Aenigma

With input from actor and writer Jan Hlobil, director and cinematographer Rene Smaal presents a film in the true surrealist tradition, in the sense that only 'found' elements were used, and that it defies interpretation based on ordinary cause-and-effect time sequence.

Forced to face the cruel side of life, a devastated, bankrupt merchant chances upon the enchanted castle of a hideous creature, the mere sight of it chills the bone to the marrow. There, a fate worse than death awaits the poor father-of-six, who, after plucking a sweet-scented rose from the repulsive master's verdant garden, must do the impossible: permit his compassionate daughter, Belle, to take his place and pay for the sins of her parent. Now, an impenetrable mystery shrouds the haunted mansion, and, as repugnance gradually turns into affection, only true love could break the spell.

An overworked bureaucrat is tasked to fix the broken office printer when his routine errand spirals into a surreal odyssey across the island.

In a far future lies a strange city called The Axion. Within this city, a descendant of humanity known as The Prototype escapes from experimentation. Thus begins his quest to restore balance to The Axion, and search for what it means to be human.

In an alternate Manhattan, two researchers-Robert Lang and Jeff Hawthorne-are drawn into Project STARLING, a covert operation buried deep within the Titanpointe building. When Hawthorne breaks protocol and vanishes into a mysterious portal, the city reels from unexplained phenomena. Lang is forced to navigate a collapsing reality as STARLING agents turn ruthless and the boundaries between dimensions begin to rupture. As transformations unfold and the city descends into chaos, both men confront forces beyond comprehension-shifting identities, spectral adversaries, and a growing sense that something vast and irreversible is approaching.

Porky invests his savings. Mayhem ensues.

"I made this film when I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, after graduating from Smith a semester early. It was my reaction to California. [The song] "Sweeping the Clouds Away" is sung by Charles "Buddy" Rodgers, who was Mary Pickford's husband. Huh? Who? The doctored photo was of an astronaut on the moon-- I thought he looked like a duck and made him one. From 1971-- Yikes!" -SC.

"I am not from this place," declares a French cowboy. An old toothless man asks, "Do you know why you're here?" These shape-shifting personalities infect young children with an evil signal in the form of a Dutch TV show. The red-eyed girls and boys believe they can now become other people and monsters, much to their delight.

A tenor, in suit and tie, with a receding hairline, sings a ballad to his love, “Your Face Is Like a Song,” to simple piano accompaniment. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.

The story is simple: Max and a pretty young lady, whom he has never met before, arrive at the same time at a luxury hotel on the Riviera, each for a little vacation by themselves. They are placed in adjoining hotel suites. Both Max and the pretty lady place their shoes outside their hotel room doors to be cleaned by staff, and the shoes fall in love.

Frankenstein's monster gropes towards the awareness that his mind is a universe; Attila, naked on a white horse, liberates his people from their ignominy; the ultra-caustic Viva bemoans the frustrations of married life and drifts into the elegiac persona of the Bloody Countess Bathory; Louis Waldon is a hip American tourist searching for the (missing) Mona Lisa.