Schedule your next psychedelic experience around this movie.

I'm a sucker for folk tales. I love the absolutely unbelievable, grandiose ideas and scenarios they present, while offering no explanation or justification. It's a folk tale. That is the justification. This is a beautiful picture from Marcell Jankovics and Pannónia Filmmstúdió in Hungary. It's a tale I'm not familiar with, but it plays the same as many you'll understand. Son of the White Mare (that's what the name translates to literally) goes on a quest seeking to rip trees out of the ground and free three princesses who have been kept in the underworld. Pretty standard...

What is far from standard is the animation and sound design in this picture. It…

The first time I saw this poster (LOOK AT IT), I knew I had to see this movie. Finding out that the whole thing looked like this made it irresistible. Why I waited a few months first, I don't know. This is the brightest, most beautiful animation I have ever seen. It's expressive, unique, inventive, and bizarre. There are so many little moments that just blew my mind, like when the three brothers wake up together, and it just morphs through all three of their faces waking up. The way everything just flowed through from one image to the next was also mesmerizing. It reminded me of the best moments from Prince Achmed, but far more dazzling and psychedelic.

The…

Director, Marcell Jankovics, is little known outside of his native Hungary which is rather criminal when he was responsible for such startling works of animation like, Fehérlófia. Translated as Son of the White Mare, the film is an imagined folktale full of familiar tropes (princesses, underworlds, magic etc.) and formal structures (the power of three being all important). Although based on Avaric legend the story should be familiar to anybody who read fairy tales as a child.

The story, whilst perfectly enjoyable, is perfunctory with broad archetypal characters and a predictable plot, although it is surprisingly rich in symbolism (most of which I didn’t even notice on first viewing). Yet people don’t watch Fehérlófia for its passable story, they watch…

Watched on YouTube
youtu.be/OwzqtF2W6RQ

To my understanding Fehérlófia is an animated Hungarian fairytale that was made in the early 80s.

It's radical, ever shifting liquid animation style is trippy and exciting; Son of the White Mare definitely doesn't look like it was made 35 years ago. It's a testament to how well animation can stand the test of time in the 21st century but even more so how visual storytelling has evolved yet stayed the same from mere paintings on cave walls hundreds of thousands of years ago. There is a very primitive and natural theme pumping through the hypnotic visuals. It bleeds imagery of birth, paternity, death, love, humanity, nature, fear and power as well as including scenes of…

First...a big thank you to Adam Cook for bringing this film to my attention, and then taking it up a notch by posting the link to the actual film, itself.

Marcell Jankovics is officially my favorite animator, all because of the visual mastery that is Feherlofia. Jankovics seemingly incorporates every single color that the human eye can perceive, maybe even colors the human eye cannot perceive.

Feherlofia is a kaleidoscopic folktale adventure where Jankovics manipulates color and form like I've never seen before; everything is constantly moving, colors, flamelike, fluidly flowing from one shape to the next, flickering and flaring while endlessly shapeshifting through a beautifully realized fantasy world. My eyes loved every minute of it.

The plot consists of…

When a star is born, the sky becomes a little brighter.
Nebulae shrunken by their own gravity, celestial beings formed by clouds of dust scattered.
But part of this material will not be a star, and will remain as dust.

No one knows how many stars there are, but they are the map of the night sky.

When a star dies, it heats and explodes.
The now called supernova irradiates a lot of energy and then fades away, back to the dust that it once was.

But because there are so many stars glowing in the sky, we we'll not be able to perceive a difference.

When a lightning strikes, it's like everything stops for an instant.
A flash, that…