http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/found-n...iri-trnka.html
Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel
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History of the director:
Jiří Trnka (1912-1969) was a Czech puppet maker, illustrator, motion-picture animator and film director, renowned for his stop motion puppet animations.
He graduated from the Prague School of Arts and Crafts. He created a puppet theater in 1936. This group was dissolved when World War II began, and he instead designed stage sets and illustrated books for children throughout the war.
After the end of the war, Trnka established an animation unit at the Prague film studio. Trnka soon became internationally recognized as the world's greatest puppet animator in the traditional Czech method, and he won several film festival awards. One animator called him "the Walt Disney of the East".
He won an award at the Cannes Festival in 1946, just one year after he began working in film. His films were mostly made for an adult audience. Beginning in 1948, the communist Czech government began to subsidize his work, although this did not seem to affect the message or style of his work. He also created animated cartoons. He wrote the scripts for most of his own films. In 1968, he won
Hans Christian Andersen Award, the most distinguished prize in children's literature.
Summary of the short film:
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An absolutely brilliant film! Jiri Trnka, the master of puppet animation, confronts totalitarianism in this, his final, film. It would be banned by the Communist Czechoslovakian government (at the time), despite taking the country's highest animation award.
In this dark and entertaining short film, an artist attempts to create a new pot for his favourite plant. He happily makes his creations while dreaming that his plant will grow to be a beautiful rose. All of a sudden, he here's a knock at the door, and in comes this giant omnipotent hand, that tries to force the artist to make statues in it's likeness. The artist resists as best he can, but he eventually becomes overwhelmed by the constant attempts, by the hand, to force him to conform. He becomes brainwashed; an intellectual zombie. At this point the hand attaches strings to the artist, puts him in a cage, and uses him to make hand statues. All the while glorifying the artist's work and awarding him with medals and honours.
The artist's inner lust to be able to express himself freely is what helps him prevail over his indoctrination, and enables him escape his prison, whether it be literal or in his mind, and return to his home where he now must live in constant fear of the wrath of the omnipotent hand. He shuts himself in, thinking he is out of the reach of the almighty hand, but in the process he puts his plant and pot up high, hoping it is out of the reach of the hand, and it ends up falling on his head, killing him. The artist is inevitabally destroyed by his own creation. All because of the constant fear he had to live with once he escaped the hand's strings. Once dead, the hand paints the artist as a great person, a national hero. Unfortunately not in the circumstances or for the reasons that the artist would like to be remembered.
Trnka's condemnation of Totalitarian society, and their lack of right for free expression is dark, damning and an amazingly animated. It is no wonder the government banned it as this is the sort of media that people admire, and would perhaps even listen to. That was obviously not acceptable. An amazing example of an artists civil disobedience and the impact it can have.