A Family for Maria/Une famille pour Maria: An animated film for five- to eight-year-olds about international adoption and the difficulty of adapting to a new environment. The film also gives a glimpse into the problems of abandoned children in developing countries. In A Family for Maria/Une famille pour Maria, love triumphs over the insecurity of a little Latin American girl who finds a new family in North America (5 min. 20 sec.). Matrioska: This is a dance of Russian dolls. But these are painted wooden dolls, hollow inside and of graded sizes so that the largest holds all the rest. They twirl, swing and sway to gay Russian tunes, never losing their fixed reserve. As the dance ends they hop up in turn into the mother figure, who then hurries off the scene (4 min. 46 sec.). Juke-Bar: Big business versus the underdog, or the territorial struggle between one greasy spoon and its cockroach habitués. Sometimes the underdog has the upper hand. A musical comedy combining puppet animation with live action, Juke-Bar rocks to a big-band beat (10 min. 25 sec.).
1996, 20 min 45 s
National Film Board of Canada Production
© All Rights Reserved, 2007
