At only eight minutes, Une Nuit sur le Mont Chauve: Night on Bald Mountain (1933) is just as epic as is the Modest Petrovich Moussorgsky musical composition which informs it.

The creators were Russian-born animator Alexander Alexief, & American Claire Parker. They regarded animation to be potentially fine art, & approached their filmmaking as fine artists.

It's pinscreen aka pinboard animation, made by pressing & lifting closely packed silver pins to vary the shades of grey, for black & white stop-motion photography, having the look of shifting shadows, often shockingly lifelike.

Highly dramatic images of storms, mountain, windblown scarecrow, running & morphing animals, rushing child, monsters, ghostly figures, witches, sometimes so lush & realistic it's hard to believe it's done only with pins. It's one of the most lyrical pieces of animation you will ever see.

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