František Váša interview (2020)

František Váša working on B. Pojar's Hiroshi

After a long pause, I'm today finally showing you something very interesting: my interview with František Váša!

What? How? When did this happen? Quite a long time from now, actually, August 21st, 2020. Some months before, I was able to reach Mr Váša by email (big thanks to Dan cz for help) and introduce him to the blog, which he very much enjoyed. He is often difficult to reach by email, though, so I was especially pleased to hear he would be visiting Split, my hometown! This was, in fact, nothing unusual. Dalmatia is often a summer destination for Czechs and his family is no exception. I had a chance to meet him and ask him what I wanted.

Our meeting took place almost in transit. Mr Váša had just arrived to Split and had a ferry to catch to the island of Vis, so we were able to talk only for less than an hour in Split’s center. Our exchanges were a bit comical; Mr Váša speaks little English – I understand Czech well but can only speak half-broken sentences with intrusive Croatian vocabulary. However, I came prepared with translated questions and they quickly set us off. I spent the next 50 or so minutes getting to talk about most of the stuff which went on in the aiF Studio with one of its leaders! In Czech, of course. It was, as you can imagine, an exhilarating experience, only compounded when I accompanied Mr Váša to the ferry, met his lovely wife (who speaks perfect English!) and then got to chat with an even bigger name in Czech stop motion animation, director Jiří Barta, who was also going to Vis! It was wonderful to meet all of them and, hopefully, this was just the first of our encounters. Very much a day to remember!

Still, the interview! I must apologize to my faithful readers for posting it very late, but the delay was caused by multiple factors, from troubles with faithfully translating certain remarks to lack of time, but also not being able to reach Mr Váša afterwards for months at a time. I should also mention that, per his request, I will not be sharing certain small portions of the 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. I hope you can respect that, as I have. The majority of the story is still here, I can assure you.

Before continuing, I must again thank František Váša not only for agreeing to meet with me and answer my questions, but also for providing some images which have further enriched this post!

 

The interview

MP: How did you react when you first saw that there is a blog devoted to Pat and Mat?

FV: [laughs] Ha, I thought to myself, and forgive me, is it possible that somebody can show this much interest in Pat and Mat, is everything fine with that person? 

MP: Hahaha, well somebody must exist somewhere!

Plug: Toadette on B. Pojar's "Bears" series

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).