Pat & Mat: Playing Cards – in good quality!

Hello, all!

As I'm busy with professional and personal obligations (amongst others, I'm finishing my first book, which has nothing to do with animation), this blog has been on pause for a couple of years now. I sometimes get the bug to go back to it, but the fire quickly gets extinguished by all the other things waiting for their turn. However, sometimes life throws a curveball (or, dare I say, plays its card?) and stops you in your tracks. This is one of those cases. 

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a pristine copy of the final Pat & Mat episode produced by aiF, Playing Cards (frequently known as Karty):

What, how, and why?! These are probably some of the questions you are thinking about, but I'll try to, as briefly as possible, explain the story behind this post.

Exactly 10 days ago, this copy of the film was unveiled to the digital world by a Polish fan who goes by the handle TymekGry. He uploaded it to YouTube via another fan, and also notified me by writing several comments on this blog.

I did not approve those comments. For reasons explained below, my reaction was not astonishment, but rather circumspection. I had to consider the whole situation. Indeed, some days later, the video with the copy disappeared, perhaps never to be seen again?

Of course, this is not how the Internet works. Once it's out there, it's out there. There's no going back to the bunker. Indeed, with just a simple search you could find it even without this post. So, where do I come into all of this?

I was not surprised to see this copy of the film. I had seen it before, many a time, the first of which happened on August 21, 2020. That was the day I met with František Váša in Split. It was a strange time – the summer Split sun made the weather sweltering, and the city was bustling with tourists, but everything was a bit subdued due to COVID-19.

Our meeting was anything but subdued, however. I was really glad to meet a great animator and director of the series, while it also pleased him to meet such a superfan. We didn't have a chance to communicate much via email, so I was thrilled and ready to bombard him with questions. However, as soon as we sat down on the Pjaca square, Mr Váša reached into his bag and took out this:

You can imagine my excitement then! Váša's words were something along the lines of "This is something for you. It's from the original." Of course, I ran home as fast as I could and inserted the DVD into my computer (which is by now long out of use). Before pressing play, I invited my sister in to share this, for me, historic moment. The opening "New Door" intro rolled out in amazing quality, followed by a never-seen credits sequence, then the rest of the episode. The 12 minutes and 40 seconds whizzed through in a blur. Finally, I had seen the entirety of the so-called "missing" or "lost" episode.

The beautiful lettering, one of the last to be done on film

The digital copy of the episode was made from original materials, presumably the original negative. I don't know what the exact purpose was, but this happened many years ago. Judging from the files on the DVD, back in 2009.

Naturally, I wanted to share this with my fellow ajetologists, but it wasn't to be. When he handed me the DVD, Mr Váša also told me not to share it in the open. Lest some old spirits be disturbed. As you might remember, the film was a collateral victim of the conflict between several members of the aiF studio, which made it go extinct. These conflicts were escalated into years-long lawsuits, so there was no point to add fuel to the fire.

I alluded to why in the introduction to my published interview: "As you can imagine, aiF’s break-up was not the most idyllic of splits (on the contrary, lawsuits sprung up) and there is no point in possibly opening old wounds with certain people through my blog."

In the end, I shared this copy with only a handful of people, who were gracious enough to never spill the beans. One of them is an animation pen pal who lives in Texas. He showed it to some kids in a daycare centre he was working in. It was a bit of a silly prank – I joked that the film finally reached its target audience, the USA!

That was that. As agreed, I never made any suggestion that this copy existed, apart from a buried clue. My Pat & Mat filmography page has for years contained the full credits for the episode. Nobody thought of asking me where I got them from, though.

I have to admit I toyed with the idea of releasing the copy online, but I would never do such a thing without previously consulting the people who worked on it, thereby betraying their trust. 

That's how we get to 2024.

When Tymek put this online, he did it rashly, without consultation and by explicitly describing how he obtained it. The person who provided him with the copy did not expect the upload to happen. This is why they later requested its removal.

This is where I felt I had to step in. I had been in contact with the person (who, I should mention, is not the director) before, and we discussed the situation through several emails. The conclusion was the following: what's done cannot be undone. The film is now out there, and let the world enjoy it. However, this will have to be done anonymously. I politely call on Tymek and his pals to remove all the references to the person who sent the copy and how it happened. This is all they ask in return of giving you the episode. Thank you for all you have done.

There was only one thing left to do – have a quick chat with the director, František Váša. He gave his okay for the film to be presented here and beyond. If anything, it's his most singular take on the series (in spite of the fact that he was pressured to include many elements he did not intend to, like the voices). He, along with a crew of a handful of people, worked on it tirelessly for more than a year. 

This was, now, 26 years ago. It's nice that we can finally put the whole story to rest and enjoy the fruit of their labour in a proper way.

This whole story could have been handled a bit better, but feelings were hurt only briefly and now it's time to move on. And by that I mean, of course, that we should be seeing the older episodes in such good quality as well! Until some other time, ciao :)

Pat and Mat in the cinema – vintage edition!

On Sunday, October 23, I got to chance to see … a je to! live, in a movie theatre. Six episodes were shown as part of the 15th Central and Eastern European Film Festival, CinEast for short, in the city of Luxembourg, where I currently live. The venue was Cinémathèque Luxembourg, a vintage cinema in the centre of the city that hosts movie lovers of all ages.

There were two showings of this program (at 15.00 and at 16.30) and I got to see the later one, bringing along a friend. The event was kicked off with a short presentation of the series aimed at children. The humor in the series was linked to the silent comedies of Chaplin and Keaton.

It was amusing and flattering to a point to see that the people who made the presentation obviously found some pictures for it on this blog…

The six episodes shown were, in order, Gramofón, Maľovanie, Obraz, Sťahovanie, Dážď and Búdka. 53 minutes might seem short for an adult viewer, but it is probably just about the right time to keep the kids' attention. The episodes were presented as is, without any cuts, and with an applause after every ending credits sequence started to roll out.

I have never previously had a chance to see these episodes with an audience, if I don't count presenting them for my class in school when I was 10 or so a couple of times. Having seen the episodes hundreds of times and know them by heart, I instead focused on the reactions of the audience, which opened up avenues for looking at the shorts in a new light. There were about 50 people in the old theatre, most of them parents with their children. One thing could immediately be verified. Children love physical comedy. They enjoy Pat and Mat slipping and falling, their machines breaking down and the two klutzes doing outrageous moves. So, when the scene in Obraz in which the drill spins Mat around a wall and makes his head stuck in his shirt approached, I correctly predicted it would garner a big reaction. Here's a short clip of Gramofón. Sorry for the subpar quality – I was focused on the experience, but do keep an ear out for a child crying out "Oh, no!" just before the fall:

Obviously, with physical comedy, it is key not to overbear the young viewers with such scenes. Watching the episode that followed with an audience, Maľovanie, furthered my belief that it is one of the best ever made, precisely because the physical aspect of its routines is done in beautiful fashion, owing in part to Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly's solid animation. Here's a clip:

Some of the more precious moments are those where the adults' laugh is heard more than the kids'. A good example was the scene in Búdka where Pat impudently tries to don his straw hat again (after it was thrown off his head by Mat in a fit of rage), but then backs off and removes it. This got an audible chuckle from some of the parents, echoing animator Jan Klos' principle of "always trying to entertain the viewers". 

However, audiences also point out the misfires and faults. For the aforementioned Búdka, it was not exactly clear what was happening at the beginning with the bird flying off, as the sounds of the bird chirps get subdued in the crowd. Klos desperately wanted to include a bird character in those scenes, even bringing in a prop to the studio, but this was not accepted. His frustration at spectators not being able to see the bird and its interactions with the handymen is clearly vindicated on such a viewing. Another interesting case was Gramofón. This episode got a muted reaction (the ending especially) and not exactly because the children didn't know what a gramophone is – they were treated to an explanation in the presentation. Observing it from such a cinematic angle, you can really get bothered with its haphazard timing at certain points. Some of its gags appear to have been better in the script than in the actual execution. Donning my director's hat, I could catch myself thinking up remarks such as "if this gag was a second longer, it would have landed much better" or "this is too fast after what we have just seen". These ideas ferment rapidly when you know the action and observe the reaction, or lack thereof.

What was also clear is that these classics need an upgrade in their presentation. As you have probably noticed by now, we were shown old copies of these episodes, made in the 1980s for TV distribution. These are not really fit for cinema showings, even when the cinema operators thankfully keep the correct aspect ratio. To appreciate and understand them better, new copies of the classic episodes must be made from the best possible materials and I am certainly not going to miss an opportunity to state that again. It is amusing, however, that the classics continue to elevate their "status" with such showings, as they were originally made just for that – television. 

Overall, watching ... a je to! on the big screen was a memorable experience, both for this old-timer and the kids who are just getting introduced to the show. I hope we get to see many more of these events all over Europe. If the presentation was a bit scaled up and there was some more background information and promotion, a mobile marathon of these old classics might just be a success.

R.I.P. Vlasta Pospíšilová (1935–2022)

Vlasta Pospíšilová has died. She was 87.

Vlasta worked on Pat & Mat in two different periods. She animated the majority of the iconic first ... a je to! episode, Tapety, in 1979. More than 20 years later, she directed six episodes of the series Pat & Mat Return in 2003-04. These episodes, produced in the Anima studio, showed a certain youthful exuberance in Pat and Mat that has seldom been seen in this century. A prime example of this dynamism is Štíhlá linie, one of the best in the 28-episode bunch.

Pat and Mat are just small entries in Pospíšilová's large filmography. She was affectionately referred to as the First Lady of the Czech animated film, a befitting moniker for a legend of the scene. She started in animation back in the 1950s, working directly under Jiří Trnka on films such as The Cybernetic Grandma and the feature A Midsummer Night's Dream. She continued to work as an animator for practically every director who arrived to the main studio at Bartolomějská street, including Jan Švankmajer, whom she worked with just before the studio moved to Barrandov.

Gradually, she came to directing from the late 1970s onwards, although she continued working as an animator until the 1990s. Her most famous directorial work are the three Fimfárum films, especially the first installment, which features adaptions of Jan Werich's stories she directed in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Her career lasted 55 years and was crowned with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Anifilm festival in Třeboň in 2015. Vlasta Pospíšilová was one of the last representatives of the long line of Czech stop motion animators which started at the very beginnings and her loss will be dearly felt.

"Těch 50 let v animovaném filmu byla nádherná doba. Škoda, že to tak uteklo." – "Those fifty years in animation were a wonderful time. It's a pity that it ran away like that."

Fans of Pat and Mat send their condolences to her family and friends and the whole animation world.

News: Pat a Mat na venkově continues

 

The new Patmat studio

Hello everybody, this will be just a brief post, as time permits. Fellow ajetologists have alerted me to this video, today's airing of the News show from Czech Television's Déčko channel for children. It confirms something only mentioned in brief so far, that the Countryside series is continuing.

My thoughts on aiF episodes

Firstly, some housekeeping. You will have noticed that the blog looks quite different. I have decided to discard the previous theme. Perhaps it was too colorful, even garish. In any case, I have gone with a darker variant this time. Nothing fancy, but it should be more appropriate for the content on the blog. Some minor layout changes have also been made. One of them is the inclusion of a new way to receive updates about the blog, through follow.it. Unfortunately, Google had decided to shut down FeedBurner, so I had to find an alternative. I have switched the 13 of my previous followers to this new platform, so tell me if everything went okay. I've also finally done something with the header. Actually, Rakso did the work from my ideas and layout as what he did in less than an hour I would do in less than a few days or so. Thanks to Rakso, as always. Finally, I have noticed that videos did not show up on mobile versions of the site for some time. I have figured out the problem (again a redundant change in programming!) and amended the latest posts.

Finally, the post. This blog has, almost by accident, been in an aiF-mode recently, so today, I will air my thoughts on the individual episodes from the studio. These comments actually originated a few days ago in an email I wrote to a friend who had not yet seen most of them and is/was preparing to do so. I had some of these discussions regarding aiF already, but why are they so interesting? Well, as I mentioned in my post on Parkety and Vrata, there is a definite amplitude in quality between individual episodes from aiF. While the 1989-90 episodes did not really reach the heights of previous episodes, they were still quite a concentrated and consistent bunch. When aiF came about, that consistency went out of the window and some episodes are noticeably lagging behind others.

What about this? Not so good? Eh, so I thought.

Presumably, Luboš Beneš paid a lot less attention to these episodes than those that came before. Before 1990, he was in a semi-comfortable position of a director at Krátký film's Barrandov studio. Then, along with the other directors, he was laid off and had to start his own studio. As he was really the lynchpin of aiF, he became manager, negotiator, employer and probably had much less time on his hands, meaning that his mantra of "don't mess with it too much, just make it fast", which Jan Klos called an unpleasant feature of Beneš, came into full force. He was running on autopilot at times. Given that the episodes also passed through fewer hands, the standards had to drop off and they did.

A Hand in Dlaždice

Rarely do I see frames from Pat & Mat episodes which I have no recollection of seeing. Yet this is exactly what happened a few days ago, when Rakso showed me this:

Yes, you're seeing it right, that's a hand occupying quite a portion of the screen in the 1992 episode Dlaždice. The screenshot comes from this master and is seen in motion on 1:06: