NPR did a segment on the new Brothers Quay film, Weeping Glass, filmed in the Mutter Meseum in Philadelphia. "The Mutter houses a collection of 19th century medical curiosities. The film brings to life the way medicine used to be, and the stories of the long-dead."
Timothy and Stephen Quay, perhaps the best known stop-motion animators, are amazing artists - among my favorite film makers in any genre. According to the article, Terry Gilliam has called the Brothers Quay film Street of Crocodiles (see below) one of the best animated films of all time. High praise from Gilliam.
Read the whole article.
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All Things Considered
The notion of "beauty" can mean many different things to artists. For the Brothers Quay — identical-twin filmmakers — it often means dimly lit black and white images of animated dolls, screws, cogs — any manner of inanimate object brought to life. They're so good at it that fellow filmmaker Terry Gilliam called the Quays' Street of Crocodiles one of the best animated films of all time.[6 min 15 sec]September 21, 2011
The Quay Brothers, filming Through The Weeping Glass at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. The Quays started filming without a script or a storyline.
Timothy and Stephen Quay are American-born stop-motion animators who do most of their work in Europe. Their latest film brought them back to the U.S. — to the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. The Mutter houses a collection of 19th century medical curiosities. The film brings to life the way medicine used to be, and the stories of the long-dead.
The Quays are lean, fashionable in a comfortable way, with long, graying hair. They're in their 60s but don't look it. It's hard to tell them apart, and they like it that way. To make the film, they turn a museum room into a darkened studio. They fill it ominously with the soundtrack from David Lynch's TV series, Twin Peaks, and they place museum specimens on a table under shimmering lights: a fetus in a jar, or a terrifying sort of metal plunger for removing kidney stones. At the start, they have no script, no storyline.
"What we most like are the accidents," they say. "They," because the brothers usually share sentences, one finishing what the other starts. They prefer to be undifferentiated.
"The accidents bend the direction of the film," they continue, "because the whole thing about this museum is discovering that one little kernel or that one strange event."
'Where Reality And Fiction Tremble With A Nice Favorable Wind'
They rotate and film the objects from different angles, conferring quietly, building mood. The Quays say this museum is both heart-rending and beautiful. Museums figure in their other films. For them, these places contain objects with occluded histories.
What we most like are the accidents. The accidents bend the direction of the film, because the whole thing about this museum is discovering that one little kernel or that one strange event.
"For us," says a brother, "it's always been the in-between world where it's an ambiguous state, and it hovers on, or shimmers in a kind of half-state. Maybe it's a little bit where reality and fiction tremble with a nice ..." He searches for the right word.
"Favorable wind," the other finishes with a laugh.
It's worth noting that the Quays usually keep lots of Belgian beer nearby when filming or doing interviews.
Before the Quays begin filming, they usually decide on the music and let it guide them. They say it "releases and closes down" images. Tim Nelson composed the music for the Mutter film.
"They're looking more for the moments where there might be something that sticks out," Nelson says, "that little sound there that might inspire a reflection off glass, or when a camera angle might change. They find the rhythms within the music."
And the music helps give meaning to the objects.
Here is the 21 minute short film, Street of Crocodiles, by the Brothers Quay.
Street of Crocodiles (1987) by BFIfilms
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