A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1959). Courtesy of Czech National Film Archive.
Why UNESCO?
(Proč UNESCO?, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia 1958, 10 min., 35mm, Czech w/subtitles)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(Sen noci svatojánské, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia 1959, 72 min., 35mm, English version)
Animation of Jiri Trnka. Coming near the end of Trnka’s career, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is likely his best-known work. This bewitching adaptation of Shakespeare’s romantic fairy tale is a masterpiece of surpassing balletic beauty that plays out amidst a garlanded pastel dreamscape. Preceded by Why UNESCO?, a short commissioned by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, which employs strikingly simple animation to make the case that all of humanity is enriched when we tear down the walls that separate us.