''The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb'' is a 1993 British

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independe ...

stop-motion Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames ...

pixilation Pixilation is a stop motion technique in which live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor beco ...

adult animated An adult is a human or other animal that has reached full growth. In human context, the term ''adult'' has meanings associated with social and legal concepts. In contrast to a " minor", a legal adult is a person who has attained the age of major ...

science-fantasy Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. In a conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as being scient ...

dystopian A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, ap ...

directed, written, shot and edited by Dave Borthwick, produced by bolexbrothers studio and funded by Richard Hutchinson, BBC,

La Sept La Sept was a French free-to-air television network and production company created on 23 February 1986 to develop cultural and educational programming for transmission via the TDF 1 satellite. In French, the word "sept" means the number seven; ...

and

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, which also distributed the film on video. The story follows the tiny

Tom Thumb Tom Thumb is a character of English folklore. ''The History of Tom Thumb'' was published in 1621 and was the first fairy tale printed in English. Tom is no bigger than his father's thumb, and his adventures include being swallowed by a cow, tan ...

as he is abducted from his loving parents and taken to an experimental laboratory, and his subsequent escape. He discovers a community of similarly sized people living in a swamp, who help him on his journey to return to his parents. The film is largely dialogue-free, limited mostly to grunts and other non-verbal vocalisations.

Plot

Inside an

artificial insemination Artificial insemination is the deliberate introduction of sperm into a female's cervix or uterine cavity for the purpose of achieving a pregnancy through in vivo fertilization by means other than sexual intercourse. It is a fertility treatment ...

factory, a mechanical wasp hovering around the establishment is crushed to death by the machinery's gears, causing its vitals to drop into one of the jars on the conveyor belt. This results in a woman giving birth to a thumb-sized fetus-like child in her and her husband's house in a grim and slum urban town. Outside, a man in a black suit witnesses the whole scene and goes to an alley to encounter Pa Thumb, who picks up a ventriloquist box-shaped doll house to make his son's bedroom. The man simply grins at him but leaves when he gets creeped out by the ventriloquist's dummy at the window of a toy shop. Pa and Ma Thumb decide to call their diminutive son "Tom," but their time with him is short-lived. He's soon kidnapped and taken to a laboratory to be studied and experimented on. After engineering an escape with the help of one of the lab's other captives, Tom finds himself in a town populated by people his size. There he meets Jack, a young warrior who hates the bigger people, whom he and the others call giants. Nonetheless, Tom convinces Jack to help him attempt to find his father.

Production

''The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb'' was made using a combination of stop-motion animation and

(live actors posed and shot frame-by-frame), often with live actors and puppets sharing the frame. It was originally commissioned as a 10-minute short for

BBC2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream a ...

's Christmas programming, but was rejected for being too dark for the festive season. The short version nevertheless garnered critical acclaim through showings at animation festivals, and a feature-length version was commissioned by the BBC a year later.

Awards

*1993 -

Sitges - Catalan International Film Festival The Sitges Film Festival ( ca, Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya, links=no) is an annual film festival held in Sitges, Spain, specialized in fantasy and horror films, of which it is considered one of the world's foremost in ...

- Best Director *1993 - Cinanima Espinho Portugal - Best Feature *1994 - Fantasporto - International Fantasy Film Award - Best Director *1994 - Fantasporto - Critics' Award - Special Mention *1994 - Houston Worldfest - Gold Special Jury Award - Feature Film *1994 -

San Francisco International Film Festival The San Francisco International Film Festival (abbreviated as SFIFF), organized by the San Francisco Film Society, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in i ...

- Best Animation *1994 - Worldfest Charleston - Gold Special Jury Award - Feature Film *1994 - Video Home Entertainment - Award of Excellence *1995 -

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British Film Award - Best Technical/Artistic Achievement *1995 -

Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival The , also sometimes called YIFFF, is held in a resort-like environment in the small town of Yūbari on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaidō. From 1990 to 1999, the festival was known as the Yubari International Fantastic Adventure Fil ...

- Special Jury Prize - Feature Film *1995 - Atlanta Film and Video Festival - Best Animated Film *1995 - Mediawave - Grand Prix *1995 - Mediawave - Audience Prize *1996 - Európai Animációs Játékfilm Fesztivál - 1st Prize
4. Kecskeméti Animációs Filmfesztivál 1. Nemzetközi Animációs Játékfilm Fesztivál
'. Kecskeméti Animáció Film Fesztivál. 1996.

References

Notes Bibliography *
Eye Weekly - The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Secret Adventures Of Tom Thumb, The 1993 films 1993 animated films British fantasy films British independent films 1990s stop-motion animated films Films based on Tom Thumb Pixilation films 1993 fantasy films 1990s English-language films Films directed by Dave Borthwick British adult animated films 1990s British films