Review of Chronopolis

After watching so many of Piotr Kamler's short abstract animated films on YouTube and UbuWeb, I finally saw his feature from the early '80s on the latter site. I read the synopsis on Wikipedia afterwards and while I got what was supposed to be understood as happening reading that, there was no way I would have figured that out if I just watched this cold. Knowing that the original version was 66 minutes and had narration by Michael Lonsdale (this version just had French text at the beginning), I half wondered if that might have made this viewing more enjoyable. As it was, the unusual visuals were what managed to keep my eyes open for the entire 52 minutes not to mention the electronic score by Luc Ferrari. Those visuals included many giant heads with headgear resembling those of the Egyptian pyramids, several black balls swirling together and apart, lots of mountain climbers on ropes, and one of them falling before flying with a large white ball helping him. Also that person and that ball walk and bounce with joy after becoming "friends". Okay, so on that note, Chronopolis is worth a look for anyone interested in these artistically unusual animated films.