On Your Mark

Suffering from writer's block during the production of "Princess Mononoke," Miyazaki took a break to create this beautiful short film, a wordless sci-fi tale accompanied by the song "On Your Mark" by the Japanese rock duo Chage & Aska. The story follows two policemen in a post-apocalyptic world as they struggle to give a winged girl her freedom, first from a religious cult, then from the government. Beautifully animated, it is the first Miyazaki film to make use of computer-generated imagery (albeit on a very limited basis ... it still looks very much like a Miyazaki film).