The Six-armed Image

1921
Silent
10m

Comic strip animal favourites of the 1920s continue their epic animated adventure around the world

Were you in the Wilfredian League of Gugnuncs? Pip the dog, Squeak the penguin and Wilfred the rabbit were comic strips stars of the 1920s and beyond. Bertram Lamb and A.B. Payne's characters appeared in the Daily Mirror from 1919 to 1956, and in 1921 they featured in an animated series produced by Lancelot Speed.

Here they disembark an airship to land on the mysterious Island of Anchovy, escape the clutches of a mysterious idol, board a steamer to Calcutta and reach the top of Mount Everest. That this is all squeezed into one episode (number 11 of perhaps 25) shows how epic their journey was. Sadly only a handful of episodes survive, but see Popski's Early Life also on the BFI Player.

Creatures Great and Small

Fur, feathers, bugs or beaks: from the start animators have cast the whole natural world in their human comedies and dramas

Would you know Mickey was a mouse if you didn’t know his surname? Many of the most famous animated characters are drawn from the animal kingdom, but they rarely behave quite as nature intended. Anthropomorphism has a long history in storytelling - going back to Aesop and beyond - and animation has imported it into film. But whether it's Bonzo the Dog or Charley the Cat, these characters are really studies in human nature.