Computer Animation Arts

If, like me, you're watching events unfold in America with a sense of creeping horror, but you're not quite able to find a precise enough expression for it, watch The Hangman from Les Goldman and Paul Julian.   It's here you'll find it - the name for the dread you're feeling at the very idea of a 'Muslim Ban' and all that it augurs.  Cometh the hangman...  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

The Hangman is an allegorical poem by Maurice Ogden and a stark warning against apathy and crimes of omission. Ogden's poem recalls the famous statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller regarding the moral lethargy of German intellectuals during the Nazi persecution of different social groups: " They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up." This animated version of Ogden's poem was made in 1964 by Les Goldman and Paul Julian . As was true of The Tell-Tale Heart , Julian's background in backgrounds is self-evident; just watch as the town to which the Hangman lays siege transitions from Norman Rockwell idyll to de Chirico wilderness. The film starts s...