Toys in the Attic
What better time than the holiday season to dive into the wonderful world of toys? Cinema has always loved to use its magic to fulfill an eternal childhood dream: seeing toys come to life. Naturally showcasing animated films, this series takes us at the frontiers of imagination, fantasy, and dreams through movies where toys are very well alive, albeit in different ways. By turns strange, amusing, wonderful, or unsettling, these toy stories inevitably lead us to reflect on our own humanity, while always managing to strike a chord deep within us.
Preceded by short film The Revolt of the Toys
A Gestapo agent bursts into a toy workshop to arrest its owner. After the owner escapes, the agent takes out his frustration on the toys, but they rise up, working together and using their wits to defeat the invader. A wonderful political fable by the pioneer of Czech animation, winner of the Best Children's Film Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1946.
In an attic full of discarded junk, a pretty doll called Buttercup lives in an old trunk together with her friends, the marionette Prince Charming, lazy Teddy Bear and the plasticine creature Schubert. When Buttercup is snatched and taken off to the Land of Evil, her pals set out to rescue her.
Jiří Barta
Jiří Barta is a Czech stop-motion animation director. Many of his films use wood as a medium for animation. Among his notable films are the 1986 film The Pied Piper. In 2007, he released his first computer-animated short film, Cook, Mug, Cook!, animated in a studio of Alkay Animation. He then released a new puppet-animated feature film, Toys in the Attic, in 2009.
