A few words from Jan Klos

Readers of this blog should already be familiar with Czech animation legend Jan Klos and his work on the series in 1981-85. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned how I believe Klos' work on three episodes in 1984 and 1985 was credited with a pseudonym. In its conclusion, I stated: Jan Klos is still with us and, hopefully, somebody will ask him about this peculiarity someday, as there is probably more to this story. I am not one to sit around and wait, so already then I was trying to reach out to Jan myself. In the end, I was able to do so thanks to the great folks from Memory of Nations and the Post Bellum organization, for which Mr Klos had given an interview. I especially must thank A. Poláková, who gave me Klos' e-mail contact in the end.

There are couple of interviews with him online already (for instance, this one, where he talks for three hours), but they mostly concern his life before animation. In my e-mail to Mr Klos then, I presented my posts on the blog and asked him about several things: the altered titles, the way he animated the characters and so on. After about 15 days, responses started coming in.

Jan Klos about 20 days ago in a candid photo made by his son-in-law,
which he included in his e-mail

As you know, Jan Klos is 79 years old, so once again I must say: Thank you very much, sir, for taking the time to write to me! I know Jan will not read this, but in case members of his family do, give my best to Jan yet again. Jan stated that he cannot spend much time at the computer and has to "ram" his thoughts into it (he's, in his own words, a simple, old, too old man), so he provided answers to my questions in the form of chapters chronologically speaking about his work (of course, in Czech) and he didn't mind me sharing them on this blog. He really took the time and effort to write them over a period of a few weeks, so here I present them to you translated into English. You will notice that Jan openly discusses his life and work, often with self-biting irony As he noted: producing "humor and folk entertainment" is an ambition and an ideal profession for me. Unfortunately, it rarely succeeds.

Jan Klos:

CHAPTER 1

By profession a puppeteer, I became an employee of Krátký film Praha in 1973 by a combination of lucky coincidences and I began to animate in the Jiří Trnka Studio (puppet film) in director Břetislav Pojar’s staff. Those were my apprenticeship years in animation. DIFFICULT years - but BALANCED with a good feeling that I can be part of creation ON A CERTAIN LEVEL. The production process, dramaturgy, direction, collaboration with the experienced deaf-mute, ingenious animator Boris Masník, these were standard professional conditions - simply HAPPINESS (the studio's address then was Čiklova 13 A).

Břetislav Pojar in the studio's yard in 1974 (photo: Ivan Vít)

At the beginning of 1982, the management of Krátký film Praha banned Pojar from working (comrade director "was unable to fulfill the production plan") and Pojar's staff was scattered around. In order to be able to continue to animate puppets (it is the simplest and my favorite animation discipline), an average director, a skilful, hardworking man and also an employee of Kr. film Luboš Beneš offered me work on his films in a new four-member team. A space he discovered was adapted for shooting puppet films with cameraman Miler, animator Chocholín and one graphic artist. So I moved to the SECOND DIVISION, and there were five of us (address: Wenzigova 5). We called ourselves "Benešfilm". Here I worked on five or up to seven parts of PAT and MAT (I don't remember anymore), which belonged to the First series - it was 21 parts. Now I remember that the series was then called A JE TO.

Pat & Mat DVD by aiF Studio (1999)

My thanks for this post go out to Jürg Schaeppi of the Pat & Mat Fansite, who has enabled me to see this DVD for the first time.

There have been many Pat & Mat DVD releases over the years, but this one is probably the most interesting. It is also the first. In 1999, DMP (Digital Media Production) from Prague released a DVD with ten episodes produced by aiF Studio.

Here is the original press release posted by the DVD's manufacturer Digital Media Production, found on an old version of their defunct website that can be accessed through Wayback Machine. It came out in support of the DVD's premiere on DVD Hall '99 which was an event opened in Prague on October 4, 1999.

The most successful Czech puppet series was created between the seventies an nineties in aiF studio. It was created by popular Czech caricaturist Vladimír Jiránek, experienced director Lubomír Beneš and composer Petr Skoumal. Pat and Mat are neighbors. Their friendship is strengthened not only by their desires to always produce, do or repair something, but also by the awkwardness that makes everything go wrong. Luckily for them, there is no lack of humor and cleverness with which they always cope with their clumsiness.
The two-handymen grotesque is being introduced for the first time in DVD format. These are the episodes present: Billiards, Safe, Windsurfing, Biscuits, Model Builders, Paving Brick, Convertible, Parquetry, Cyclists and Pipe.
The DVD Pat and Mat can be ordered via DVDexpress for 790 CZK.

790 CZK feels quite a lot to me, but maybe it wasn't as expensive 20 years ago. However, in Jürg's words, it was indeed crazy expensive. A further stumbling block was that he had to order the DVD from a Czech company and wait a few weeks for it to arrive to Switzerland. It seems the DVD was never made available outside of Czechia, which is a real shame as it was envisioned as an international release. This is already evident from the cover, which has the episode titles in nine languages: Czech, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Polish and, finally, English - which we know is a market the studio was especially looking to break.

1999 was a very tough year for aiF. It was actually its last, as the studio oficially declared bankruptcy on August 24. If you already haven't, I would advise you to read my post about the episode Karty and the studio's bankruptcy before continuing. It can be found here. You read that correctly - the DVD came out a month and a half after its producer bankrupted. This makes me believe it was in production for a longer period of time. The shadow of Karty hangs over every corner of this release. Even on the cover you can notice the hammers-pliers wallpaper that appears on Mat's walls in the episode. Later, there's even explicit mention of it. However, let's see what this DVD had in store for us way back in that time. I have to say that is one of the more ambitious Czech releases of the series, which says a bit more about the ones that followed. A lot of effort was undoubtedly put in it.

The DVD opens with a lovely claymation reproduction of aiF's logo that I had never seen before. Maybe it also popped up in Karty, who knows. What follows then is the 1992-94 series intro, but with the title cards updated. Instead of me describing it further, Rakso 98, a friend of this blog, has made a tour of it with various menus shown. This is the intro (when you watch it, only one warning message plays):

aiF filmed clay logo

Commercials from Patmat film

If you are mostly stuck at home like many of us are right now, here is some extra material featuring Pat & Mat: commercials made by Patmat film in the last thirteen years. These were usually uploaded to YouTube by the original clients, then reuploaded by the operators of the now defunct Dutch website www.ajetobuurman.nl or the current owner of the Dutch licence, Trademarc (are these one and the same? I don't know).

1. Sedita (2007)

Sedita is a Slovak biscuit company. This was made in a period where the studio was dormant, this being its only project from 2004 to 2009. The animation for this commercial was done by Bedřich Glaser, who animated on the series in 2002-03 and 2009, and whose animation I'm not much a fan of. Sorry, Bedřich.

during filming - photo was once on the studio's website

2. Tipos (2011)

Again a Slovak company, this time one that makes lottery scratchards. All of the following commercials in this post were animated by Jan Smrčka. This one was made on the Pat a Mat na venkově set.

3. tablica.pl (October 2012)

tablica.pl was a Polish e-commerce website that was in the meantime taken over by OLX. These commercials are interesting because they are made for new technology, but have a retro feel to them. This includes a recreation of the houses from 1989-1994 (this time conjoined as a duplex) and an old portrait of Pat & Mat that was used in some 1994 episodes.