Where Empty Shells Hide

Mandala

January 1953 •English

Scroll paintings prepared like film strips with successive images.

ASTRAKAN

May 2024 •Portuguese

A Paw Over Dark

May 2023 •English

A washed up actor performs night after night in a grimy theater to a nearly empty audience. However, everything changes when a clueless dog jumps on stage.

Little One

June 2024 •English

A worn out mother, Sara, seeks out the source of her child’s favorite lullaby.

Love

July 2024 •Turkish

A strange wire-fingered homunculus navigates through his dreams of different faces and faces, traversing a subliminal and endless variety. They are all different faces, but all have huge eyes that are questioned as to what keeps them apart, perhaps left broken by an impossible love.

African American Express

July 2024 •English

African American Express is an abstract animation exploring the impact of consumerism in the Black community. Told in the style of Soviet Propaganda, this animated short dissects the pattern of excessive materialism and consumption prevalent within the Black population.

A Visual Poem

June 2024 •

Surreal environments take center stage in this visual odyssey.

Faust

September 1994 •Czech

A very free adaptation of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", Goethe's "Faust" and various other treatments of the old legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. A nondescript man is lured by a strange map into a sinister puppet theatre, where he finds himself immersed in an indescribably weird version of the play, blending live actors, clay animation and giant puppets.

Ad Astra

June 1983 •Hungarian

An impressive parable where the artist’s creativity is paralyzed by the dull crowd can be seen as a metaphor for a totalitarian system. Cleverly designed animation shows the artist as a tied man whose creativity is hindered by the crowd. A visually attractive film with very interesting editing won an award at the Annecy festival in 1983.

No. 11: Mirror Animations

December 1956 •English

Cut up animation and collage technique by Harry Smith synchronized to the jazz of Thelonious Monk's Mysterioso.

Nursery Rhyme Review

February 1946 •English

A compilation of four Mother Goose stories "photographed in three-dimensional animation" and unified by a prologue and an epilogue with Mother Goose herself magically setting up a projector to show the films. The familiar nursery rhymes are "Little Miss Muffet," "Old Mother Hubbard," "The Queen of Hearts," and "Humpty Dumpty." Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2004.

It Fell on Deaf Ears

November 2016 •English

Because Quebec Sign Language cannot be captured on paper, videography has revealed itself to be the best way to represent this visual language. The first ‘comic strip’ in sign language, the film depicts snatches of conversations between various deaf and hearing protagonists. A visit to a silent world, where the hearing impaired ask us to listen to them.

LAND

April 2013 •English

LAND is a fluid series of formal land animation experiments based upon the imprint of landscapes in various locations and intuitive interpretations of those movements. Shot in New York, Thimble Islands Bear Island, Connecticut, Armstrong Redwoods, Sonoma County, California, Hastings, England. note* (part of the EYE Filmmuseum Permanent Collection)

Superfluidity

April 2017 •English

Glass plate film reflection holograms dance throughout space and time.

Mugworth

November 2018 •English

Old Bellousinni hates Christmas above all things. Living alone in his great mansion with his butler, his evil has no limits. But on Christmas night, the visit of an old friend and three ghosts that teach him the true meaning of parties and happiness ... or at least what they try. Black and scary comedy based on Dickens's "Christmas Story."

Skeletons in the Closet

January 1989 •English

Stop-motion experiments using B&W 16mm film. Shot using a Bolex, transferred to video, DVD, mp4. No soundtrack.

Series 4

January 1972 •English

This experimental short documents the clash, sometimes obsessive, sometimes glorifying, between humans and their mechanized environment. Using photographs, the animator creates varying perspectives through optical manipulation and changing colour, achieving bold and provocative effects.

Dia Estrelado

April 2011 •Portuguese

In an inhospitable place, a boy and his family struggle for survival.

Deter & Oro

May 2023 •Spanish

Metamorphoses I

November 1978 •

For the multimedia exhibition Tangenten I (Tangents I), Dammbeck and co-organizer, sculptor and painter Frieder Heinze had planned to collaborate on a film that would combine non-camera animation with 35mm footage of a train ride between the two Dresden districts of Radebeul and Pieschen. When the exhibition was banned in 1978, Heinze turned to other projects, but Dammbeck continued working on the film by himself. Metamorphoses I—the first experimental film ever to be shown publicly in East Germany—marks the filmic beginning of Dammbeck’s long-term art project the Herakles-Konzept (Hercules Concept).