Kryptonim Farewell

Anthology of Polish Children's Animation (1947-2000)

An Anthology of Polish Children's Animation includes almost forty shorts chosen from amongst several hundred award-winning or critically well-received films from the last 60 years. The works presented here contain no violence, but are intended not only for younger viewers, but also for lovers of art film, who will value their unusually high artistic quality and innovative form. Among the directors included are some of the most famous names in Polish animation, among them Zenon Wasilewski, Witold Giersz, Daniel Szczechura, Julian Antonisz, and Academy Award-winner Zbigniew Rybczynski.

Mondo candido / Candido's world - by Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi (1975)

Well, this is their most outlandish cinematic confection – a sexual-psychedelic comic-variation on Voltaire's CANDIDE, that transcends time and logic. Basic coherency might be at a minimum, but it's never boring! Set in some nebulous medieval time, Christopher Brown stars as Candido, a free spirit who lives in a Baron's fabulous castle and prances about like Richard Simmons with a hamster up his ass. Taught that this is "the best of all possible worlds," Candido's gleeful routine is shattered when the Baron spots him face down in his chaste daughter Cunegonda's crotch and banishes the lad from his castle.

Russian director Aleksei Fedorchenko surfaced here back in 2005 with First on the Moon, an eccentric, wistful mockumentary inventing a Soviet lunar mission launched at the height of Stalin-era delirium. His third feature, Silent Souls, included in last year's New York Film Festival, is another sort of imaginary excavation, evoking Russia's pre-Slavic, pagan past in the form of a meditative road trip taken by two descendants of the ancient Merja people.