The Cabinet of the Brothers Quay: Program One



Friday, February 16th 2007, 8:00 pm

The Brothers Quay

(Timothy & Stephen Quay, UK, total running time 84 min., 35mm, 16mm and Beta-SP projection)

The Quay brothers, identical twins Timothy and Stephen, were raised in Philadelphia and later immigrated to London. There, they have holed up the past couple of decades where they rigorously toil on their painstaking, singular, exquisitely composed stop-motion animation. Their work appears to be influenced not by the animation that has preceded it but by the oddities of natural history: 18th-century curiosity cabinets, medical anomalies, and outdated instruments of science. And their stories are influenced not by contemporary life but by ancient folk tales of the macabre. Even though the brothers shroud their personal lives in mystery, we can still peer into their beautifully twisted psyche through their astonishing films. These two programs feature a near complete collection of their short films, shown almost entirely in new 35mm and 16mm prints!

THE CABINET OF JAN SVANKMAJER (1984), EPIC OF GILGAMESH (1985), THE PHANTOM MUSEUM (2003), STILLE NACHT I–IV (1988–1994), ANAMORPHOSIS (1991), and REHEARSALS FOR EXTINCT ANATOMIES (1988).

Program Two plays Saturday, February 17th, 8 p.m.

Program One plays again on Sunday, February 18th, 5 p.m. Program Two plays again at 7 p.m. that same night