Fimfarum 2

režija / directed by: Jan Balej, Aurel Klimt, Vlasta Pospíšilová, Břetislav Pojar

scenarij / script: Jan Balej, Aurel Klimt, Jiří Kubíček, Břetislav Pojar

likovna podoba / art design: Jan Balej, Martin Velíšek, Petr Poš, Pavel Koutský

animacija / animation: David Filcík, Jan Klos, Kateřina Pávová, Alfons
Mensdorff-Pouilly, Jan Smrčka, Aurel Klimt

kamera / photography: Miroslav Špála, Radim Loukota, Jakub Šimůnek, Zdeněk Pospíšil

montaža / editing: Lucie Haladová, Magda Sandersová

glasba / music: Vladimír Merta

zvok / sound: Marek Musil, Pavel Dvořák

glasovi / voices: Jan Werich, Ota Jirák

producent / produced by: Martin Vandas, Aurel Klimt (MAUR Film s.r.o.), Vít Komrzý (UPP), Magdalena Sedláková, Václav Myslík (Česká televize), Radovan Polách (Krátký Film Praha), Filip Marek (Samuelson)

The sequel to a collection of fairy tales 'for clever children and clever adults' from the much beloved book by Jan Werich. Under Břetislav Pojar's leadership Tom Thumb, a picturesque story full of reversals and adventure, three similar brothers come to life in The Hunchbacks from Damascus, a work which evokes the atmosphere of the Near East and an oriental narrative style Aurel Klimt presents. Vlasta Pospišilová's Three Sisters and a Ring employs a rustic instruction manual a la The Decameron: how to fool a husband out of a ring. And Jan Balej allows brothers Marek and Kouba to explain a natural phenomenon, and to relive the age-old fairy tale about envy and devils in Why, Uncle, Is the Sea Salty?

Film Comments

"First of the quartet is Jan Balej's Why, Uncle, Is the Sea So Salty? an edgy parable of being careful what you wish for. In Pospisilova's charming Three Sisters and One Ring, sibs conspire to imaginatively humiliate their respective husbands. The Hunchbacks of Damascus, from anthology instigator Aurel Klimt, flirts with racial stereotyping but is an absorbing fable. Bretislav Pojar's Tom Thumb is a reverent telling of that tale. Clever political content will go over tykes' heads, but give taller auds a taste of Werich's anarchistic and humanist worldview. Success of the first collection after 15 years of labour led to an accelerated production schedule for the second, which cleverly mixes stop-motion and other animation styles. Charming credit sequence finds characters from each chestnut gathered for a literal curtain call. Fleeting puppet nudity may give pause to the ultraconservative."
Eddie Cockrell, Variety

Director's notes

"As for the approach to the fairy tale of Three sisters and one ring we can start with the original comment of Jan Werich: "Three brothers and three sisters, three married couples, were living in their own way, not particularly cleverly but by no means stupidly. They were not opposed to going five miles on foot for a good laugh." And that is what is supposed to be the benchmark for all the difficult situations that the sisters have prepared for their husbands. At the end there is both reconciliation and the manifestation of the grace of common villagers. The story is set in the beautiful countryside of Southern Bohemia in the 1920's. During realization two-dimensional decorations and props are applied to classic puppet film. Imaginary scenes shot by means of cut-out animation."
Vlasta Pospíšilová

"The fairy tale itself calls for an artistic approach full of colour and decoration. For
palace scenes, the use of glittering decoration; rich stylisation both in interior and
exterior. It is a suggestive humorous story based on the tradition of fairy tales from the Orient, thus the playful and informal style. The main technology I use is classic manual puppet animation combined with computer technology. There is a lot of movement from place to place in the story and so it is necessary to use special effects for quick change of environment while creatures are static or on the move to make the story quicker and more natural. In such cases I prefer visual narrative avoiding unnecessary descriptiveness. To get the effect, I use digital recording and pictorial post-production that allow me to shoot the puppet separately from the background and to check the resulting composition immediately. At the same time it allows me to use for example only one window and cut it on computer into pieces (e.g. the scene with unlimited combinations of the three identical hunchbacks). This way I can work on the edge of more than one technique of animation using and combining them freely as necessary."

"The story of Why, Uncle, Is the Sea So Salty?, narrated by Jan Werich, is about the human desire to possess more and more and thus is a topical issue even nowadays. Not only is it appealing because of the story of two brothers but also because of the variety of settings. We visit a typical Czech village, go down to hell by lift, drive a tractor as far as the sea port and eventually sail on a big boat. The modern interpretation of the story exploits modern technical developments, for example a tractor, an infernal lift, TV, radio etc. All that leaves room for imagination, however, the graphic preparation of scenes, settings and props is very demanding. The film is shot using classic manual animation of puppets supplemented by computer effects."
Jan Balej

"Werich's version of the tale about a well-known figure of a little chap is actually a
short picaresque novel spiced with his distinctive humour and philosophy. I would like to preserve as much of the text as possible, as it is Werich himself who narrates the fairy tale. It is not an easy task to translate such a story into film. There are a lot of characters as well as a large number of different locations in the tale. Protagonists are of different sizes, most of the story takes place in the exterior. Both of these matters count among the most difficult in a puppet film. Therefore I am using computer technology in association with manual animation as well as a combination of various techniques: paper and its naive animation for descriptive parts that are heavy on decoration, classic three-dimensional half-plastic puppets for actors' parts. The style of costumes and decorations corresponds approximately to the end of the first half of the nineteenth century."
Břetislav Pojar

Biographies

Vlasta Pospíšilová (1935, Prague). She graduated at the College of artistic design, where she specialized on puppet-leading and scene designing. In 1956, she enrolled as an animator in the studio of puppet film in Prague, where Jiři Trnka was preparing a feature animated film A Midsummer Night's Dream. With his artistic guidance, she acquired professional skills that she used in all her following films. Vlasta Pospíšilová also collaborated as animator with Jan Švankmajer. In the late seventies she started to direct puppet animation films. In the nineties she created 30 episodes for the puppet animated serial Fireflies. In the year 2000, she created already the third fairy-tale by Jan Werich A Dream Fulfilled.

Aurel Klimt (1972, Žilina). He studied animation at Prague's Film Academy. To begin with he concentrated on cartoon animation, then on video art in Radek Pilař's studio and from the third year under the tutorship of Břetislav Pojar, he specialized in pixilation and puppet animation. Since completing his studies he has worked mainly on his own films but also on theatre productions and animated leaders for television. He is a complete author, working as scriptwriter, editor, animator, director, scenographer and usually also the subject of his films.

Jan Balej (1958, Prague). In 1998 he graduated from UPRUM - the film and television graphic arts studio. In 1990 he founded the Hafan film Praha studio which concentrated on puppet animation film production. Between 1992 and 1994 Balej designed and directed a series of four Tom Thumb films. In 1999/2000 he made a thirteen-part series of bedtime stories for the Czech Television entitled How things are with the hippos. In the year 2000 he finished a short puppet animated film One night in a town.

Břetislav Pojar (1923, Sušice). He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts but he did not complete his studies because during the war in 1942 Czech universities were closed. As a result Pojar did not become an architect, but was forced by the Nazis to work in the AFIT studio (Atelier filmovych triku / Film Special Effects Studio). Immediately after the end of the war AFIT employees set up the Bratři v triku studio and Břetislav Pojar became one of the studio's leading animators. Pojar was one of the founders of the Department of Animation at the Film and Television Faculty and at the same time it's first Head of Department. In 1990 he was made professor and still actively works in the department today.