form y separately published work icon [Nursery Rhymes] series - author   film/TV   children's   fantasy  
Issue Details: First known date: 1958-1960... 1958-1960 [Nursery Rhymes]
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Between 1958 and 1960, surrealist Dusan Marek made a series of short animated films based on nursery rhymes. Some bibliographical sources list these films individually, while others list them as a series under the loose (but apparently unofficial) title Nursery Rhymes. Following the latter pattern acknowledges that there is some conceptual and thematic connection between these works, whether or not the film-maker conceived them as a series.

Conversely, Stephen Mould suggests that Marek made a film called 8 Nursery Rhymes in 1959-1960, but this reading doesn't take into account the additional nusery-rhyme films held in the National Film and Sound Archive, nor the fact that some of the films have a 1958 publication date. It is possible that some of the individual entries in the NFSA catalogue represent variants of the same film (such as the two films entered as 'Tom the Piper's Son' and 'Piper and Pigs'), but even omitting such examples leaves more than eight individual titles with clear connections to nursery rhymes.

Source:

Mould, Stephen. 'Dusan Marek: A Landlocked Czech Surrealist in the Antipodes', Papers of Surrealism 6 (Autumn 2007): 1-19.

Includes

form y separately published work icon Cock Robin Dusan Marek , 1959 Z1887169 1959 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short, animated version of the English nursery rhyme 'Who Killed Cock Robin?'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

form y separately published work icon Hey Diddle Diddle Dusan Marek , 1959 Z1887175 1959 single work film/TV children's fantasy

An animated film version (made uisng stop-motion animation and paper cut-outs) of the English nursery rhyme 'Hey Diddle Diddle'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

form y separately published work icon Jack and Jill Dusan Marek , 1960 Z1887179 1960 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short, animated version (using stop-motion animation and paper cut-outs) of the English nursery rhyme 'Jack and Jill'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

form y separately published work icon Jack Sprat Dusan Marek , 1958 Z1887183 1958 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short, animated version of the English nursery rhyme 'Jack Sprat'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

form y separately published work icon The Little Woman and the Peddlar Dusan Marek , 1960 Z1887193 1960 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short animated film based on a nursery rhyme. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

The particular nursery rhyme on which the film is based is also obscure, though generally linked to a nursery rhyme of uncertain origin that begins 'There was an old woman, as I've heard tell', in which a woman, falling asleep on the highway after taking her eggs to market, has her petticoats cut off up to her knees by a passing peddlar, and suffers a crisis of identity.

form y separately published work icon Mother Goose Dusan Marek , 1959 Z1887197 1959 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short, animated film, listed by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) as part of Dusan Marek's series of films based on nursery rhymes. As with all films in this series, the NFSA describes this as a 'Cut out animation of the nursery rhyme of the same name'. Since 'Mother Goose' is more commonly the putative narrator or collector of nursery rhymes, rather than the protagonist of her own rhyme, this leaves the content of this film rather obscure.

form y separately published work icon Old Mother and Her Dog Dusan Marek , 1960 Z1887201 1960 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short, animated version of the English nursery rhyme 'Old Mother Hubbard'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

form y separately published work icon The Old Woman Who Bought a Pig Dusan Marek , 1959 Z1887207 1959 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short, animated version of the anonymous nursery rhyme 'The Old Woman Who Bought a Little Pig', a cumulative tale in which a woman seeks to get her recalcitrant pig home from market by asking a dog to bite the pig, a stick to beat the dog, a fire to burn the stick, and so on. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

form y separately published work icon Pick a Back Dusan Marek , 1960 Z1887213 1960 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short, animated version of a nursery rhyme. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

The specific nursery rhyme on which this film is based is likely the following (or some variant thereof):

Pick a Back Up To Bed

Up the wooden hill to blanket fair,

What shall we have when we get there?

A bucket of water and a pennyworth of hay,

Gee up dobbin all the way!

form y separately published work icon Taffy Dusan Marek , 1960 Z1887219 1960 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short, animated film by Dusan Marek, based on a nursery rhyme. According to the National Film and Sound Archive's catalogue entry for this film, it depicts 'a feud between Taffy and another man, who ends up setting Taffy's clothes on fire and getting blown up '. Based on this description and the title, the film is most likely a variant of the anti-Welsh English nursery rhyme 'Taffy Was a Welshman', which appears in a number of variants.

form y separately published work icon Tom the Piper's Son Dusan Marek , 1959 Z1887223 1959 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short, animated version of the English nursery rhyme 'Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

The National Film and Sound Archive lists a separate nursery-rhyme film by Marek called 'Piper and Pigs'; since there is no nursery rhyme by this name, it seems likely that this is another variant or another print of Marek's 'Tom the Piper's Son.'

form y separately published work icon Three Wise Men of Gotham Dusan Marek , 1960 Z1887247 1960 single work film/TV children's fantasy

A short animated film from surrealist Dusan Marek. The plot is described by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) as follows: 'While a man is fishing, two men go over the wall landing in a boat below. The fisherman follows the other two down, but lands in the boat head first causing a leak. They all sink. The end.'

Though the NFSA does not make it explicit that this film is based on a nursery rhyme (as it does for Marek's other nursery-rhyme films), the title and the NFSA's description of the plot strongly suggest that the film is based on the English nursery rhyme commonly called either 'The Three Wise Men of Gotham' or 'The Three Sailors of Gotham', which plays on the reputed foolishness of the inhabitants of the village of Gotham, in Nottinghamshire:

Three wise men of Gotham,
They went to sea in a bowl,
And if the bowl had been stronger
My song had been longer.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 19 Sep 2012 10:00:18
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