Film Screening: Fantastic Planet

Nothing else has ever looked or felt like director René Laloux’s animated marvel Fantastic Planet, a politically minded and visually inventive work of science fiction. The film is set on a distant planet called Ygam, where enslaved humans (Oms) are the playthings of giant blue native inhabitants (Draags). After Terr, kept as a pet since infancy, escapes from his gigantic child captor, he is swept up by a band of radical fellow Oms who are resisting the Draags’ oppression and violence. With its eerie, coolly surreal cutout animation by Roland Topor; brilliant psychedelic jazz score by Alain Goraguer; and wondrous creatures and landscapes, this Cannes-awarded 1973 counterculture classic is a perennially compelling statement against conformity and violence. (1h 12m, Not Rated)

Presented by the CF Ira Holmes International Film Series, screenings are held at 2 p.m. at the Appleton Museum of Art and 7 p.m. at the CF Ocala Campus, Building 8, Room 110, 3001 S.W. College Road.

Films at the Appleton are free to all museum and film series members; nonmembers pay museum admission. Films at the Ocala Campus are free and open to the public.

Click here to watch the “Fantastic Planet” trailer.