Duration: 53 mins
Country: Czechoslovakia, Germany
Rating: All Ages
Genre: Animation, Fantasy
Director: Jiří Barta
Stars: Oldřich Kaiser, Jiří Lábus, Michal Pavlíček, Vilém Čok
Synopsis: The Pied Piper is set in a medieval town: a gothic never-was world where greedy townsfolk (carved out of woodblocks) hunger for gold and eerie cobblestone streets overflow with rubbish. The rubbish brings rats, thousands of “real” rats. When a piper leads the vermin away, the townsfolk reward him not with praise but disdain and thus seal their doom.
Jiří Barta’s vision is engulfed in a delirium of fantasy and horror and his 1986 gothic masterpiece — with its combination of puppet animation, and ornately designed oil-painted backdrops — appears as a darkly twisted jewel. Based on the original Middle Ages folktale, Barta’s The Pied Piper, caught somewhere between the worlds of Caligari and Švankmajer, deserves its place among the classics of Czech animation.
Restored in 2023 by Deaf Crocodile, in collaboration with Krátký Film Praha. The Pied Piper will be preceded by Jiří Barta’s 1982 short film The Vanished World of Gloves (Czechoslovakia, 16 min) – a marvellous and eccentric tour through cinema history told through animated gloves, this newly restored 1982 short by Jiří Barta is a loving ode to Cinema in all its forms.
This screening is dedicated to the Zika family milestone of 75 years in Australia.