By JAMES DAWSON
Front Row Features Film Critic

Junho Chung’s heartbreaking “The Little Match Girl” animated short is available on YouTube. CR: Junho Chung

Junho Chung’s beautifully drawn animated version of “The Little Match Girl,” which was broadcast in 2003 on Los Angeles’ then PBS affiliate KCET’s “Fine Line” program devoted to student films but never made available elsewhere until now, has just been uploaded to YouTube by the filmmaker (Go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP8Y5Ft0haM and jump past the 40 seconds of color bars.) This touching five-minute variation of the classic Hans Christian Andersen story, with a simple and moving score by Yong H. Choe, conveys the heartbreakingly tragic tale without any dialog whatsoever, making it universally accessible.

Korea-born Chung majored in illustration at New York’s School of Visual Art. He went on to major in character animation at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Santa Clarita, Calif., where “The Little Match Girl” became his first animated film. His then three-year-old daughter Jennifer, to whom the film is dedicated, inspired the design of the main character.

The waif tries to keep warm in the animated short film “The Little Match Girl.”