Thursday, February 15, 2018

Short Films: Momodoch


Momodoch are a series of short films directed by Caroline Ebner and based on the children’s stories by Brian and Uschi Bagnall. They are narrated by Duncan Galloway and feature the illustrations created by the Bagnalls.

The style is just shy of a motion comic – narrated rather than voice acted and featuring little actual animation. Rather they showcase the wonderfully colourful and rich pieces that, I assume, accompanied the original books.


a new home
They are perhaps light of story but stronger in situational narrative. In the first part, entitled Monsters, Ghosts and other Ogres we discover that the reason we rarely see vampires (and other monsters) was because we ignored them as we became concerned with other (more mundane, one assumes) fears. One vampire, Momodoch – a 375 year old from the East of England – decided to emigrate with his friends.

the blood orange garden
They create a village for themselves named Obstroloch. A chaotic place with little social structure but a pub called the Black Soul. The first film simply establishes this place and comes in at 9 minutes. The second film, Momodoch and his Friends ..or the Soccer Game, begins with a sojourn in Momodoch’s blood orange garden but soon establishes that his birthday is approaching. His friends arrange a party but also need to get him a present. As the vampire collects points, they decide to have a football match with all goals dedicated to him. The second film is the longest at 13 minutes.

vampire frog
The final film, Momodoch's Birthday, is the shortest at 5 minutes and centres itself on the party arranged in part 2. How much of the books are covered I don’t know but these are pleasant to look at, the narration is solid but the films are ultimately based on a kids’ story and nothing more than a curiosity.

At the time of writing I couldn’t find an IMDb page.

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