15. B'raesheet
TV Shows
John Teton's animated short "B'raesheet (Complete Version)", released in 2010, is a new work built upon his award-winning 1973 film, based upon an ancient legend suggesting that people experience a fantastic vision of the universe prior to birth. It is set to music by Stravinsky, Charlie Haden and others. Critics wrote of the shorter version "a hauntingly lovely seven-minute impression of shapes and textures set to the music of Stravinsky's Firebird" (San Francisco Examiner), "traces an embryo's evolution with joyous appreciation for lifes mysteries" (Variety), and "Featured on Showtime, with its original humpback whale in the stars sequence more than twenty years before Fantasia 2000, this international award-winning film, set to Stravinsky's "Firebird," is a mesmerizing experience" (Jerry Beck in "The Whole Toon Catalog"). At eleven minutes, the new, complete film is one-half longer and includes some never-before-released material that greatly amplifies the original vision with far different imagery and additional music. The original version of "B'raesheet" played at the Chicago and Los Angeles International Film Festivals, and took First Prize in Animation at the 12th Independent Filmmakers Festival and the President of the Japan Foundation Prize at the First Hiroshima International Amateur Film Festival--and as such, was the only American film to be awarded an Outstanding prize at the festival commemorating the 30th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack. (Some viewers may notice elements of the Stravinsky sections that are nearly identical to segments of a well-known PBS television series and a recent Academy Award-winning animated short, however both the series and the other short film, like "Fantasia 2000," were created years after the earlier "B'raesheet" had put its Stravinsky sequences on screens throughout the US and abroad.)
