FUJI
(1974) Directed by Robert Breer
"A poetic, rhythmic, riveting achievement (in rotoscope and abstract animation), in which fragments of landscapes, passengers, and train interiors blend into a magical color dream of a voyage. One of the most important works by a master who - like Conner, Brakhage, Broughton - spans several avant-gardes in his ever more perfect explorations." -- Amos Vogel
35mm (blow-up from 16mm), 9 min.
LMNO
(1978)
"[A] French gendarme weaves a hapless path through the film's strobe attacks, disparate drawing styles, and variable scale .... Framed by underwater and travel imagery, the central section's faucets and aerosols, collapsing tents and outsized croquet games, breakfast foods and sexual violence, all suggest domestic frustration." - J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
T.Z.
(1979)
"An elegant home movie, its subject is Breer's new apartment which faces the Tappan Zee (T.Z.) bridge. It is permeated, as are all his films, with subtle humor, eroticism and a sense of imminent chaos and catastrophe."--Amy Taubin, Artforum
TRIAL BALLOONS
(1982)
A mix of rephotographed live action and animation using hand-cut traveling mattes.--Canyon Cinema Catalogue.
BANG!
(1986)
"Bang reveals Breer at his most accomplished and most playful. It is also his most autobiographical film - the youngster paddling a boat is Breer as a boy and the pencil cartoon sequences were drawn by Breer when he was around ten years old.
"Robert Breer is the godfather of animation art. In Bang he sustains ten dense minutes of collagistic mayhem that's as potent as anything he's ever done. Television images of a boy paddling a boat and an arena crowd cheering, plus film shots of bright pink and red flowers and a toy phone, are intercut with frenetic drawings in Breer's trademark heavy crayon, principally of baseball games. Breer inserts a photo of himself with a question mark scrawled over his head, accompanied by the words 'Don't be smart.' But he can't help it - he is."--Katherine Dieckmann, The Village Voice
A FROG ON THE SWING
(1989)
This animated fable is centered around a backyard pond shown intermittently in live-action scenes. A small child appears and disappears in a ballet of crows, rabbits, monkey wrenches, and goldfish. When the police arrive there are pot-shots at backyard varmits, but the frog on the swing seems to survive it all.
As usual in Breer films, the soundtrack is often conspicuously out of sync with the picture. Or is it vice versa when a crow goes "moo?"--Canyon Cinema Catalogue.
TIME FLIES
(1997)
A playful meditation on loved ones and the passing of the years.
ATOZ
(2000)
A short film dedicated to his granddaughter Zoë that demonstrates all the characteristic traits of Breer's animation: his humour, his favourite motifs (the hammer, a frog, graphic shapes, aeroplanes). What is the impact of an order such as the alphabet on the awakening mind of a child?--International Film Festival Rotterdam.
WHAT GOES UP
(2003)
Breer's personal take on the everyday in images that zoom past us like a flashback of a thousand perfectly lived moments, a four-minute epic. The final scene of a derailed train provides a metaphor for the absurdity of the notion that a big, beautiful, well-lived life simply runs out. --International Film Festival Rotterdam.