TIKI TIKI (1971)

An unclassifiable animated odyssey from the director of Heavy Metal.

A group of monkeys, including a director loosely inspired by Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider persona, struggle through various trials and tribulations while making an epic adventure film in this psychedelic and satirical look at the Hollywood counterculture of the early ’70s. Directed by celebrated animator Gerald Potterton – who earned multiple Oscar nominations for his work at the National Film Board of Canada, contributed to Yellow Submarine, and later directed Heavy Metal – this is an outrageous and inspired feat of cinematic imagination.

An unlikely hybrid of analogue animation and live action Soviet fantasy film, Tiki Tiki repurposes extended passages from Rolan Bykov’s eye-popping 1967 phantasmagoria Aybolit-66 as the film within the film, employing irreverent comic dubbing and cutting to subvert the original intent. The result puzzled and thrilled ’70s audiences in equal measure and turned heads by winning Mosfilm art director Aleksandr Kuznetsov a Canadian Film Award. An unapologetically eccentric experience that has earned comparisons to H.C. Potter’s Hellzapoppin', Tiki Tiki remains one of the most sought-after animated enigmas of its era.