Stephen Quay

Afraid of losing his wife, Horatio creates a replica he calls Hortensia. But things don't go as planned... Shot on 35mm and propelled by an impressive score by Michèle Bokanowski, the Quay Brothers evoke an intense drama of jealousy, betrayal and murder, revolving around a window dresser's obsession for a life-sized doll.

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In a realm beyond the senses, plants interact with surreal cinematography to chart the course of our character: an entity said to embody the life and work of Felisberto Hernández, Uruguayan father of magical realism. Through this journey, we are confronted with an open-ended experience questioning the nature of musicality versus cinematography, entity versus aberration, and self versus space, in a self-referential, blurry, digital and mystical setting.

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A documentary on the subject of the collections of books, instruments and medical anomalies at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Mutter Museum housed there. This short film represents the first to be made by the internationally recognized Quay Brothers in the United States. While not a stop-motion animation film, a form for which the Quays are best known, the entire film is vibrantly constructed and 'animated'. Musical score by composer Tim Nelson and voice-over provided by Derek Jacobi.

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A bird acts as an alchemist in an enchanted forest, selecting different kinds of wood to combine them in a parquet floor.

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The movie is set in a technologically developed but, at the same time, feudal world. Beautiful Duenna was created in order to carry out certain mission. However, she will be forced to choose between accomplishing the task she was created for and love.

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Opening sequence for the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival.

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In the Renaissance castle of the Polish count - Jan Potocki - in Lancut, the modern traces of a past glory persevere and become visible again at the tones of Krzysztof Penderecki's music and Brothers Quay's imaginary animation.

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Commissioned by Opera North, the Brothers Quay created the installation and film 'She, So Beloved' inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem ‘Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.’ The Orfeo myth is re-told through a combination of art forms; film, dance, music and visual art contained within a contemporary staged installation to provide an intimate sensory experience.

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The story of Alice in Wonderland, explored in the stop-motion world of the Quay brothers.

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Dark fairytale about a demonic doctor who abducts a beautiful opera singer with designs on transforming her into a mechanical nightingale.

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This two-disc set contains 13 of their classic short films in brand new restored and remastered editions, plus a collection of 'footnotes', including interviews, idents, alternative versions, unreleased pilot projects and more. The Quays were extensively involved with the preparation of these DVDs, personally supervising the transfers and menus designs, recording commentaries on selected titles, and contributing an illustrated video introduction. Disc one: Films The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (1984) The Unnameable Little Broom (1985) Street of Crocodiles (1986) Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1987) Stille Nacht I-IV The Comb (1990) Anamorphosis (1991) In Absentia (2000) The Phantom Museum (2003) Disc two: Footnotes BFI Distribution ident (1991) Introduction by the Quay Brothers (2006) Nocturna Artificialia (1979) The Calligraphies (1991) The Summit (1995) The Falls (excerpt) (1980) Archive Interview (2000)

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A display at the strange and wonderful artifacts in a collection of medical curiosities.

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Inspired by Gustav Mahlers 'Kindertotenlieder', made for the Tate Gallery, London and has never been released. ’There’s something we did for the Tate Gallery, 'Songs for Dead Children', which we can’t release because we can’t clear the music rights. It’s like £6000.’

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All of the album's songs were made into music videos by various filmmakers, such as the Quay Brothers, Garine Torossian, Grant Gee, and Guy Maddin.

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Tom Waits, the brothers Quay, and a dog door.

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One of several collaborative dance films by the Brothers Quay & (dancer, choreographer) William Tuckett. Little enough info around on line, but there's briefly by way of Wikipedia entry. Adapted rather loosely from the works of the E.T.A. Hoffman. Familiar Quays' tropes, much in evidence: automata, trompe l'oeil effects, etc. No credit on the sound design (which is fairly elaborate), tho' that is possibly Larry Sider.

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A woman sits alone on a chair at a table in a room on one of the top floors of an asylum. Bright spot lights dot the night, sometimes shining on her window. She sharpens pencils and writes on a page in a copy book. The pencil point often breaks under her fingers' force. She places broken points outside the window on the sill. A satanic figure is somewhere nearby, animated but of straw or clay, not flesh. She finishes her writing, tears the paper from the pad, folds it, places it in an envelope, and slips it through a slot. Is she writing to her husband? "Sweetheart, come."

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Ten stop-motion animation works by brilliant animators The Brothers Quay, including six previously unavailable shorts and two unique music videos by “His Name is Alive.”

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Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?

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Two men seek to negotiate an agreement of international significance.

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Short animated film featuring the song "Can't Go Wrong Without You" by His Name Is Alive.

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Near an extraordinary chair with many legs, a hand is visible gripping an edge. The hand is weathered, the fingers cracked and scarred. The end of a rifle appears and a shot fires. The bullet is visible whirling through space; it caroms and then goes through a pine cone. A long spoon emerges from a drawer in the chair and stretches toward the hand. The bullet is on the spoon. Later, the hand holds the bullet between two fingers; another shot is fired.

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The Quays' interest in esoteric illusions finds its perfect realization in this fascinating animated lecture on the art of anamorphosis. This artistic technique, often used in the 16th- and 17th centuries, utilizes a method of visual distortion with which paintings, when viewed from different angles, mischievously revealed hidden symbols.

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Stop-motion animated short film with a white ball, a rabbit, and a girl, and a voice singing "Are We Still Married".

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A porcelain doll’s explorations of a dreamer’s imagination.

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With harpsichord music in the background, a dandy, seated at a table, plucks a quill pen from a ceiling full of them above him, dips it in ink, thinks, then draws a straight line down the page in front of him, out of which sprout six more quill pens, each held by a hand. The calligrapher moves all the hands and pens in unison, drawing an elaborate feathered wing, which comes to live, peeling off the page, and, now a quill pen, slips in to his hand. He tucks it behind his left ear.

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An extremely obscure minute-long short by the Brothers Quay in 1989. Animation appears to be done in 'Cutout' style, is abstract and plotless - more a moving painting than anything else. Featured on the 'Inner Sanctums' blu-ray boxset featuring a vast collection of shorts by the Quay brothers.

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A farming family and their livestock dance during a much-needed downpour in this Quay Brothers short made for Sesame Street.

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A magnet moves on a floor. A moth beats against a window. A doll child watches the magnet; threads of metal filings gather around the magnet.

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Stop-motion animated short film in which, among other things, a man made of wire looks malevolent.

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