"HAS Classics" is a collection of masterpieces of animation that should be seen by all generations. Films related to "water," the theme of Hiroshima Animation Season 2022, will be screened.
Lineup
Inspirace
Karel Zeman
Czech Republic
The glassmaker sits at his desk, pencil in hand, bent over the paper, trying to capture on paper a sketch of the subject of his next work. He is not very successful.
He has crumpled up several papers, thrown them away, and the idea is still not coming.
He glances at the raindrops running down the window.
His gaze lingered on a droplet caught somewhere outside the window. The shiny droplet awakened the glassblower's imagination. He saw the shapes he would create in the drop.
Before his eyes, the droplet turned into an underwater bottom with corals and fish scurrying among them. A clam lying on the bottom released a bubble that turned into a dancer on the surface. She began to dance. Her art drew the admiration of the penguins on the shore and the swans. A dandelion seed, blown by the wind, fell on the very drop the glassmaker was watching and turned into a pieroth. The pierot caught the eye of the dancer he was about to approach. But there were obstacles between them. The pierot dropped to the ground and turned back into a dandelion seed. The observed droplet fell from the leaf and the glassmaker's vision of the glass figures dissolved. It did not disappear completely, however, for the glassmaker began to realize his visions over the lit stove.
This film is dedicated to those who transform the hard mass of glass into the magical images of their poetic imaginations - Czech glassmakers.
KAREL ZEMAN (1910-1989)
As one of the Masters of Czech animation, Karel Zeman contributed significantly to the concept of the Czech school. Above all being a pathfinder, indefatigably trying to find his own style, he apparently differed from the other Czech artists of animation (Jiri Trnka, Hermina Tyrlova, Bretislav Pojar etc).
Karel Zeman made his debut in Zlin before the end of the 2nd World War, named The Christmas Dream (Vanocni sen, 1945) in which he used a combination of a live action and animated puppets. This film reflects Zeman's fascination with movement as well as his own style. Movement becomes a source of humour, surprise and excitement here.
After a few movies in the technology of the classic three-dimensional puppet with popular character Mr. Prokouk, the attention of the experimenter Zeman focused on the aesthetic and visual potential of glass and glass figurines in his next film Inspiration (Inspirace, 1948). In this film poem, the author revives this fragile and at the same time very unusual material for animation and achieves the apparently impossible - a ballet of puppets created from blown glass.
In the first half of the 1950s, Karel Zeman continued his exploration of puppet technology and started with combinations of various animation technologies. In 1955 he finished a feature movie Journey Into Prehistory (Cesta do praveku, 1955), in which he combined live action with reconstructed prehistoric creatures successfully.
From the end of the 1950s Karel Zeman started to work on a new imaginative genre which combined actors with an artistically stylised background, using special effect technologies and stop-motion. With this technique he followed the aim to create a fantastic world of movies: An Invention of Destruction / Vynalez zkazy (1958), Baron Munchausen / Baron Prasil (1961), A Jester's Tale / Blaznova kronika (1964), A Stolen Airship / Ukradena vzducholod (1966) and On the Comet / Na komete (1970). However, Zeman's success is not merely due to the abundance of tricks with which he excites the audience, but also to his creative emotion and humour. After these daring incursions into the world of fantasy and imagination, Zeman returned to the fairy-tale genre and stop-motion technologies in these full-length films : The Tale of Tales of One thousand and one Nights (Pohadky tisice a jedne noci, 1974), Krabat (Carodejuv ucen, 1977) and The Tale of John and Mary (Pohadka o Honzikovi a Marence, 1980) a and revived the fantastic world of his imagination and humor for the last time.
Karel Zeman's movies have not ceased to amaze viewers and professional audiences to this day. His original imagination, artistic sense and technical mastery in combining different film technologies remain unsurpassed. He was a tireless experimenter in the field of film technologies, means of expression and artistic communication. In his work, he never repeated himself, with each movie he accepted new and new artistic and technological challenges. Zeman's films are so unique and inimitable that to this day none of the creators have been able to build on his artistic legacy and continue his artistic style.
