Directors/Writers
Stephen Quay
Timothy Quay

Music
Karlheinz Stockhausen

Sky Arts and the British Film Institute have agreed a new partnership to restore a selection of classic British films to high definition format and following their transferral, they are literally, looking the best they ever have.

Twins Stephen and Timothy Quay are American-born influential stop-motion animators who live and work in England.

Made in 2000, this short film was inspired and based on a piece of music by legendary avant-garde composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, entitled Zwei Paare. The brothers have since explained their attraction to this piece of music as being the result of its 'saturation in electricity', an element they reflected with their use of lighting in the film.


They have also related a curious coincidence in the storyline: when Stockhausen himself came to see the film a tale based on the real life events of a woman who was consigned to a psychiatric hospital, who would write love letters every day to a mystery man he was moved to tears, and only later revealed that his mother has been imprisoned in an asylum by the Nazis.