Entering 1884

LONDON, 2 January 1884
As the Daily Empire reminds us, we are entering the feared year of 1884. It was more than 30 years ago, in 1848, that Mr Phineas Jupitus horrified the audience at the Old Red Lion Theatre, when unveiling his phantasmagorical steam image projection machine.
The audience was ever so pleased at first - elated! - to witness that in 1884 the moon would become the province of the British Empire, only to be horrified moments later by the appalling scenes of future war.
We are now living in that prophesized future.
Yesterday, Captain Horatio Kitchengame claimed the moon on behalf of Queen Victoria. At the same time, extraordinary reports began coming from the continent stating that it is being overrun by an invading force.
"Large areas of Belgium, Holland and France have been laid waste," reports Daily Empire. "Little is known of the invading force, except to say that it is unprecedented in strength and may be being led by a Carpasian Count called Ravenoff Fafner who was thought to have died more than 400 years ago."
(The complete article of the Daily Empire can be viewed here.)

[1884: Yesterday's Future, an animated film directed by Tim Ollive and produced by Terry Gilliam  (2012) - 100 min feature film for a family audience (but not the very young)]

Krysař

This is the opening scene of Krysař, a renowned animated film directed by Jiří Barta (1986). In this version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, it is not the rats that infest the town and it is not for the rats that the Piper comes to Hameln.
In the opening scene, Barta introduces the city of Hameln as a character in its own right. Hameln is a mythological, gothic Gormenghast, a one single jointed, twisted structure. It is a medieval town of blacksmiths and iron, without even a trace of trees, grass or birds. The underlying machines of the town set the sunrise in Hameln, and the risen sun is of dim quality that does not allow for a full palette of colours.
Townsmen - cubist puppets of dark walnut wood - are an integrated non-separable part of Hameln. Barta explained in an interview for Kinoeye that he wanted to show the townsmen as mere puppets, as wooden machines, in striking contrast to the emotional, dynamic and dramatic world of rats (also visually, since real dead rats were used to create the rat puppets).
"The puppets' world," explained Barta, "is one of horror."
Barta further dehumanized the townsmen as he made them squeak in unintelligible gibberish, while the Pied Piper, Agnes and the old fisherman remain markedly silent. The Pied Piper keeps his silence even when he is insulted by the townsmen and paid, mockingly, with a black button.
Barta's Pied Piper does not retaliate in the same way as Grimms' one. At sunrise, he stops the time in Hameln and begins to pipe.