Fantastic Planet preceded by The Finesse

Director: Christopher Kulendran Thomas, René Laloux

1973 / 82min / 35mm

Human Oms on the distant planet Ygam rise up against their giant blue Draag owners/overseers, who treat their tiny charges as pets to be either dandled or punished as whim dictates, in Laloux’s surreal, anti-authoritarian animated parable, based on Stefan Wul’s 1957 novel Oms en série, a film whose immediately recognizable, at times hallucinatory images come from stop-motion cutouts born of the imaginations of artist and writer Roland Topor and character designer Josef Kábrt, reaching a ravishing pinnacle in its celebrated sex scene. Jazz pianist Alain Goraguer’s psych-out score offers the ideal accompaniment to Fantastic Planet’s otherworldly landscapes and fabulous flora and fauna, altogether adding up to an out-of-this-world audiovisual experience.

A clip from The Finesse (Christopher Kulendran Thomas, 2022, 10 mins, Digital)

Fantastic Planet (René Laloux, 1973, 72 mins, 35mm)

Introduction by artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas on Sunday, April 26th