We chose this film for its brilliant craftsmanship and epic scope. Writer -director -cinematographer -animator -librettist Fredrik Emilson proves himself to be the Orson Welles of stop-motion opera cinema with puppets. View Trailer | View Full Film | IMDb | Contact The weighty title is, on the surface, a joke; the film, by Sweden's Fredrik Emilson, is a puppet animation. But once an audience has experienced the 15 exquisite minutes that make up the movie, the concept of a short-film epic seems not impossible. "Love and War" is an opera, and true to the form in all respects, from the original score to the sense of tragedy to the grand set design. The story includes flashbacks, air wars, romance and a vivid evocation of time and place. The emotions are rendered so convincingly, and on such a big scale, that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the characters - Bunny and Bear - are played by inanimate puppets. Raising the stakes even higher is the fact that Emilson not only wrote and directed the film, but edited and shot it, and composed the operatic score. "The libretto, the score, the directing, the editing - he did it all," said Aspen Film executive director Laura Thielen. "I was blown away." |