Umbilical World

Umbilical World

7.0

Nov 23 2018

1h 19m

Animation

Best known as the cult creator of the animated web series Salad Fingers (SUFF 2007) David Firth creates morbidly fascinating worlds that delve deep into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. It’s fair to say that once you lay eyes on his shorts, it’s hard to shake their visceral effect in a hurry. Eleven years after first screening his work at SUFF, Umbilical World represents a curation of Firth’s most popular shorts to date, each bookended by brand new transitional animations. Using surrealist techniques to explore depression and mental illness with some of the darkest humour this side of the twenty-first century (his work has been featured on Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe and Mitchell & Webb), Firth has become one of the world’s most significant, independent animators. Umbilical World is a brain-melting celebration of Firth’s short but prized career — a dog-stew of animated fancies from the scabland toybox that is his mind.

David Firth

David Firth

Salad Fingers / Various

Recommendations

See all
Song of the Miraculous Hind
7.3

Song of the Miraculous Hind

2002

Divided into four sections, "Song" is inspired by the Siberian and Finno-Ugric legends about Creation, in which the world begins with characters who are only half-human, one being half-bird, the other half-bear. The narrator delves into the origins of Hungarian culture, the Iranian and Turkish influences that impacted the society, and finally the story of Stephen, the emperor who brought Christianity to the country and shifted the capital west in an attempt to link with Europe.

The Sea of Ravens
7.2

The Sea of Ravens

1930

Jean Epstein’s short documentary filmed on the Breton island of Sein, which film preservationist and cinephile Henri Langlois called “one of the most beautiful documentaries in the history of French film, a true poem about Brittany and the sea."

Mission: Impossible
7.0

Mission: Impossible

1996

When Ethan Hunt, the leader of a crack espionage team whose perilous operation has gone awry with no explanation, discovers that a mole has penetrated the CIA, he's surprised to learn that he's the prime suspect. To clear his name, Hunt now must ferret out the real double agent and, in the process, even the score.

Hellboy
6.7

Hellboy

2004

In the final days of World War II, the Nazis attempt to use black magic to aid their dying cause. The Allies raid the camp where the ceremony is taking place, but not before they summon a baby demon who is rescued by Allied forces and dubbed "Hellboy". Sixty years later, Hellboy serves the cause of good rather than evil as an agent in the Bureau of Paranormal Research & Defense, along with Abe Sapien - a merman with psychic powers, and Liz Sherman - a woman with pyrokinesis, protecting America against dark forces.