'Blok': Playful, Voyeuristic Vintage Polish Experimental Animation
In what appears to be a single continuous shot, viewers get a glimpse of a series of vignettes that take place inside various apartment rooms
In 1982, young Polish screenwriter, director, and music teacher Hieronim Neumann created a captivating experimental animation titled Blok, after the term "block" used in much of Eastern Europe to describe the common apartment buildings erected mostly during Communism. In what appears to be a single continuous shot, you get a voyeuristic glimpse of a series of vignettes that take place inside various apartments. It's kind of like HBO's Voyeur Project stuffed inside a praxinoscope and transformed into a Rube Goldberg machine -- or, as MetaFilter puts it, "like a children's book for adults." Enjoy:
Block can be found on the altogether excellent three-disc collection The Anthology of Polish Experimental Animation, alongside nearly 40 other gems.
This post also appears on Brain Pickings, an Atlantic partner site.