Movies: Stephen Quay

In 2015, Christopher Nolan curated a selection of short films by the surrealist animators the Quay Brothers to be distributed as a touring 35mm presentation. The three films—"In Absentia" (2000), "The Comb" (1991) and "Street of Crocodiles" (1986)—we...

Dark fairytale about a demonic doctor who abducts a beautiful opera singer with designs on transforming her into a mechanical nightingale....

A puppet, newly released from his strings, explores the sinister room in which he finds himself....

Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a be...

The exploration of the effects of an unexpected catastrophe, known as VUE (violent unknown event) through the bios of 92 survivors....

A man journeys by rail to a nameless sanatorium where his father has recently died. Once there, time loses its linearity and he finds himself in a world that appears both strange and strangely familiar....

In Prague, a professorial puppet, with metal pincers for hands and an open book for a hat, takes a boy as a pupil. First, the professor empties fluff and toys from the child's head, leaving him without the top of his head for most of the film. The pr...

Igor: The Paris Years, one segment of a larger biographical program created for Channel 4 on the life and times of Igor Stravinsky, finds the brothers working in a slightly different vein than the one that would come to characterize their later work....

A woman sits alone on a chair at a table in a room on one of the top floors of an asylum. Bright spot lights dot the night, sometimes shining on her window. She sharpens pencils and writes on a page in a copy book. The pencil point often breaks under...

Stop-motion animated short film in which a puppet on a trike captures a puppet bird-man....

A porcelain doll’s explorations of a dreamer’s imagination....

Stop-motion animated short film in which, among other things, a man made of wire looks malevolent....

Enigmatic, stop-motion, animated story of a man's day....

A magnet moves on a floor. A moth beats against a window. A doll child watches the magnet; threads of metal filings gather around the magnet....

Guy Maddin, who has been nicknamed the Canadian David Lynch, is undoubtedly one of the last remaining Magi of cinema. Despite living in the middle of the digital age, this heretical director hailing from the snowy plains of Canada has spent 25 years ...

The Quays' interest in esoteric illusions finds its perfect realization in this fascinating animated lecture on the art of anamorphosis. This artistic technique, often used in the 16th- and 17th centuries, utilizes a method of visual distortion with ...

Docimentary about the work of the Qway Brothers for their film Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life...

Short animated film featuring the song "Can't Go Wrong Without You" by His Name Is Alive....

Stop-motion animated short film with a white ball, a rabbit, and a girl, and a voice singing "Are We Still Married"....

A documentary on the subject of the collections of books, instruments and medical anomalies at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Mutter Museum housed there. This short film represents the first to be made by the internationally recogn...