Tuesday, April 8, 8:00 PM
SON OF THE WHITE MARE
(1981, 81 minutes, Dir. Marcell Jankovics)
with a live score by Ryan M. Todd
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Feherlofia, born the third son of a white mare, is blessed with superhuman powers and a keen interest in the stories of old. Stranded alone in a long ago era, he sets out on a quest to unite with his two brothers and destroy the dragons that dethroned the almighty Forefather many years prior.
SON OF THE WHITE MARE is world-renowned Hungarian animator Marcell Jankovics’ tribute to the nomadic steppe tribes, those Bronze Age hunter-gatherers who tamed the horse and placed their faith in spiritual stories of the fantastic. Jankovics’s animation style is a revelation for the unfamiliar, as gorgeous as it is psychedelic, moving and morphing almost too quickly to process, each frame a masterpiece that adds up to an overwhelming experience.
And to make it that much more memorable, we’ll be screening the film with an original live score by Philadelphia’s own Ryan M. Todd. Inspired by the stark and eerie sounds of early electronic film scores and library recordings, Todd’s atmospheric synthscapes evoke fantasies of abandoned cities at night, where uncertainty and fear lurk at every turn.
Known affectionately in his home country as “the Hungarian Walt Disney”, Marcell Jankovics received an Oscar nomination at the age of 23 for his short “Sisyphus” (1974), which was repurposed over three decades later for a GMC Super Bowl commercial. His short film “The Struggle” won the Palme d’Or at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. After nearly three decades in production, his 160 minute masterpiece The Tragedy of Man was released in 2011 to rave reviews.
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