to a large audience on Saturday afternoon in Toldi Cinema.
Although some brought their children along,
Vandas emphasized that his feature animation is targeted towards adults and it is not a “mainstream dreamland” piece of work.
The story tells the strange life of strange people in a small town. Although most of the characters and the story are the original ideas of director Jan Balej and screenwriter Ivan Arsenyev, some of the characters, like the aged pet-crematory owner, or the old lady with a pet mule were inspired by real people. Jan Balej continues the
Jiri Trnka and
Jan Svankmajer tradition of Czech puppet-animation, with this three-part story of grotesque humor. The viewers, all trained on digital animation and computer technology, might find it amazing to face such a craftwork, where making an 80-cm-high puppet might have taken days, and where two minutes of shooting using the stop-motion technique might have taken even a few weeks to complete. The 90-minute piece took about 6 years to finish. The widely acclaimed One Night in One City was seen by about 25,000 people at such animation film events, as the Trebon, Lisbon, Belfast, Bucharest, or Hong Kong Film Festivals. In his next animation film, a modern-day adaptation of Andersen’s fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, Balej will make use of digital technology. It is much easier to manipulate digital material than the 35 mm celluloid, and here the director is planning to place the puppets into documentary footage.
One Night in One City will have one more screening at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, the 8th in Toldi Cinema. This film is one of the most exciting pieces of the
World Cinema section; so get your tickets on time.
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