Rene Laloux: La Planete Sauvage [Savage Planet/Fantastic Planet] (1973)

35mm print (color, sound) 70 min. France

“Winner of a Special Grand Prize at Cannes in 1973, Savage Planet is an eerily disquieting animated allegory about a race of giant blue humanoids called Draags, who lord over the planet Yagam and walk tiny humanlike animals called Oms on leashes. Based on the popular Czech novel Ohms en serie by Stefan Wul, René Laloux and Ronald Torpor’s Savage Planet is, like its recent predecessor Yellow Submarine, an aesthetic pastiche of psychedelic Pop Art and the fantastic visions of Bosch, Tanguy, Dali, Redon and Dr. Seuss. Although clearly alluding to repression behind the Iron Curtain, the film’s slave narrative as the ages and transcends the political exigencies of its time.” (The Imaginary War, 2000 Press Release)