The Paris Years by the Brothers Quay – brilliant animation and musical synchronisation.

The Brothers’ works from 1979 to the present show a wide range of often esoteric influences, starting with the Polish animators Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica and continuing with the writers Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser and Michel de Ghelderode, puppeteers Wladyslaw Starewicz and Czech Richard Teschner and Czech composers Leoš Janáček, Zdeněk Liška and Polish Leszek Jankowski, the last of whom has created many original scores for their work. Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, for whom they named one of their films (The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer), is also frequently cited as a major influence, but they actually discovered his work relatively late, in 1983, by which time their characteristic style and preoccupations had been fully formed.^[4] In a panel discussion with Daniel Bird and Andrzej Klimowski at the Aurora festival in Norwich, they emphasized that a more significant influence on their work was Walerian Borowczyk, who made both animation shorts and live-action features.

Most of their animation films feature puppets made of doll parts and other organic and inorganic materials, often partially disassembled, in a dark, moody atmosphere. Perhaps their best known work is Street of Crocodiles (1986), based on the short story of the same name by the Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz. This short film was selected by director and animator Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time,^[5] and critic Jonathan Romney included it on his list of the ten best films in any medium (for Sight and Sound‘s critics’ poll of 2002).^[6] They have made two full-length live action films: Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1996), produced by Keith Griffiths and Janine Marmot, and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005), produced by Keith Griffiths. They also directed an animated sequence in the film Frida (2002).