An anthology film is a feature film composed of vignettes or Short Films. Generally, the shorts have nothing to do with one another, but occasionally there is a theme, Framing Device, or plot running through the stories, connecting them together. In animation, this kind of film is often called a "package film."
Anthology films are made for various reasons. They give short films exposure they wouldn't otherwise get, since shorts are no longer run by themselves in most cinemas. Anthologies also allow animation studios to practice and experiment without committing millions of dollars to a project. They allow a writer to explore a theme in multiple ways, or show the ways different directors will approach a subject. And sometimes, it really just makes for a neat story. Comedic ones often cross with Sketch Comedy.
An anthology film is different from an anthology of shorts in that all the films were intended to be released together. Fantasia is an anthology film; a collection of Silly Symphonies is not.
Here's Wikipedia's list of anthology films, but feel free to add examples below.
Compare Vignette Episode for serial works.
Examples:
Animation
- Disney has made six package films, four of which were made during the war years. The company lacked the staff to make one big feature film, but still wanted to keep the animators busy and make movies, so they opted to release shorts. Disney's feature-length package films are:
- Saludos Amigos
- The Three Caballeros
- Make Mine Music
- Fun and Fancy Free
- Melody Time
- The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
- Fantasia, though not officially regarded as a package film, basically fits the format in that it consists of multiple unrelated segments tied together with narration.
- Fantasia 2000 is an update of the original film.
- The Reluctant Dragon sort of falls into this, featuring several different animated and live-action segments under the guise of a "behind-the-scenes tour" of the Disney studios as they existed in 1941.
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh could also qualify, although it's more of a Compilation Movie.
- Disney also made several Pooh featurettes made of episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh during the 90s and early 2000s .
- Disney has also released several DTV package films, like Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas.
- Allegro non Troppo, a parody of Fantasia, follows a similar format.
- The Animatrix
- Batman: Gotham Knight
- The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales
- Fears of the Dark
- Genius Party
- Halo Legends
- Heavy Metal
- A Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass Double Feature
- The House (2022)
- Memories
- Neo Tokyo (1987)
- Robot Carnival
- Short Peace
- Winter Days
Live Action
- The ABCs of Death
- After Sex
- All Hallows' Eve
- Amazon Women on the Moon
- Amores Perros
- ARIA
- Asylum (1972 Horror)
- Babylon 5: The Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
- Black Sabbath (1963)
- Body Bags (1993)
- California Suite: Four unconnected stories about visitors to the Beverly Hills Hotel.
- Cat's Eye
- Campfire Tales (1991)
- Campfire Tales (1997)
- A Christmas Horror Story
- Cloud Atlas
- Coffee and Cigarettes
- Cradle of Fear
- Creepshow
- Dead of Night
- Deadtime Stories
- Deadtime Stories: Volume 1
- The Death King
- The Devil's Messenger
- Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
- Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)
- The Field Guide to Evil
- Four Rooms
- The French Dispatch: Three stories based on three distinct articles from a fictional magazine (the eponymous ''French Dispatch), which are also connected because all three are about events which happened in the same fictional French town.
- From Beyond the Grave
- From a Whisper to a Scream
- The Gold of Naples
- The Great New Wonderful
- Grim Prairie Tales
- Grindhouse
- Holidays
- Hood of Horror
- Horrific
- The House That Dripped Blood
- How to Irritate People
- I Am Cuba
- If I Had a Million
- If These Walls Could Talk
- Immoral Tales and its spiritual successor, Three Immoral Women
- InAPPropriate Comedy
- Intolerance, 1916, making this trope Older Than Television
- The Kentucky Fried Movie
- Kinds of Kindness
- Kwaidan
- The Monster Club
- Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
- Moonwalker
- Movie 43
- Mystery Train
- Necronomicon: Book of the Dead
- New Year's Eve
- New York, I Love You
- New York Stories
- Night on Earth
- Nightmares
- Nite Tales: The Movie
- O. Henry's Full House, five shorts adapting short stories by O. Henry
- One Night in October: Issues the usual Anthalogy format and has all the stories happen in one night.
- Paisan, six stories set during the 1943-1944 Allied invasion of Italy
- Paris, je t'aime and its American counterpart, New York, I Love You
- Le Plaisir: Three Guy de Maupassant stories.
- The Playground
- Plaza Suite
- The Profane Exhibit
- Pulp Fiction
- The Rising of the Moon
- Scary or Die
- Sin City
- Southbound
- Spirits of the Dead
- Tales from the Crypt
- Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
- Tales from the Hood
- Tales of Halloween
- Tales of Manhattan
- Tales of Terror
- The Theatre Bizarre
- Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her
- Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
- Three
- Three... Extremes - Horror anthology with three Asian directors.
- Torture Garden
- Trick 'r Treat
- Trilogy of Swordsmanship
- Trilogy of Terror
- TunnelVision
- Twice-Told Tales
- Twilight Zone: The Movie
- The Uncanny
- Valentine's Day
- Vault of Horror
- VHS
- Waxworks
- When Darkness Falls
- Wild Tales
- A Woman's Testament: Three stories about women using their looks to get by in patriarchal 1960 Japan.
- XX
- Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow