Horse (1967)

Enacting the story of a hunt with wild but precise gestures, the Polish animator Witold Giersz’s The Horse (award-winning at the Krakow Film Festival for “its exceptionally interesting animation technique”) explodes with color and brings to life the physical strokes of paint of which it is made. The film never lets you forget that what you’re seeing is simply paint being rearranged into recognizable shapes, yet the pumping musical score and expressiveness of its titular character provide a simultaneous emotional experience. The abstract backgrounds render the narrative world beautiful and strange yet entirely comprehensible, as the film depicts an epic chase from humanity’s past.