Marek Beneš interview (2017)

A neat interview with Marek Beneš was posted on the Croatian website express.hr in September of 2017. Available here, this interview by Paula Bobanović is one of the better interviews with Marek posted online, so I'll translate it here. The images also come from that interview unless noted otherwise.

When did you get the idea to make a feature film with Pat & Mat?

The idea to bring Pat & Mat to the movie theaters was born in 2016, when the duo celebrated their 40^th birthday. Actually, they had originally appeared in cinemas, as the first episode was made to be distributed in movie theaters.

How did you find the team which made the whole movie and were production companies interested in financing the project?

This time everything happened in reverse. The movie was actually supposed to be a series made for television, but we released it in cinemas for the 40^th anniversary as well. All the work was done by one animator, while myself and my production company financed the movie on our own, without anyone's help.

in the Patmat film studio, 2014

In how many countries has the show been broadcast by now and in which countries is it currently airing?

My father said that the series was, around 30 years ago, bought by more than 80 countries, while my movie is currently being shown in 20, which include Croatia, South Korea, the Scandinavian countries, France and, of course, Czechia and Slovakia.

How old were you when your father started working on the series with his colleague, illustrator Vladimír Jiránek? Were you even interested in what they were doing since the show was actually meant for adults?

Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly: animator profile

Animators are one of the unsung heroes of Pat & Mat and probably every stop motion series. They are the ones who spend the most time actually creating the action we see on the screen, which makes their work vitally important.

While they have mostly stuck to similar principles throughout the years, each animator on this series has some quirks and differences which make their style unique. One of these animators, and definitely a legendary one, is Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly.

at work in 2019 (photo: ČT)

Biography

Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly was born on January 9, 1948 in České Budějovice. He is originally from a known aristocratic family whose roots are in Czechia, France and Austria. Actually, Alfons is a count, which makes him probably the only count to have worked on Pat & Mat. ČT produced a documentary about his family as part of their Blue Blood series. It can be viewed here, but only if you access it from Czechia.

He joined the Jiří Trnka studio in 1969 and started animating sometime in the 1970s, working on many important films, with different directors such as Stanislav Látal and Jiří Barta. When Lubomír Beneš opened his aiF Studio, Alfons followed him there and worked up to the 1997 Jája a Pája series. When aiF went to pieces in 1998, he joined Hafan Film, while also working on some episodes for Patmat. In the next decades he again worked on some feature films, most notably Toys in the Attic and Fimfárum 2.

Even though he is about to turn 72, Mensdorff-Pouilly is still working on Pat & Mat, animating some of the episodes of the new 39 episodes due for TV release 2018-2020. Along with puppet armature maker Ondřej Zika, he is the only member of the current production team who had some involvement on the original ...a je to! series.

Pat & Mat career

His Pat & Mat career spans four decades. After animating on the 1982 episode Mal'ovanie, he worked on the episodes made in aiF, three from 1992 and four from 1994. He handled the episodes which took place outside, while František Váša worked on the indoor sets. Interestingly, in one recent interview Váša stated that a mishap happened to one of his colleagues, presumably this animator, when during the replicating process a negative cutter severely damaged the negative on which a Pat & Mat episode had been filmed, which meant that the whole short had to be reshot from scratch. I wonder which episode was affeceted by that.

at work on ep. #45 in 1994 (photo by I. Vít)

Animator switch: Mal'ovanie

Mal'ovanie is one of the best episodes of this stop motion series. Although its plot is essentially a re-hash of Tapety, it combines good action and timing with probably the greatest slapstick humor of the series. This was aided by Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, a great animator whose only outing on the original series was this episode. More on him will follow in the next post.

This post shows an interesting production detail which rarely shows up. Although the vast majority of the episode was animated by Mensdorff-Pouilly, the first few scenes were handled by Karel Chocholín, most likely to save time.  Update: These scenes were, in fact, animated by Jan Klos, for reasons explained here. They also take place on a different set (the kitchen).

Apart from the animators' different styles, the switch after the first three shots is easy to notice because the puppets are different as well. See the differences for yourself:

There were other episodes animated by two animators, for example, Tapety, Výlet or Parkety, but I don't believe that any had such an easily observed switch which happened at the beginning of the episode. I will cover some of these later on.

Episode lists: 79-91 (Pat a Mat na venkově)

When word first appeared of another Pat & Mat series in the making, it was via an announcement of the Zlín Film Festival's screening of the first episode, Postele. That was back in 2010. Another announcement came a year later, when Papírový servis was shown at the same festival a year late.

Further news did not appear online before a whole batch of eight episodes was released to TV in 2013, notably to Dutch VPRO, where they premiered on 9 June 2013. At that time these episodes were not listed anywhere (not even on the studio's official website), so I was left to make my own list. I made sure that Postele and Papírový servis were first and second due to their festival appearances, while the order of the rest of the 2011 and 2012 episodes was just a guess. I posted that list to Wikipedia hoping someone will eventually correct my wrong guesses, but nobody did. The official website of the studio lists the episodes in alphabetical order, the DVDs following them. As such, the episode listings of 2011 and 2012 available online are almost surely wrong.

Starting from 2014, Patmat film published regular updates from the studio when a new episode started production, so the last five episodes were indeed listed correctly.

UPDATE: Some time after writing this post, I noticed that the first eight episodes of this series were released on the Czech DVD Pat & Mat 9 while the series was still in production.

DVD Cover

The DVD featured the episodes in chronological order, so I updated my list to reflect that order of episodes.

Episode list: 51-78

The listing of the 2002-2004 episodes now appears to be pretty simple, though that wasn't always the case. This is what it looked like when the episodes were originally released:

	51	2003		Opékají špekáčky
	52	2003		Opravují střechu
	53	2003		Černá bedýnka
	54	2003		Kolečka
	55	2003		Psí bouda
	56	2003		Natírají podlahu
	57	2003		Skleník
	58	2003		Houpačka
	59	2003		Nezvaný návštěvník
	60	2003		Bodygárdi
	61	2003		Natírají okna
	62	2002		Puzzle
	63	2003		Velikonoční vajíčko
	64	2003		Štíhlá linie
	65	2003		Automat
	66	2003		Autodráha
	67	2003		Akvárium
	68	2003		Zavařují
	69	2003		Rogalo
	70	2004		Hrají golf
	71	2004		Někam to zapadlo
	72	2004		Kopají bazén
	73	2004		Věší krajinu
	74	2004		Vánoční stromeček
	75	2003		Vánočka
	76	2003		Stůňou
	77	2003		Fax
	78	2003		Jahody

This is the order in which they appeared on the Pat & Mat fansite. That order was taken over from the DVDs which featured these episodes for the first time. Some obvious errors can be seen here as episodes with earlier production years appear out of sequence (2003 after 2004). This was corrected later on and the current list is also the order in which these episodes premiered on Czech TV bar the pilot Puzzle, which erroneously premiered as the last part of the 2003 package instead of the first.

These episodes were produced in three different studios for the same buyer. Their lists did not follow the production order, but were divided by studios, with different episodes from the same studio grouped together.

Episode order: 1-35

Before I started writing about Pat & Mat, I wanted to make a separate page with their filmography so far. This would be useful later on and there is no place on the Internet which has this information in complete or correct form. When talking about its preciseness, an important reservation must be mentioned. The production order of several episodes on my list is most likely wrong. To figure out how that is possible, we must first look at who originally published the episode lists in the first place and what's wrong within those lists. An important note: an official production list of the first series' episodes has never been posted! The first post will cover the episodes 1-35.

Episodes 1-35

The aiF Studio list

The first available list of Pat & Mat episodes, containing the first 50 episodes, looked like this:

Click for a better view - the original list published by the aiF Studio website, still accessible here.

Even though the list seems OK at first and follows the different stages of Pat & Mat series well enough, a more ardent view will spot some very obvious errors. They affect episodes here numbered 23, 24, 29, 32 and 35. They are completely out of place just by their production years alone. Gramofón is from 1981, yet follows an episode made in 1984, a year later than 24. 32 and 35 are from 1989, while the rest of the 30-35 section is from 1990. As such, those episodes are completely in the wrong order. (BTW, the aiF episodes seem to be in the correct order, which can especially be confirmed for the 1994 episodes.)

Even though this list had some serious errors, when Ateliéry Bonton Zlín brought the 1976-1990 episodes to DVD for the first time in the early 2000s, they took this order of episodes verbatim, leaving episodes here numbered 23 and 24 to languish on DVDs on which they did not belong.

Introduction & About

Welcome to the first ever blog dedicated to two clumsy handymen, Pat & Mat! If you are wondering what this place is, here are a few quick pointers:

What are Pat & Mat?

Pat & Mat is a series of short stop motion animation films made in the Czech Republic, previously Czechoslovakia. It follows the two titular characters as they go through do-it-yourself-induced trouble in their apartments or houses. Immensely popular, it started in 1976 and 130 episodes have been filmed, with the most recent ones completed only this year.

ajetology?

... a je to! was the name of the first (and best) series in which these two characters starred. Ajetology is a name I made up on the spot to jokingly characterize this blog as the ultimate science on the series. In keeping with the two's do-it-yourself style (and to, shhh, hide the fact that I really don't have any experience in making websites), this blog has a bit of a bare-bones look.

What is this blog and why does it exist?

This blog serves as a place to discuss some interesting details about the series' production, characters, ideas and everything in between - it may well have been called Pat & Mat trivia. Its audience is primarily fans of Pat & Mat, people who have already watched some or all of the episodes, but if this site inspires someone to look up the series for the first time, I'll be more than glad.

I started it because I needed a place to put some of the knowledge I amassed about the series during all this time. The blog is intentionally written in English, not just because Croatian and English are the only languages I can write in, but because this series needs an international place for discussion about it as well (the majority so far have been from the Slavic world).

Who is the author of this blog?

My name is Marin Pažanin and I was born in 1997. I am a student from Split, Croatia. This is a fan's blog. I am in no way officially connected with Pat & Mat. All of the rights to the characters and episodes belong to their respective owners.

My Pat & Mat story

Before we delve into specific posts, I'd like to share my own story of how I became a fan of this series.

I was around 5 years old when my dad and myself found ourselves in one of the department stores near Split and in their VHS department. DVDs were still some way off our household at the time. Dad spotted a batch of Pat & Mat cassettes and handed one to me. 'You sure you don't know these guys? They were on TV many times. Pretty funny.' Not having a clue about that series, I accepted the gift and watched the thing at home.

Instantly I was hooked. The show was bizarrely hilarious and genius, something completely different from things I had seen before. I loved every bit of it. I then eagerly encouraged every other opportunity to go to that store and expand my Pat & Mat collection. Soon enough my 7 VHS, 35 episode collection was complete.

I must have watched every one of the casettes at least five times. Always the analytic, I watched them closely, remembering plot details and even writing down things such as production years. In other words, I was a bit of a Pat & Mat fanatic. My hairdresser at that age, who I still visit from time to time, was subjected to hearing plot summaries of certain episodes - because what better is there to talk about than a weird puppet series, right? People found my fascination funny, but somewhat cute. It somehow got to my teacher, who encouraged me to give a presentation on the series in the school library. A burning question I remember one of the classmates asked was: do Pat & Mat have four or five fingers? I also remember being unsure because the characters do have four fingers, but five in certain scenes. I must have led my classmates to several misconceptions about the series that time!

My self-absorbed bubble about this series burst while one day visiting my cousin. He, I believe affected by myself, was also a fan of the series and showed me a DVD of episodes his dad had obtained who knows where. It was a copy of the first Pat & Mat DVD, published in 1999. As I watched the characters repairing the gutter, making biscuits or playing billiards, I was perplexed. Unseen Pat & Mat episodes! Insane! It was, of course, the DVD with ten aiF episodes from the 1990s.

At that time the Internet was something I was beginning to get acquainted with and I went to search for more info online. I discovered the wonderful Pat & Mat fansite, which answered a lot of my questions. There was also the official site of aiF Studio as well. I discovered more episodes were produced in the early 2000s. They were yet to hit the Croatian DVD market and I bought the first ones when they came out.

This was around twelve years ago. Since that time I have followed the series with different intensities, but have never stopped being a fan and self-proclaimed expert. During the last year or so I again hit a period of closely watching this series and connecting with other people who do - because it still makes me laugh, even though I'm a slightly bigger guy now. This blog is what came out of it.

If this blog finds some readership, I would like to notify it that I have no idea how often it will get updated. A student's life is unpredictable and sometimes filled with many different obligations which could prevent me from updating it regularly.

In any case, thank you for visiting and have a pleasant stay! A je to!