Today was the only day when i got around to catching some of the animation festival action and ended up sitting through three shows – The Jan Werich’s animated film ‘fimfarum’, the international program ‘four’ and the John Kricfalusi Retrospective.

Jan Werich’s animated feature length film – Fimfarum. A delightful collection of five fairytales based on the legendary book of the same name by Jan Werich. The film was in the making for 17 years and was completed recently in 2002. The many themes that run through this collection deals with depression , gamblins, alcoholism, wifebeating, attempted murder, devil worship and incontinence. I personally thought it was very entertaining and adhered to Trnka’s rich lineage of Czech puppet animation. Its great to see work of such sort being carried on over time and not showing any signs of losing the very essence and beauty of storytelling and design. This site has a couple of videos and mp3 tracks of this animation www.fimfarum.cz

The International program no.4 was pretty cool. The film ‘the wallet / le portefeuille’ by vincent bierrewaerts from france/belgium appealed to me a great deal in terms of concept and execution. The idea of ‘multiple solutions and consequences of one situation’ has always raised my curiosity – hence ‘sliding doors’ is a personal favorite. The film is best summarized as below

‘A man who has just seen himself refusing work finds on his way a wallet. A share of itself collects it while the other share carries on its way with indolence. While returning at his place, the part which collected the wallet discovers in this one a large money bundle. The character divides once again. Part of itself will spend the money while the other goes in the search of its owner. Arrived at this last, another unexpected event will still cause a division of the character.’ – www.cfwb.be/av/KIOSK/HTM/FILMS/Fleportefeuille.htm

Keeping in practice with the modern adaptation of fairytales and folktales, ‘The Great Ball Game’ by Andrew Horne and ‘Moo(n’) by Leigh Hodgkinson, both had a delightful narrative voiceover quality. ‘Louis’ by N. Bruchet, S. Devynck, O. Barre and ‘Parenthese’ by F. Blondeau, T. Deloof. J. Droulers, C. Stamp, both from France was absolutely deliciously rendered with a rich sense of composition and textures (especially in the latter). Anne Marie’s ‘Fox Dance’ was also a part of this collection and seeing it on the big screen added a different dimension to her work. She has a tremendously superior control over anatomy in every imaginable medium that is highly commendable (and as i write this entry, i remember now that i forgot to leave behind a copy of my thesis for her to read .. crap!!)

John Kricfalusi’s retrospective left me with a sick feeling in my stomach. Its great animation but the content just seems to be loaded with unnecessary inuendo and blatant repetiive reference to testicles, pubes, tits, aerola, pussies. It was funny for a while but i felt it was just used to death. Ren and Stimpy’s alleged gay relationship no longer requires pondering upon in the new series. Malcolm Turner claimed that this screening was the world’s second screening of this rare material that after censor would result in the removal of 15 minutes out of 40 minutes of animation. He said we were privilleged…. hmm… i quite respectfully disagree. Here is the MIAF link that lists the films shown at the retrospective MIAF 2004 – Kricfalusi Retrospective

Stu, Kizz and myself met up with Ardessa and Mike for dinner at Funkfish – conversation was a little melo, i guess we were all a little ‘knackered’ from the late night we had the day before.

well…. almost melo…