AllMovie

Released to theaters in 1975, the Fantastic Animation Festival is a collection of some of the most innovative animated shorts from the prior six years. The one exception is the 1941 Fleischer Studios Superman short, "Mechanical Monsters." The 16 shorts feature a variety of animation techniques -- cel, clay, cutout, rotoscoping -- and spans a variety of genres, from the dry humor of Derek Lamb and Jeffrey Hale's "The Last Cartoon Man" to the somber, perplexing "Oiseau de nuit" ("Nightbird"). The only common thread is that almost every film's look and feel firmly dates it as a product of the 1970s. The Fantastic Animation Festival lineup includes: "French Windows," an untitled clay-animated short by I.D. Marinescu, "A Short History of the Wheel," "Cosmic Cartoon," "The Last Cartoon Man," "Cat's Cradle," "Moonshadow," "Oiseau de nuit" ("Nightbird"), "Room and Board," "Bambi Meets Godzilla," "Mountain Music," "Mechanical Monsters," ads for Levi's and 7-Up, "Mirror People," and the Oscar-winning "Closed Mondays."