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):

UPDATE: Unfortunately, my original YouTube channel got banned due to circumstances which were never justified or explained by YouTube. Therefore, I am linking the video forwarded by TymekGry (explained below).

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 :)

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!

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.

Jan Klos: seized credits?

As most readers of this blog have figured out by now, I love identifying animators and comparing their work on different Pat & Mat episodes. Each and every one of them brought their own interpretation of how the characters should move and act, sometimes probably unconsciously. In my previous post, I mentioned how Jan Klos is probably the best animator of them all when it comes to scenes where the character and personality is most important.

Jan Klos working in 1976 (photo: Ivan Vít)

This post, however, deals with strange animation credits on ... a je to! episodes from 1984 and 1985. Pat & Mat series usually had two animators handling most of the episodes; in the aiF era, those two were František Váša and Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly. In 1979, the two animators were Karel Chocholín and Xenie Vavrečková. In 1981-1983, it was Karel Chocholín again and Jan Klos. However, an unusal discrepancy in the credits happened in 1984 and 1985. Instead of Jan Klos, Ján Keks was credited for animation on Korčule and Hrnčiari, while Karel Klos was credited for Porucha. Interestingly, the Jan Klos credit was replaced with Ján Keks very noticeably ― you can literally see the smudges left by someone erasing L and O and replacing them with E and K.

1982

1984

1984

1985

Here also is the animation credit for Porucha, this time redone completely:

 

This is something that I always found strange. I've seen these episodes so many times and in the end arrived to the following conclusion: I believe that Keks and Karel Klos are in fact the same person - Jan Klos. Of course, my intuition is not enough to sell that statement. Here then are some other arguments for my case: 

Lubomír Beneš interview (1994)

Lubomír Beneš, February 1995 (photo: ČTK)

Lubomír Beneš died in 1995, so there aren't many interviews with him around. However, I was able to find two newspaper articles which feature interviews with Beneš from 1994, a year before his death. They were conducted when seven new Pat & Mat episodes were completed and premiered. My thanks for these articles go to Tereza Hunkařová from the Masaryk University of Brno, who included them in her bachelor thesis titled Večerníček jako dramaturgické specifikum v televizní tvorbě pro děti a mládež, or Večerníček as a dramaturgical specifics in television production for children and youth, which is available at this link. She in turn got the newspaper clippings from Ateliéry Bonton Zlín, so my thanks go to them as well. I've translated the articles from Czech, so if there are any mistakes, feel free to comment on them.

The first article is from Blesk magazín:

“What is: ... and it is!” - Blanka Kubíčková’s interview with Lubomír Beneš

The clumsy, inventive egghead screwball pair: puppet do-it-yourselfers Pat and Mat. But first, a word from director Lubomír Beneš and artist Vladimír Jiránek. In a studio where seven episodes were recently filmed, the two did not want to talk to me. Lubomír Beneš did so for them instead.

When were these two handymen born and how did they get together?

Vladimír Jiránek and I started inventing hijinks in 1976 because we wanted to let off steam from what was happening around us, from totalitarianism. We drew and designed until we came to the look of the two figures. They were a little different than the audience knows them today ― without caps and more plump. The first part was called Kuťáci. We wanted to continue shooting, but Krátký film did not allow us to do so. The reason given was that Kuťáci are just ordinary entertainment and not appropriate for the cultural policy of the time. However, Slovak Television showed interest in further episodes, and in the end we filmed twenty-eight episodes for them.

Unreleased episode Karty and the dissolution of aiF Studio

Introduction

Pat & Mat's history is full of great stories and tidbits. Marek Beneš, the current director of the series, often tells the story of how he went to a market in Iran while promoting the series there and stumbled upon a seller with unofficial Pat & Mat merchandise. The vendor repeatedly tried to assure him that Mat was in fact the one with the yellow shirt, completely unaware of who he was talking to. However, there is one story that captures the imagination of anyone who even superficially looks at the history of the series and it's the story of the would-be 50th episode of the series, Karty (or Playing Cards in English), a fully completed episode from 1998 which never officially saw the light of day. It is like one of the duo’s ridiculous inventions ― prepared, animated, completed and then never seen, making it completely dysfunctional. 

our heroes playing cards in the eponymous episode

Naturally, as soon as word got out to that this blog exists, a request to cover the history of the episode was requested. This text will cover the episode’s history and the dissolution of aiF Studio that produced it. But first, let’s take a closer look at the mythology built around this episode in the preceding years.

How did we get here? Info about the episode online

Karty’s existence would have probably been mostly unheard of before 2014 had it not been mentioned on the aiF Studio’s official website back in the day. According to the website, Karty was supposed to have been the first in a series of 52 new episodes which would also have been dubbed. This was an insanely ambitious project and would have taken several years to complete. However, the website, available to this day, but on a different address, also contained an important remark: the episode was not authorized for release or distribution. 

aiF Studio's mention of Karty

The Pat & Mat fansite, which served as the most informed website about the series during the early 2000s, also found the episode to be a complete mystery, except for the fact that two snippets of it could be seen on a Korean website. We’ll get to that later. 

Info about the episode on the fansite

The official website of the Patmat studio, opened in 2001 by Marek Beneš, ignored the episode’s existence completely, as it does to this day, which is given the episode’s status completely logical. This was how things remained until sometime around 2006 the website of the studio animation people uploaded these four screenshots of the episode. 

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?