My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts
A personal interpretation of Norwegian history - starring a grandmother who during the Second World War loses her job ironing the King's shirts. Instead she gains access to the enemy's uniforms, and inspires her own brand of resistance fighters, the "Shirt Guerillas".
CinemaSerf@Geronimo1967
The granddaughter/narrator regales us with a story that begins in 1905 when her grandmother lived in the newly independent Norway. If you know your history, then you'll know it was a joint monarchy with Sweden until a Danish prince was chosen as King Haakon VII and his British wife Maud his consort. The snag? Well it turns out that neither knew how to iron a shirt. That didn't go down well with the cheering crowds so they had to outsource the task to a local shop. That's where grandmother comes in. She worked in the shop and wanted to know whose monogrammed apparel she was sorting out. Hardly the soul of discretion, she blabbed to everyone which got her a dashing husband before the Nazi invasion forced the King to flee and WWII led to the "Ling" energetically defying their occupation. This is when grannie came into her own again. As the soldiers brought their uniforms to her shop, she - and soon all of her compatriots - added all sorts of itching powder to their clothing. A sort of sartorial sabotage that soon reduced their unwelcome visitors to nudity and eventually afforded the King a chance to return to his Kingdom where ironing, well we just didn't need it so much. The animation here is a little simple, reminiscent of the "Mr. Benn" cartoons at times, but this has an interesting story underpinning it and the drawings actually serve more as a visual aide-memoire to that. It's only ten minutes long, and I did quite enjoy it.