Vera Linnecar

Shows the improved services and other benefits that oil brings to the backward territories. The financial and technical resources of foreign lands have tapped the liquid wealth hidden below the surface of the earth. In return a new prosperity and improved standard of living is being brought to the peoples of those formerly barren lands.

Animated short. A man runs and runs.

A tourist travelling through Morocco discovers an ancient curse and must choose between light and dark.

Unbeknownst to the Spencer Davis Group, their manager is upper class, grew up in a haunted manor, and is called Algernon. When they visit his home, they find out that the family is broke, they don't have the money to pay the servants, and their home is going to ruin. Spencer suggests that they advertise the home (and the ghost) and charge admission.

A BAFTA award nominated animated Industrial safety film featuring a clumsy fruit porter who learns the error of his ways, told as a mini-operetta.

The story of married animators, John Halas and Joy Batchelor. A Jewish emigre from Hungary and a working class woman from Watford, England, John and Joy fell in love, created cartoons that helped the allies to win the war, and produced the first feature-length animation in British cinema history, Animal Farm (1954).

No man is an island, but Charley represents his nation in this economical cartoon tale of Britain’s economics.

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A BAFTA award nominated animation advertising "Time" magazine.

Watch the Ungle Wungle bird find his mate in this very early Bob Godfrey film, made with his colleagues at Larkins Studio.

This cartoon propaganda short by Halas & Batchelor sweetens the pill of post-war coal prices by promising jam tomorrow.

A soon-to-be born baby learns about the kinds of schools he will attending in the years following his birth.

A mock promotional short cartoon film for the 'Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit'

A short animated War Office commissioned health education film, showing the fate of each of the 6 jungle soldiers.

Samantha, beloved by Spring, is captured by a butterfly hunter.

An animated short that summarizes the manufacture of steel and a humorous look at a world without it.

The film is designed to encourage recycling - which was a key part of the war effort.

Are you a dog or a cat person? If you favour the felines then this animated meditation on cats of all shapes and sizes is for you. The film grew out of industry veteran Vera Linnecar's play with applying mottled coloured paints directly onto animation cels. Paired with the piano music these scenes are a playful experiment, mixing abstraction with careful observation of cat behaviour. Vera started her animation career at the Halas & Batchelor studio in 1940, as did Elizabeth Horn, who also worked on this film. Moving from tracing, to inbetweening, to animating, Vera became one the company's principle artists. In the late 1940s she moved to the Larkins studio which better suited her experimental spirit. In 1957, along with Nancy Hanna, she joined Bob Godfrey and Keith Learner at Biographic, and continued innovating there until she retired in 1983, after four decades in the business.

A surreal mix of advertising tropes from the 1960s is very funny but has a neat anti-capitalist undertow.

Meet Charley, your jovial cartoon guide to Britain’s changing towns and cities.