The Cat Piano - Narrated by Nick Cave

A city is a peace with itself.  Populated by singing cats, a blue beat poet falls in love with the gorgeous siren who sings at a club.

Yet the peace of the city is broken when a dark figure visits and begins to kidnap the town’s occupants for his own perverse musical intentions.  The cat (wonderfully voiced by Nick Cave) determines to save his city and restore the natural order of Cat Town.

The Cat Piano is yet another triumph by The People’s Republic of Animation who consistently show that animation does not have to be cloying, childish and chaste – but is an adult art form in its own right.  It is co-directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson and the narration is in the form of a short epic poem, written by White.  Credit must also go to Jessica Brentnall who produced the piece.

The Austria-based animation house is fast gaining a global reputation for their short animated film and this is no access.  The entire look of the movie was created by using Adobe Photoshop to animate everything – something of a challenge but something which is fast becoming the house’s signature style.

This kind of animation makes me breathless partly because it simply exists but also because it is so extraordinarily done.  It is reminiscent, to me, of some of the fantasy films of the 1950s – I remember one the name of which I cannot recollect (answers on a postcard please!) where there are hundreds of children playing a single piano of incredible length. 

The film, quite rightly, has won numerous awards but I am scratching my head as to why an Academy Award was not forthcoming for this extraordinary, exquisite work of animation.