Don Kihot (1961 short)

Don Kihot is a 1961 experimental animated short by Vlado Kristl for Zagreb Film. It is loosely based on Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

Themes
The author reduced the characters in the short to Klee-style ideograms, with backgrounds being represented by abstract frescoes, all of which is accompanied by atonal music.

Reception and legacy
The short was blacklisted during the former Yugoslavia due to its rigid classification of art and society, which Don Kihot challenged. The short won a number of prizes at international festivals, such as the main prize at International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 1962. It is described as a "difficult but very poetic film" and a magnum opus for Kristl. Speed and Wilsom state that the short "presents the eccentric individualist assailed by all the forces of the modern state - guns, radar, tanks, planes, patrols, armies - and in some amazing way the nonconformist deviationist Don triumphs over them all".