{animation} – Page 36 – { feuilleton }

Crime and Punishment, a film by Piotr Dumala

More from the Polish animator, and a stunning, wordless adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel. Crime and Punishment dates from 2000, and utilises the same technique as Dumala’s earlier films—images scratched into a plaster ground—only this time there’s a muted colour palette and considerable depth achieved through cast shadows and blurred objects layered over the drawings. Yuri Norstein achieved a similar sense of depth in Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) and Tale of Tales (1979), and Dumala’s film also shares the latter’s umber tones and sombre lighting. The story is pared to its bones, as it would be with a running time of 30 minutes, but it’s still a marvellous adaptation. There’s even a nod to Walls when an omnipresent fly disappears for a moment into a hole in the wallpaper.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Walls, a film by Piotr Dumala
• Academy Leader Variations
• Yuri Norstein animations
• Screening Kafka

Walls, a film by Piotr Dumala

Polish animator Piotr Dumala was among the filmmakers contributing to Academy Leader Variations, the short anthology that was the subject of a recent post. He also received a mention in the Screening Kafka post for his memorable animated portrait of Franz Kafka. Walls (1988) is another short film made just after Academy Leader Variations, and like all of Dumala’s films the images are created by scratching lines into painted plaster. The cross-hatching that results from this means the animated images are much closer to drawings than the vaguely similar pinscreen animations of Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker. Walls is moody, inexplicable, and may be watched here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Academy Leader Variations
• Screening Kafka

Animated Self-Portraits

Another animated anthology, this one being a brief collection of self-portraits of around 10 to 20 seconds each. Like yesterday’s short film, Animated Self-Portraits (1989) was produced by David Ehrlich who contributes a portrait of his own. I’m not enough of an aficionado to recognise all the names involved but the contingent from Czechoslovakia (as it was then) includes Jan Svankmajer and Jiri Barta. More of an entertaining piece than Academy Leader Variations even if you aren’t familiar with the animators.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Academy Leader Variations
• 42 One Dream Rush

Academy Leader Variations

Leader is the name for a short piece of film at the beginning or end of a cinema reel. Academy leader is the name for the introductory countdown sequence that was standardised in the 1950s to show a series of numbers (from 11 to 3) marking off each foot of film; the final two feet are always black since these precede the beginning of the film itself.

Academy Leader Variations (1987) is a 6-minute animated film commissioned by ASIFA, the International Animated Film Association, in which a number of animators from different countries produce their own leader countdowns. As with any anthology, the styles are very varied, and some of the contributions are more inventive than others. You also see a couple of pieces using crude computer animation that look a lot more dated than the hand-made offerings.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• 42 One Dream Rush

Secret Joy of Falling Angels, a film by Simon Pummell

An animated film from 1991, Secret Joy of Falling Angels layers a variety of ink and paint effects, sketched outlines and a silhouetted bird skeleton. This creates a very different group of animated angels to those in Borowczyk’s Les Jeux des Anges and Bokanowski’s L’Ange although taken together all three films would make for a strange and unique triple-bill. In a previous post I quoted producer Keith Griffiths enthusing about Bokanowski’s masterwork, and Griffiths happens to be the producer of Simon Pummell’s film. Pummell also offers thanks to those regular Griffiths collaborators (and fellow Bokanowski enthusiasts) the Brothers Quay. (Note: the Vimeo page has “Fallen Angels” but the title on the film is “Falling Angels”.)