I once saw a wonderful and disturbing animation short in a movie
compilation of animation shorts that had all won a certain annual
animation award.  (I don't remember the specific award, but I believe
it was from the late 1980's or early 1990's.)  It is a stop-action
animation of tomato can "citizens" living in a cardboard "city".  The
citizens are oppressed by a dictatorial government.  They are arrested
arbitrarily and beaten by secret police.  They are herded into a
"propaganda machine" where they are violently opened, their tomato
guts dumped out, and brutally refilled with the "propaganda" of the
day (beans, corn, etc.)  It was not meant to be funny or amusing;
rather, it was a grim allegory of Soviet Communism.  What was the
title and creator of this animation short, and, most importantly, how
can I view it again?

I viewed this movie when I was a student at Clarkson University,
1990-1993, in Potsdam, NY, at the local theater's weekly "art film"
night.

Hello.

The title of the film is "Canfilm." It's from Bulgaria. The creator is
Zlatin Radev.

See this description posted on May 12, 1992 in the Usenet group
rec.arts.movies:

"Canfilm" (Zlatin Radev; Bulgaria; 18:11): The best (and longest)
piece of the fest.  It took me a little while to figure out what the
analogies were in this allegory.  We see a country whose citizens are
food cans.  As we open, the proper contents to have are cherries. 
Then a new regime comes along that wants all the cans to hold
tomatoes.Secret police cans carry off cans of cherries to teach them
propercontents.  Some very nice ideas.  (VG)"
Archived by Google Groups: 
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1992May12.152127.25923%40cbnewsj.cb.att.com&output=gplain

Also see this description from the article, "ANIMATION CELEBRATION: A
FUN FILM FEST," BY MANUEL ESPARZA":
"However, the most provocative piece was done by a Bulgarian, Zlatin
Radev. He created a society of cans that go through violent
governmental changes in Canfilm. It comes complete with propaganda
supporting the current regime, secret police rounding up dissenters,
and graffiti-scrawling revolutionaries.
The scenes are extremely vivid. If this work had been done by an
American filmmaker, it would have been just funny. But underlying the
obvious humor is an unsettling feeling that art is imitating life.
This 18-minute piece alone is worth the ticket price."
On the web site of University of Houston:
http://www.stp.uh.edu/vol57/92-04-17.html

According to a University of California at Berkeley's Media Resource
page, Canfilm is availabe on a video called "Animation Celebration
Video Collection. Volume 4." See complete contents listed on this UC
Berkeley page:
Animation Celebration Video Collection. Volume 4. 

Two copies of the video "Animation Celebration Video Collection.
Volume 4." are listed for sale on eBay's Half.com:
http://half.ebay.com/cat/buy/prod.cgi?cpid=2006624&domain_id=1877&meta_id=3

search strategy: google groups, movies, films, tomato, "Can film",
canfilm

I hope this helps.

---

Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 11 Nov 2002 21:25 PST

I accidentally left out the web link for that UC Berkeley media page
listing the contents of the video:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Animationfilm.html

---

Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 12 Nov 2002 22:22 PST

Thank you very much for the tip.  
-juggler

Excellent!  Thank you very much.