Old animated short about a mountain watching civilization rise and fall

May 1, 2019 9:46 AM

Probably in the 90s or early 2000s, I saw a short animated film which involved a mountain or a large boulder which was the sentient main character (I'll use gender neutral pronouns for this character). The mountain observed the tiny humans evolving and building things around them, and the idea was that they lived on such a long time scale that the things we find so important like war and religion were of no importance to them. I would like to know what this film was called and hopefully watch it again.

I'm pretty sure I saw it at the International Tournee of Animation (the animated shorts program that made the rounds at art house movie theaters). It was probably not Spike and Mike.

posted by matildaben to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Best answer: IIRC it was part of the first version of Mike Judge & Don Hertzfeldt's The Animation Show in 2003, so that might have been where you saw it.
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:59 AM on May 1, 2019

I found it on Youtube. It's called "Das Rad" (The Wheel) in German. It's about 8 1/2 minutes long.

I ran the description there through Google Translate, from German, and it now reads: On a mountain overlooking the green valley are two old stones. Hew and Kew have already seen a lot in their long existence, which is why the first human wooden huts can gain even moderate interest from them - after all, life as a stone also brings with it its hiccups! But at some point, the rapid development of humanity itself brings stones out of their stoic calmness ... As time passes, the two rocks Hew and Kew watch the world around you change rapidly.

Try to use the phrase "brings with it its hiccups!" in a sentence today!
posted by Sunburnt at 9:56 AM on May 2, 2019

Similarly, "An Object At Rest", which "follows the life of a stone as it travels over the course of millennia, facing nature's greatest obstacle: human civilization". Mountain turns into boulder turns into pebble turns into sand turns into glass.... But probably not 20+ years old.
posted by yggdrasil at 7:26 AM on May 3, 2019