Peter Foldes

Peter Foldes, born in 1924 in Budapest, Hungary; died 29 March 1977 in Paris, was a director and animator of British nationality.

Biography

Budapest-born Peter Foldes (1924-1977) was one of a number of Hungarian artists (another was the film's composer Mátyás Seiber) who ended up working with fellow countryman John Halas on the latter's animated films after he moved to Britain in 1946. After leaving Halas, Foldes made a number of animated films in collaboration with his British wife Joan (b. 1924), starting with the allegorical Animated Genesis (1952), On Closer Inspection (1953) and A Short Vision (1956).

A Short Vision became one of the most influential British animated films ever made, when it was screened on US television as part of the popular Ed Sullivan Show. Although children were advised to leave the room while it played, it still caused outrage and alarm with its graphic representation of the horrors of nuclear war. In the film, wild creatures flee in terror as a strange missile flies overhead. As it passes over the sleeping city, the world's leaders and wise men look upwards. The missile explodes, destroying humans, wild creatures and the Earth itself. It caught the mood of the times, since the mid-1950s was the height of both the Cold War and nuclear paranoia.