Synopsis
The story’s main character is Fehérlófia, who is a man with superhuman power. He is born as the third son of a horse. He listened to old tales, mostly about the Forefather and the end of his reign, caused by evil dragons.
1981 ‘Fehérlófia’ Directed by Marcell Jankovics
The story’s main character is Fehérlófia, who is a man with superhuman power. He is born as the third son of a horse. He listened to old tales, mostly about the Forefather and the end of his reign, caused by evil dragons.
Hijo de la Yegua Blanca, Sohn der weißen Stute
Quite simply the quintessential hyper-psychedelic animated film, more of a trip than even Pink Floyd - The Wall. Marcell Jankovics transitions through a never-ending sensory overload of stunning images with perfect fluidity and attention to detail without ever abandoning his mythologically-based narrative for too long. The battle sequences, for lack of a better word, are amazing; watching this film is like playing the most surreal, abstract Atari 5200 game that you can imagine and crossing it with a healthy dose of ancient Scythian folklore. Get to it.
Potentially the greatest animated film ever made. A film that exists in a place outside of time, temporally expansive and reserved simultaneously, transportive to the point of destroying one's perception of moments as they move, from one to the next, weaving in and out of worlds, destroying & creating dimensions and falling deeper into the pull of novel galaxies; a film that makes you feel like a pingpong ball, only the pingpong machine is a swirl of dreamscapes and non-space and realities and outer space and dark matter, fused into a never-ending, reddening rainbow, an arch of colors formed of folklore in the spiraling sky.
From caves paintings to this, it may have taken 64,000 years, but it’s hard to imagine visual storytelling could ever get more elementally sublime than this: A true apex in animation.
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…
The animation style of Son of the White Mare is honed to a razor's edge.
The color design is vibrant, rich, and blindingly electrifies each frame. These hues propel a festival of mesmerizing psychedelic effects. The animation looks so liquid and pliable, and this malleability gives each scene a vast potential for transformation. Character designs melt into each other with this extreme intimacy. Every frame is so dense, and this injects a varied textural feeling to the film.
Son of the White Mare is a strange, emotional, and hypnotic experience.
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…
liked it more this go around, saw it as more of a folk tale type deal than anything else
Yes, it's confliction-less, if you are great, you are great, and end up just repeating the same dichotomy of power struggle. Which this film either realises and winks at the end, or is unconsciously embracing. Regardless of what is told, its means of telling is incredibly invigorating. Like while watching a fairytale of fulfillment while waiting on your long journey to cosmic ascendance. Or Gaspar Noe telling a fairytale.
With minimalism being so prominent in today's culture, and my aversion to its simplicity feeling that this element prevents it from penetrating core emotions, Son of the White Mare proved that you can indeed make minimalist symbol aesthetics hypnotically ethereal and with some of my favourite sound design, can elevate it to sophisticatedly spine-tingling fluidity. That key events pass, without you acknowledging them, you are swept up in its visual haze, but what a beautifully entrancing haze it is.
exquisite, mind blowingly gorgeous, and captivatingly transcendent. I wish I could get this movie tattooed on the back of my eyelids
tarrdigrade 1,833 films
If you're feeling overwhelmed, but still want to squeeze a film into your daily routine, this list is made for…
Rahat Ahmed 100 films
100 highest-rated feature-length animated films on Letterboxd. Sequels to shows—Japanese, American or from elsewhere—that need greater context before watching have…
Tobias Andersen 8,758 films
Rules: Generate a number (from 1 to x) via: www.random.org
See how many number of films there are in the…
Darren Carver-Balsiger 392 films
Movies made by auteur directors with a very arthouse sensibility, that happen to be genre movies (e.g. horror films, heist…
Orestes 14,669 films
A few notes:
1) Films missing are mainly hardcore porn and TV shows (Hitchcock mysteries namely). There's a number of…
Jayce Fryman 18,680 films
This list collects every film from the Starting List that became They Shoot Pictures Don't They's 1000 Greatest Films. This…
Sam Williams 50 films
The Official Top 250 Narrative Feature Films list has a 2,500 rating threshold. These are the highest rated films that…