A je to on Croatian television, 1985

I just love thinking of new places to look for hidden gems and immediately striking gold, that is finding something new in my different researches. I was browsing the digital archive of Split’s paper Slobodna Dalmacija (Free Dalmatia, once an important and respected newspaper, today an also-ran) for something unrelated when it struck me – in the many years of its circulation, Pat and Mat were surely featured at some time, right? So, I set off on my search. But, the search function of the site is very clunky and completely useless for multi-word entries. What to do? Of course, search for BENEŠ. After various references about Czechoslovak president Edvard and Croatian boxer Marijan, I found mention of a certain L(j)ubomir Beneš on a page of the December 6, 1985 edition:

Here’s the article enlarged:

Translated, it reads: 

“It’s how it is"

On Sundays, at 19 o’clock, in the animated shorts slate on Channel 1, among others, we watch a puppet series whose original title is “It’s how it is”. The series was made by the television in Bratislava, and is directed by Lubomir Beneš, who also wrote many of the episodes, together with Jiri Kubiček. Two heroes, two neighbors, try to convince us that there are no unsolvable problems, although the way in which they do that seems to tell us otherwise.

The somewhat misguided translation of the original is amusing. The correct Croatian translation would be “(i) to je to” (i.e. “(and) that’s it”), which is even occasionally used nowadays. But, the real reason I am dedicating a post to the article is the publicity shot from Zahrádka. It’s – quite strange!

Everyone who has watched the episode (and I recently went through it in my minutiae series – on halt at the moment) knows we seem to have two Pats, which does not make much sense. Is it from an alternate universe where the episode is extended? After making a huge garden gnome, do Pat and Mat decide to make plaster replicas of their own selves and are not trapped as we are led to believe?

Pat is positioned quite suspiciously. Maybe that’s actually Pat’s evil twin (who can, of course, only be named Rat) who has escaped from prison to trap his brother in plaster and take over his free, peaceful cottage life along with fellow felony Tat. Maybe (I’d say, probably) the picture is cropped, so we won’t know the rest of it until we discover the original in another unexpected place. Slobodna is also missing many publication years on its archive for the time being. It’s how it is…

Scenes from Narkoblues (1997)

Things have been going slowly on this blog. Unfortunately, I don't have that much time to devote to it at the moment, so posts will appear less frequently. Some things are on the way, but I don't know when I will get them out. I'd like to say that I'm feeling fine and hope you are too in these unpredictable circumstances.

Recently, thanks to a friend, I got to see Narco Blues (or Narkoblues, the title in Czech) for the first time. This film was made in aiF Studio in 1997 as, I believe, aiF's only completed one-shot puppet short film, not tied to character series. Directed by famed director Břetislav Pojar together with cameraman Ivan Vít, it was part of Rights from the Heart series, which highlighted different problems children face when their rights are violated. This film dealt with drugs - here is a synopsis from the NFB of Canada, which co-produced the film with aiF and Czech Television:

On summer vacation a young teenager finds himself hanging out alone on the streets of his neighbourhood, all his friends having gone to the country with their parents. Near his home he meets a disturbing character, a drug pusher looking for clients, who introduces him to an artificial paradise. The teenager discovers a seductive and terrifying world that frequently draws him back to his neighbour. To buy the drug, he empties his piggybank, pawns his favourite possessions and finally goes into his mother's purse where he finds her wallet empty. The pusher is unscrupulous. Unable to pay, the young teenager lets himself be persuaded into committing a theft. The duo is surprised by the police, but the boy manages to escape. The incident leads to a bad trip, which ultimately has a salutary effect on him. An animated film without words for twelve to seventeen year olds.

title card

A je to: minutiae #3 (Čiklovka: Gramofón, Grill - Jan Klos steps onto the scene)

Gramofón

In 1981, the series moved from the "mother" studio in Bartolomějská to the studio's Čiklovka branch, most likely to save space. Only two people followed the series there: director Luboš Beneš and animator Karel Chocholín. The rest of the crew consisted of Čiklovka members, all new to the series. One of the most important members of the new team was cameraman Vladímir Malík. In Croatian as well as in Czech, there's saying that if you know something thoroughly, you have it in your pinkie finger. Malík could definitely claim that, not only because his surname translates to pinkie, but because he was the best cameraman of the three on the original series. Camera errors (such as shots out of focus) were at a minimum when he was behind the scenes, while his work is also full of intricate details like lush shadows. Since the early 1970s, Ivan Vít, who later returned to the characters in 1989, was his assistant.  Malík had bags of experience at Čiklovka - he was there when directors Břetislav Pojar and Josef Kluge opened the branch in 1959. However, his work on ... a je to! was among his last at Čiklovka, as he was shifted to the main branch in 1982. Here is a wonderful short documentary about his life made in 2011. Malík was born in 1931 and is currently 89 years old, hopefully still going strong. His predecessor in the role, Jiří Šafář, died in 2018 aged 97, so maybe being cameraman on the series is a good omen for a long life.

CHRONICLE OF CINEMATOGRAPHER VLADIMÍR MALÍK from Jaro Waldeck on Vimeo.

And here he is working in the studio (year unknown):

Gramofón is the episode where Malík's imprint is most felt. Remember, ... a je to! was made on a shoestring budget, often with time constraints, so not many innovations and time-consuming methods could be utilized. Still, the crew managed to make this episode look very atmospheric.

In accordance with the new surroundings, the titles got a makeover.

 Pat looks at his shiny gramophone. Unlike some episodes, this one features technology which is a relic of the past. Still, I don't think children would have much problem understanding what a record player does after watching it. The wallpapers and a lot of the props would later be reused in Křížovka, an episode which looks entirely different. Take a look at the detailed windows - to me, the setting looks as if Pat's flat is on a high skyscraper and has a view to lower ones.

A je to: minutiae #2

Hojdacie kreslo

Mat is watching some dog. Unfortunately, it is not Dášeňka.

Edgar Degas' The Dance Class is hanging on the wall. Pat had it in the previous episode.

A je to: minutiae #1

In this series of posts, I will discuss minutiae from the ... a je to! series. One definition of the word minutiae reads as precise details; small or trifling matters and that is what this is all about. Small or not so small details you probably never even noticed or you didn't think about them. The TDK masters made me rewatch the entire series a couple of times, this time in a new light, and these are some interesting bits and pieces a person who has watched these episodes so many times thought it would be nice to share. The screenshots are all raw, as they are on the DVDs, without any editing.

Tapety

No, the title card for Tapety is not green, but grey! The titles on the TDK masters look unusual for the 1979, almost as if they were sourced from different materials than the rest of the films, especially on the next episode.

a bit of a scratch, as if somebody sprayed the frame with gulaš

Mat has so much junk in his kitchen. I wish some other episodes also showed their homes full of items which don't belong there. It doesn't sit well with me when their living spaces are tidy. Previously, I didn't notice how the iconic gulaš can (that is, two cans, but you'll have to wait for another edition of minutiae to see an explanation) has a dark blue, not black outline around the words.

I already mentioned how Mat's living room looks very drab at the beginning, as if the crew did not yet have a sense of how to light up the set and started with too much white light. They gradually dialed it back a bit and introduced warmer colors, even in the same episode.

on the contrary, this shot needs some more light!

gulaš and bread, classic. or is it a croissant?

More from Steamworks Studio

Just a small post today. As I've said, more behind-the-scenes photos are bound to come from Steamworks Studio, who animated many of the 2018-20 episodes in China, which I talked about in my previous post. These photos come from an article on the Chinese website new.qq.com. I didn't want to just copy every single photo here, so here's a link to the place where I found these and all the rest of them: https://new.qq.com/omn/20200731/20200731A0BSF100.html

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.

Closer look: Papírový servis (2011)

When I was first thinking about making a blog about the series, one of the ideas rolling around in my head was to review every episode produced up to that point. That would have been a monumental task and one that I'm glad I abandoned. However, from time to time, I will take a closer look at some of the episodes and those posts will function as kind of a review. That explains the title of the post and here is the episode I'm talking about today. This time, the YouTube video was uploaded by the studio themselves, Patmat film:

Produced in 2011, it is the third episode from the Pat a Mat na venkově (Pat & Mat in the Countryside) series, which I haven't covered much yet. Even though I cannot find any mention of it at the moment, I remember reading an article about this episode premiering on the Zlín Film Festival. It is my favorite episode from that 13-episode series made over six years, mostly because of its absurdist plot. The plot is divided into three parts: 1) Pat & Mat enjoying their meal, 2) the two trying out ways to produce paper plates and 3) the two producting paper plates infinitely. Even though this is a longer episode (8:30 in length), only the second part lags a bit, while I like the tempo of the other two parts. As is the custom with episodes from Patmat, the first shot shows the setting where the action takes place.

This rustic setting was replicated in the 2009 Pat & Mat computer game. I like the general atmosphere of this series, which undoubtedly purposefully harkens back to the 1982-85 episodes set in the countryside as well. The opening of the episode is somewhat an anti-opening for the series; in it, everything goes well and the two handymen show skill and imagination in coming up with different paper tableware. They enjoy sausages, the local Kremžska mustard and some foreign ketchup with a funny label - strašně hot (terribly hot).

The core team that made this episode consisted of only four people from the Patmat film studio, which is in actuality 60 square meters located in an apartment house's basement in Hostivice near Prague. From right to left, Marek Beneš wrote and directed the episode, Jan Bouzek built the sets and most of the props, Jan Chvojka was the cameraman and Jan Smrčka the animator. Here they are in 2010 working on the previous episode, Vodovod:

archive photo from the studio's website

Currency mismatch

5 lipa coin in my coin collection

Somebody from the Anima studio must have visited the Croatian coast and was left with a 5 lipa coin they couldn't use any more, or was thinking ahead enough to figure out it would be a good prop for the studio.

When Pat and Mat break open their piggy bank in the Wheels (Kolečka) episode, we can briefly see an authentic Croatian 5 lipa coin.

The coin was perfect for filming as it's very small, only 18 mm in diameter. Of course, that also makes it almost worthless, being worth just 1/20 of the Croatian kuna.

However, there's a saying that goes: one man's trash is another man's treasure. Can some of you perhaps identify any of the other coins?

 

The scene following that one features a subtle gag that's only understandable to Czech and Slovak audiences and one which I became aware of only when doing research for this post. If I am correct, what Pat pulls out is a 100 korun banknote, but one from Czechoslovakia, which was withdrawn in 1993, ten years before this episode was made. Almost as valuable as his 5 lipa coin, then.

Perhaps I should have gotten rid of these sooner...

Repurposed sets

Pat & Mat's 1984-85 cottage on exhibition - or is it? (source: unknown)

Constructing the scale models used in filming of stop motion animation, as well as making all the props, is an elaborate and time-consuming process. The drill Pat & Mat use, as we've already mentioned, is as old as the characters themselves. If it works and looks good, there's no need to change it. As such, some of the sets used for the series are actually repurposed sets from other shorts or series.

A certain part of Lubomír Beneš's Král a skřítek (The King and the Goblin), his version of the King Midas tale, revolves around a fountain with a golden dragon on top. Here's what it looks like in that 1980 short:

Four years later, the fountain resurfaced in a short scene from the opening of Klavír, ...a je to! episode #25. This time, the top was changed to a statue of Mat (?) ― yes, I don't really understand it either.

Interestingly, an iconic set of the 1979-85 series had also been repurposed.

an intruder at the house?