The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. 2005. 10 min. 35mm.
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. 1987. 25 min. 35mm.
The Red Shoes. 1999. 28 min. DCP.
Michael Sporn (1946–2014) was among the most productive and respected animators on the New York scene, creating a sizable body of work for television, as well as contributing to the preservation of animation history through his internationally celebrated blog “Splog.” This program features his award-winning adaptation of Mordicai Gerstein’s The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, an elegy to the human spirit and the Twin Towers. It also includes two films written by Sporn’s frequent collaborator Maxine Fisher: Lyle Lyle Crocodile, produced for HBO’s Storybook Musicals Series from the children’s book by Bernard Waber about a croc who moves in with a family on 88th Street; and The Red Shoes, again for HBO, which sets the classic Hans Christian Andersen morality tale of vanity and friendship in an African-American neighborhood of New York.