The Village, a Vila or a Village is an Oscar-nominated short film by Mark Baker released in 1993 in the United Kingdom. The short film was animated with traditional hand drawn animation. The film was directed and written by Baker, produced by Pam Dennis and other actors and crew members, the animation tells the story of an isolated circular village located in the middle of a large forest in Northern Britain. The Church rules over the village as a figure of authority. The people in the village are devout Christians following the church and obeying the village priest, the villagers who are presented as hypocritical "Sinners" most of the time spy on each other by looking out their windows and peeping into one another's houses. The village is filled with distrust which causes many conflicts and tension between everyone. The protagonist of the film is a large bald man wearing glasses, a light grey long sleeved shirt and dark grey pants who is a gardener, in one of the first scenes the man is seen digging soil planting apple trees just outside the village. The rest of the village is seen after with the main focus being about the villagers staring at each other.
The Village was initially made for the British television channel Channel 4, Pizazz Pictures which was the studio where the crew worked in managed the production with Baker serving as director, Pizazz Pictures also distributed the animation. The Village aired on Channel 4 TV station as a "Pizazz Pictures production".
Today The Village is available on YouTube and Baker's website.
Plot
The Village starts with a scene of little ants carrying small food crumbs and objects into an ant colony hole, one ant picks up a large rock, carries it in the line of ants and fails to get it into the hole. Other Ants grab the rock and help put it somewhere else. The gardener is soon introduced, he is seen digging with a shovel in a designated area for planting apple trees, the rest of the Village is then introduced. The villagers are seen with their heads popping out of the small square windows of their townhouses while staring at each other and turning their heads. A large lady comes out of a house and steals apples from a tree beside the church while everyone watches, the village priest comes out of a house and drinks a bottle sacramental wine inside the church, it is heavily suggested that he is an alcoholic, after that he goes to a building where a prisoner is held in the basement behind a small window with bars, the priest spits on him and then leaves. The prisoner then gets up and reveals that he was lying down on top of a hole which he was digging with a spoon to escape. A greedy old man listens as the prisoner is digging and then goes back into his bedroom where he slides a large chest from under his bed that is filled with gold coins, he throws the coins up and down while smiling. Meanwhile, a large man wearing a tank top listens while waiting for his wife to bring food at a table. The man spits out the food that his wife brought, his wife grabs a basket and heads out to get some other food, she heads out of the village near the garden where the gardener is planting trees. They see each other and intimately smile at each other, an old lady is watching which makes the wife afraid and prompts her to run back to her house, the old lady laughs sadistically while the gardener sticks his tongue out at the lady, the lady then gets mad and takes a trash can and dumps all the garbage out of her window, the ants come and pick up the food scraps for themselves.
