The Brothers Quay

The Brothers Quay
The Brothers Quay
Born	(1947-06-17) June 17, 1947 (age 69) Norristown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	film directors, animators

Stephen and Timothy Quay (/ˈkweɪ/ KWAY; born June 17, 1947) are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators. They are also the recipients of the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for their work on the play The Chairs.

The Quay Brothers reside and work in England, having moved there in 1969 to study at the Royal College of Art, London after studying illustration (Timothy) and film (Stephen) at the Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In England they made their first short films, which no longer exist after the only print was irreparably damaged. They spent some time in the Netherlands in the 1970s and then returned to England where they teamed up with another Royal College student, Keith Griffiths, who produced all of their films. In 1980 the trio formed Koninck Studios, which is currently based in Southwark, south London.

The Quay Brothers' works (1979–present) show a wide range of often esoteric influences, starting with the Polish animators Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica and continuing with the writers Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser and Michel de Ghelderode, puppeteers Wladyslaw Starewicz and Czech Richard Teschner and Czech composers Leoš Janáček, Zdeněk Liška and Polish Leszek Jankowski, the last of whom has created many original scores for their work. Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, for whom they named one of their films (The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer), is also frequently cited as a major influence, but they actually discovered his work relatively late, in 1983, by which time their characteristic style and preoccupations had been fully formed. At a panel discussion with Daniel Bird and Andrzej Klimowski at the Aurora festival Norwich they emphasized the more significant influence on their work was Walerian Borowczyk, who made both animation shorts and live-action features.