s plight mirrored the situation faced by many of our artists in their time. The film was banned for many years, and in 1984, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named it the fifth-best animated film of all time.