Fantastic Planet preceded by The Finesse

Director: René Laloux, Christopher Kulendran Thomas

1973 / 82min / DCP

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)

Fantastic Planet (René Laloux, 1973, 72 mins)

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

Part of New Museum Presents New Humans