UNDER THE SEA is an experimental animated film structured on adaptations of five literary classics: Madame Bovary, Frankenstein, Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Gulliver's Travels and The Voyage of the Beagle. ...

The film synthesizes, layers and juxtaposes its multiple sources into a unifying context of an ongoing voyage at sea. The images are equal parts illustration, stream of consciousness, free association, objective data, random juxtaposition and period research. The animation is both abstract and figurative ....

Three scripts were written for each book: one dealing with narrative exposition, a second one dealing with character dialogue and the third script consisting of chronological fragments of words and phrases. ... Script text is also performed in German, Sanskrit and Japanese, as well as in English.

All of the animation in UNDER THE SEA was created by hand by Paul Glabicki, using paper, ink, prismacolor and collage. ...

... [T]he film is an Abstract Narrative film ... presented as a multi-layered, and somewhat disorienting event: an experience not unlike travel to a foreign land, picking up a map in a foreign language, or attempting to decipher an alien artifact.

Awards (selected): Grand Prize, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 1989; 14th Atlanta Film and Video Festival.