Harpya (1979)

Directed by

Raoul Servais

Genre

fantasy film

Country

Belgium

Runtime

9 min

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 43 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A man tries to live with a harpy. The creature is half woman and half bird of prey with an endless appetite. This short film has no dialogue.

tensedarkly comicunsettlingdreamlikesurrealcreepyweirdsilent

What happens

Harpya is a 1979 Belgian short comedy horror film written and directed by Raoul Servais, which tells the story of a man (portrayed by Will Spoor) who tries to live with a harpy (portrayed by Fran Waller Zeper), a mythical being that is half woman and half bird of prey with an insatiable appetite. The nine-minutes-long film, which has no spoken dialogue, explores authority and domination, themes Servais had earlier addressed on a larger, societal level but here applied to a personal relationship. Servais, who began to make animated short films in the 1950s, wanted to move away from the cartoon format and invented a new technique for combining animation and live action specifically for Harpya. The film was positively received by critics, won the Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival and gained international renown for its director. Servais abandoned the technique he used in Harpya because it was too time-consuming but continued to combine actors and animation in his later films. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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