Cannibalism, punk mannequins and fevered images from the unconscious. Yeesh! This is definitely not your parents' idea of animation, or probably yours either.

On top of the extremely twisted subject matter, "Surreal Animation," an uneven festival of short animated works by European filmmakers the Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer and Jiril Barta, also plays havoc with what people traditionally regard as animation.

While the Quay brothers are masters of miniaturization, using tiny puppets to illustrate their works, Svankmajer is more likely to use a combination of live actors, clay animation and props for his shorts, and Barta stiffly animates mannequins.

Czech animator Barta examines the secret life of a group of trashed clothing-store dummies in "Club of the Discarded." His mannequins actually live in an abandoned building and go about their "regular" routines - including jobs, cleaning up and even sexual activities - unnoticed by humankind, until their way of life is threatened by some less traditional, almost punk, dummies that take over the building.

Fellow eastern European Svankmajer explores even more bizarre territory with his "Food" trilogy, a great deal of which is in, shall we say, truly poor taste.

In "Breakfast," a man buys his meal from a vending machine that looks just like a man and is then converted into a vending machine himself. A father and son, ignored by their waiter, eat the flower setting, the table setting, the table and then each other in "Lunch," while patrons dine on parts of themselves in "Dinner."

Far better than any of those works, however, is a series of shorts by Brits the Brothers Quay, who began their careers in the same Aardman Studio that produced "Wallace and Gromit's" Nick Park, and gained fame for their music videos - for Tool and Peter Gabriel.

Included in the Quays' program, which makes up the bulk of the festival, are videos for songs from Michael Penn and His Name Is Alive, as well as "The Comb," a mix of black-and-white live action and color miniature animation that looks at the dream of a sleeping beauty.

But surely the Quay's crowning achievement to date is "Anamorphosis," a fascinating and dazzling animated discussion of the 17th century artistic technique relating to perspective in art, which may be more effective than any academic lecture on the subject.

"Surreal Animation" is not rated but would probably receive an R for violence, some vulgar gags (especially in the Svankmajer shorts) and sex between some of Barta's mannequins, as well as some brief nudity and nude images.