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Max Beeza and the City in the Sky

As sublime as it is silly, this ambitious animated short mixes a vision of a dystopian, tower block Britain with anarchic vaudeville humour

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Fantasy
  • 1977
  • 24 mins

Vote for Froglet

As the general election is held in the UK, it's polling day for the Clangers on a small blue planet far away.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Children's
  • 1974
  • 7 mins

Superted

Don’t tell the Spotty man but Superted has a new friend. A stop motion predecessor of the superhero teddy idea

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Children's
  • 1975
  • 9 mins

Next

Two virtuoso performances in one – Shakespeare's complete works presented in puppet form by a master of animation

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1989
  • 5 mins

Animated Britain (trailer)

Discover an animated portrait of Britain, brought to life frame by painstaking frame, with our free-to-view BFI Player archive collection - available as part of Animation 2018, a year-long celebration of animation

  • Promotional
  • 2018
  • 1 mins

The United Kingdom

What does it mean to be British? You might not have a much clearer idea after watching this animated portrait, but you will certainly be entertained

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1994
  • 5 mins

Bunty the Bouncing Bassoon

Warning! If you step into the Merry Music Shop then this singalong cartoon is an animated earworm in waiting!

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Children's
  • 1963
  • 6 mins

The Aeronauts

A reet gradely yarn in cartoon form, as a boy and his grandad fly from Wigan to “Th’ USA” in the 1930s

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1984
  • 12 mins

David Low Animation

Gad Sir, it’s an animated Colonel Blimp! David Low’s drawings were brought to life in this test for a sadly unrealised political cartoon project

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1936
  • 0 mins

The Family Holiday

Got your holidays booked yet? Take a look at what Terminal Tours have to offer in this consciously coarse comic cartoon

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Comedy
  • 1975
  • 8 mins

Two off the Cuff

Animated special offer! 2-for-1 cartoon from Bob Godfrey, with the voice of Ronnie Barker

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1968
  • 9 mins

Lautrec

If anyone can bring Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s sketchbooks to life, Geoff Dunbar can-can

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Documentary
  • 1974
  • 6 mins

That Yorkshire Sound

An audio-driven animated documentary covering a day of life in Yorkshire.

  • Short documentary
  • 2017
  • 3 mins

The Mail Goes Through

Witness the no-so-great train robbery in this post-war cartoon, produced "in glorious monochrome"

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1947
  • 10 mins

Little Tom Thumb

Worst. Parents. Ever. But a lovely animated tale using cut-out animation designed by Sunniva Kellquist

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1967
  • 7 mins

I Wanna Mink

A cartoon cautionary tale of a marriage turning sour, featuring real-life husband and wife Sam Wanamaker and Charlotte Holland

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1959
  • 9 mins

Honestly It's the Story of My Life

A down-to-earth portrait of art school life from Sarah Ann Kennedy, creator of Crapston Villas and voice of Miss Rabbit and Nanny Plum

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1990
  • 5 mins

Animation Has Changed

Out with the old and in with the new – one of Britain’s leading animation companies pitches its new image with great humour

  • Advert
  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1971
  • 7 mins

Polygamous Polonius Revisited

A cartoon character assassination of the Iron Lady with a healthy dollop of lunacy from Bob “Roobarb” Godfrey

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1985
  • 8 mins

Polygamous Polonius

An off-beat animated love story of sorts as Polonius meets his match in Agnes the art lecturer

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1960
  • 9 mins

A Short Tall Story

This animated allegory with a message of mediation was so successful it was adopted by the United Nations

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Fantasy
  • 1970
  • 4 mins

The Professor

A nutty professor meets a very hungry caterpillar in this animated chase cartoon brimming with swinging 60s backdrops.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1967
  • 7 mins

Ersatz

An affectionate stop-motion tribute to Hollywood and cinema going, by an animator at Cosgrove-Hall Productions

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1978
  • 14 mins

Dream Doll

A relationship liable to blow up at any moment is at the heart of this animated short about a man and an inflatable sex doll

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Comedy
  • 1979
  • 12 mins

Mildred

A future Beatles director and former Goon script a beautifully designed comic cartoon for BP

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Sponsored film
  • 1960
  • 10 mins

Johann Sebastian Bach In Euro Deutschland

Do you know your Europeans? This animated overview of Germany with Bach was part of a series on the new European Union

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1995
  • 5 mins

Custard

Trust me – you will never look at custard the same way again

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1974
  • 22 mins

Henry 9 'til 5

This cartoon might be NSFW, but it shows that your imagination doesn’t have to be

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1970
  • 6 mins

Pear-shaped Hill

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let this classic bedtime story begin, with added animation to bring the illustrations to life

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Children's
  • 1970
  • 7 mins

To Our Children's Children's Children

This is one small step for The Moody Blues… It may not have led to any giant leaps, but it’s a fun cartoon take on British space exploration

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Performance
  • 1969
  • 7 mins

The Mathematician

2 + 2 = BOOM! The apocalyptic danger of maths is explored in this computer animated cartoon from the mind of Stan Hayward

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1976
  • 3 mins

Tropical Breezes

A British Steamboat Willie? This early British sound cartoon might not have been the first, but it’s a cracker

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1930
  • 11 mins

Dear Margery Boobs

Agony Aunt finds her romantic match in a man with increasingly complicated sex fantasies.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Comedy
  • 1977
  • 5 mins

Dreamlands

Gothic-tinged animation, presenting the final day of a fox, who is being sentenced to death for murdering his rabbit lover.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 2012
  • 4 mins

Music Man

Music lesson daydreams turn nightmares in this European influenced Technicolor cartoon

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Fantasy
  • 1938
  • 6 mins

The Dirt Inside

A slab of clay is wrought, eviscerated and shattered to render an account of date rape with staggering effectiveness

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1998
  • 6 mins

Boogie Rag Roll - Thunderclap Jones

Frantic Welsh boogie-woogie maestro Thunderclap Jones pounds the piano in this fast and furious pop promo

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Children's
  • 1963
  • 6 mins

The Christmas Visitor

The Night Before Christmas meets Toy Story in this charming British cartoon from 1958.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1958
  • 7 mins

Topology

A maths lesson is an excuse for an animator’s tour de force

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • School programme and Educational film
  • 1969
  • 9 mins

Dodo in Christmas Adventure

Meet the animated sci-fi fixer from a strange atomic race who knows the value of Christmas.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1965
  • 5 mins

Selwyn's Lucky Day

A story of valleys life and and the lottery, this is truly a winning animation. Watch it and love it!

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 2000
  • 8 mins

A Film about Poo

This is a film about poo, and the things that you should and shouldn't do.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Comedy
  • 2009
  • 2 mins

Children of Wax

Delightful African folk tale collected by Alexander McCall Smith and animated by industry veteran Kathleen “Spud” Houston

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1988
  • 7 mins

Players

Tennis match escalates into apocalypse

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1982
  • 7 mins

Midsummer Nightmare

For Puck’s sake watch this. Shakespeare’s “shrewd and knavish sprite” emerges in the C20th and takes on the modern obsession of television

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Comedy
  • 1957
  • 9 mins

Plain Man's Guide to Advertising

Does your home suffer from BO? This gag filled pastiche of the ad industry is happy to nibble the hand that feeds it

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Comedy
  • 1962
  • 20 mins

Internet Story

A fast-paced and experimental film told through fragments of internet videos, animations, blogs and news articles.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • Comedy
  • 2010
  • 10 mins

A Date with an Enfield

Personal film about love and memory, animated over hundreds of frames of Google Streetview.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 2016
  • 2 mins

More Animated Britain films in our Rentals collection.

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Early Animation

Free

The dawn of a new celluloid art: Britain's animation pioneers at peace and war

DIY Animation

Free

Amateur animation auteurs bring their homegrown creations to life

Animated Ads

Free

British animation won great success as an entertainer, but it has long had a lucrative second career in sales

Creatures Great and Small

Free

Fur, feathers, bugs or beaks: from the start animators have cast the whole natural world in their human comedies and dramas

Animation 2018

Free

13 new short films from new and emerging animators, commissioned through a prestigious initiative by the BFI, BBC Four, and BBC Arts.