It is a coincidence that the first film outside of the Pat & Mat series that was discussed at greater length was Narkoblues, but it's not much of a coincidence that it was a film directed by Břetislav Pojar. Pojar was one of the best and most famous Czech stop-motion directors of all time and many would say he was second only to Jiří Trnka, his mentor. Pojar, however, lived much longer (1923-2012) and so was part of almost the whole history of the art form in Czechia, which is why he cannot be skipped in any story about Czech animation. He even had direct involvement in one Pat & Mat episode, writing 2003's Natírají podlahu.
Pojar's most famous directorial work, both home and abroad, is the Pojďte pane, budeme si hrát (Hey Mister, Let's Play!) series of shorts about two teddy bears. If you haven't seen these films before, well, what are you waiting for?!
If you aren't familiar with this series, here is a brief comparison with Pat & Mat. Both feature two main characters, but here our heroes are younger and also different from each other, much of the humor coming from their interaction, penned by Ivan Urban. They encounter other animals throughout in their forest-like worlds. An important difference is that the two bears speak, which, I presume, is one of the reasons why this series didn't receive that much international success. However, that won't be a distraction to you (see why down below).
Invention is an important element of both series. But while Pat and Mat come up with various devices, tools and contraptions, Little and Big Bear's inventiveness is more abstract - they can manipulate and change their bodies into whatever shape they desire. Want to play with trains? Here, I'm a locomotive. Have to wake up bear buddy? I gotta become an alarm clock. These free-flowing animation metamorphoses were possible due to the puppets' semi-relief forms, designed by Miroslav Štěpánek.
Although I don't need a special reason to bring these films to your attention, I have a great one nonetheless. My friend Toadette published an in-depth article on the first three films from the series, which you can find on the On the Ones blog here:
https://ontheones.wordpress.com/2020/12/23/bretislav-pojar-and-miroslav-stepanek-1-pojars-hey-mister-lets-play-entries-1965/
I suggest you watch the films before you read the article as it contains quite a bit of (over)analyzing, but also the history behind them and the Čiklovka studio. This will be much easier than for previous animation fans as Toadette has also provided English subtitles, created in a painstaking way. You will find the links in the article (also, Toadette's YT channel features translations of five films from the second Bear series and Pojar's subsequent projects The Garden and Dášeňka). I collaborated (to use the literal translation of a term from the credits) on the translations and also provided some images and extracts. Watch closely and you will see what's coming up soon to this blog, hopefully.
Be sure to check out the article. When you do watch some Bears from Kolín, why not tell Toadette (or me) what you thought of them?
"My friend Toadette" well Marin I knew you could get in touch with many people, but I didn't think you'd start talking to Super Mario characters about Czechoslovak animation.
ReplyDeleteIt's the power of the Internet!
DeleteI can fully recommend series called The Garden/Zahrada. You can see a combination of semi-relief and normal puppet animation. Surprisingly, Jan Klos took care of the puppet animation of this series (and he's not the only one, Boris Masník worked on the Garden series as well).
ReplyDeleteYes, Jan Klos worked on most of the "regular" puppet animation, with Masnik working on the semi-relief ones (except when Masnik was away due to illness). Klos practically worked as his assistant a lot of the times, but they also animated some shots simultaneously.
DeleteAlthough I like the rest of the series as well, the unique first entry, Milovnik zvirat (The Animal Lover) is definitely my favorite.
Boris Masnik was also mentioned in Who Throw That Gentleman. For the first two episode, it was temporarily rendered in the studio of Brothers in T-Shirts similar to Josef Lada's Mike the Cat. directed by Josef Kluge.
ReplyDelete