"I believe in the trend of animated films that links its future to the mental capacity of the means of expression belonging to kinetic arts and the currently developing principles of aesthetic and semantic audio-visual integration; a trend that explores and reveals the ability to create ambitious animated films based on the conflict of form, texture, light and movement, and not just on the traditionally understood drawn anecdote or even illustrated story" - Kazimierz Urbański, from the manifesto Art Under Camera.
"... the opening credits.... are accompanied by images of colourful liquids, creating hypnotic whirlpools and aesthetic explosions..... When the fluid background calms down, we see the rush of paper antelopes and the relentless attempts to hunt them down. When one of the animals is finally brought down by an arrow, the endless battle between warring groups, which is the central motif of the film, begins. It has existed since prehistoric times, when people fought with bows and spears, then swords, and later firearms. The increasing automation and power of war machines, the appearance of tanks and planes, and finally the use of weapons of mass destruction lead to total annihilation, which once again is shown, as in the prologue of the film, by means of a storm of flowing liquids.... Playthings is one of the few films by Urbański in which the storyline is clear to the viewer, and the narrative structure is visible from beginning to end. However, it is not the message, but the original use of materials that gives this film extraordinary power. The characters and weapons cut from paper, based on highly geometric forms, create a visual show thanks to the artistic power of simple images. Cutout animation is the only technique in which objects are subject to such dramatic disintegration (a figure consisting of several pieces of paper falls apart into its components upon the impact of a bullet) and easy transformations (the forming of an army battle order or a column of tanks advancing under intensive aerial bombing as seen from above). Drawing on the basic feature of the cutout technique, which is the continuous transposition of the elements comprising the presented characters, Urbański created an extraordinary ballet of form and colour with a pacifistic message"
- Mariusz Frukacz, transl. Bozhana Nikolova
Music by Andrzej Markowski
More about Kazimierz Urbański at CULTURE.PL
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