The Village (short film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Village |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1993 |
| length | 14 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mark Baker |
| script | Mark Baker |
| production |
Pam Dennis for Pizazz Pictures |
| music | Julian Nott |
| camera | Jim Davey |
| cut | Annie Kocur |
The Village is a 1993 British animated short film directed by Mark Baker .
action
In a village all houses form an almost completely closed circle, in which the church is also enclosed. Each resident lives in one of the rental houses with a window facing the inner courtyard and the area outside the village. Everyone can watch everyone doing what they do outside the home. The pastor has a drinking problem and secretly drinks in the church or behind tombstones in the cemetery outside the village. A housewife pretends to sweep the courtyard but secretly steals apples from the apple tree at the entrance to the church. And a young woman pretends to pick vegetables for her nasty husband, while she has a relationship with a bespectacled man who plants trees outside the village. Everything is mostly observed by an elderly woman.
A man in the village owns a lot of money and the golden sheen of the money shines through the window. The nasty man sees the appearance and murders the man. He throws it out the window when the tree planter and the young woman are engaged in making love in the forest not far from the village. The bespectacled tree planter sees the ladder that leads to the window of the victim and climbs it. The older woman sees him doing it, recognizes the corpse below the window and calls the village together. The tree planter is arrested. The nasty man, however, collects the money and anarchy begins in the village. The pastor now drinks alcohol in public, the housewife is given apples openly and a gallows is erected in the courtyard from the freshly planted trees of the tree planter. The woman, however, gives the tree planter a spade in the prison and he digs a tunnel and flees to the roof of the village. The village is looking for him but cannot find him.
At night the nasty man looks at his stolen treasures and hears the noises of the man on the roof. He climbs onto the roof and threatens the tree planter, but is held back by his wife. When the nasty man pushes the woman away, the tree planter hits him, the nasty man falls down the roof and dies. He had ripped off the tree planter's glasses. The ants in turn carry away the nasty man's corpse overnight, so that only the skeleton remains. Based on the glasses, the villagers believe the next morning that they are dealing with the tree planter. They remove the gallows and go back to their daily work. From a distance the woman and the tree planter look at the village.
production
The Village was the first film that Baker made for Pizazz Pictures. It was designed in response to Baker's The Hill Farm and was meant to represent the darker side of rural life. Baker used an engraving from the Globe Theater as inspiration for the shape of the village . While Baker had animated The Hill Farm alone in three years, he only had three months of production time for The Village . His team of draftsmen therefore consisted of 14 people.
Awards
At the Festival d'Animation Annecy , The Village received the jury's special prize in 1993. At the Krakowski Festiwal Filmowy , the film was awarded the Silver Dragon in the “Best Animated Film” category.
The Village was in 1994 for an Oscar in the category " animated Best Short Film nomination," but could not free himself from Wallace & Gromit - The Wrong Trousers prevail. The film also received a BAFTA nomination for Best Animated Short Film in 1994 .
Web links
- The Village in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Village on bcdb.com
- Background information on The Village at astleybakerdavies.com