Take 300 classic films, a Xerox and some animation savvy...

Next week I'll be brushing up my claymation skills and gatecrashing a few sessions in East Lothian schools with animator filmmaker Oscar Stringer, who I'm hoping might also want to be our Guest of Honour at Wednesday's TeachMeet07.

In bloggy serendipitous style I've just come across Fast Film (Channel 4 review), a truly astounding piece of animation, paper and film mashup by Virgil Widrich:

"What makes Fast Film unique is that all its scenes were taken from 300 different feature films. Director Virgil Widrich captured stills from the 300 movies, and made over 65,000 photocopies of these, then folded them into a variety of shapes and animated them. The result is a completely fresh look at Hollywood - a tour of movie history at breakneck speed."

It reminds me a great example I saw from a Dundee primary school, where the kids did a paper animation to illustrate the Burns epic poem Tam O'Shanter. Fast Film is truly impressive but exactly the kind of thing I'm sure kids are more capable of doing than we might ever believe.

You could, of course, forget the edu-spin on this post and just go watch it now on the YouTube clip below or at the Real stream. Thanks to Ben for the headsup.