Contemporary

The Brothers Quay are identical twin brothers and influential stop motion animators. Their films, like Jan Svankmajer’s, contain surreal and dark content. Their influences include Walerian Borowcyzk, Jan Lenica, Franz Kafka, and Bruno Schultz. Their most notable short film is “Street of Crocodiles” from 1986. This film in particular has influenced many filmmakers today, including Christopher Nolan, who even produced a documentary on the work of the brothers simply entitled Quay. Terry Gilliam selected Street of Crocodiles as one of the best-animated films ever. Aside from stop motion animation, The Brothers Quay have also showed their work through many other means, such as music videos, adverts and set design, which truly does show how creatively diverse they can be as artists. The reason they remain so influential is that they explored American gothic before artists like Tim Burton came to prominence, which means that their works itself set the standard for more mainstream efforts such as Tim Burton. The Brothers Quay audience is that of an older one, as their work tends to consist of much darker themes such as those shown in Street of Crocodiles, and they have less of a “family friendly” approach to their work than someone like Burton.