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Although Ari Folman’s film Waltz with Bashir premiered more than 10 years ago, this suggestive story is so unforgettable that many viewers remember it vividly to this day. It was screened in the official competition selection at the Cannes Festival, won dozens of awards and was nominated for dozens more, including an Oscar. Folman balances between multiple genres – his film is a documentary, an autobiographical story and a psychological and war drama. Its main protagonist is the director himself, who, as a 19-year-old soldier of the Israel Defense Forces, took part in the First Lebanon War in 1982. The film reconstructs his memory – in later life, Folman approaches other veterans, asking them to help him find his memories of savage massacres in Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila. In its time, the film resonated with another Middle Eastern autobiographical film, Persepolis. Unlike its director Marjane Satrapi, Folman is more thorough in his documentary approach. But his film can also stir the emotions of its viewers who see a gruesome world that they had only a faint (or no) idea existed.

Just like with documentaries made in a real environment with real protagonists made from flesh and bones, there is a number of documentary sub-genres in the world of animated documentaries. One of the most popular is for example orally-historic animated documentary in which an original recording/testimony of witnesses (or thematically chosen sociological group) is accompanied by a visual authorial interpretation using animation.

Mockumentary may not be the most common animated documentary sub-genre, but its individual examples are all the more original and varied. In this programme block, we will find a parody on a sports report (Rallye Kampa-Petřín), a biographical documentary (Brown’s Daughter), fake scientifically exact nature documentaries (Dinosaurs, Bearytales) and sociological interviews (Bread). After all, the magic of animated documentary spoof was alluring also to one of the most famous Czech animators, Jan Švankmajer – in his mockumentary Castle of Otranto, he searches for fictitious tracks of a local mystery.

Animation has always worked with exaggeration, hyperbole and absurd situations. And it seems that these are exactly the qualities of most good mockumentaries.

Bearytales
Director: Veronika Zacharová, CZ, 2015, 3 min

My Mum is an Airplane
Director: Yulya Aronova, RU, 2013, 7 min

Dinosaurs
Director: Dao Linh, CZ, 2013, 5 min

Castle of Otranto
Director: Jan Švankmajer, CZ, 1977, 17 min

Bread
Director: Andrew Gordon, GB, 2007, 2 min

Rally Kampa-Petrin
Director: KREUS, CZ, 2012, 8 min

Brown’s Daughter
Director: Coline Brun-Naujalis, GB, 2011, 12 min

Museum Guard
Director: Alexander Gratzer, AT, 2016, 3 min

LUCENS
Director: Marcel Barelli, CH, 2015, 6 min

Trick Collection
Director: Ester Nemjóová, CZ, 2015, 2 min

How to Obtain a Good Child
Director: Stanislav Látal, Miloš Macourek, CZ, 1965, 10 min

This autobiographical film tells the extraordinary story of Paul Fierlinger, from his birth in Japan, through his childhood in the USA and growing up in communist Czechoslovakia, to his escape back to the United States he dreamt of. The director depicted lingering images from his childhood in order to come to terms with painful memories and a complicated relationship with his parents. The film is a valuable and extraordinary testimony about modern Czech history by an author who never considered Czechoslovakia to be his home. An interesting fact about the film is that its authenticity is underlined by the voices of some of its characters such as artists Miloš Forman, Jan Tříska and Pavel Landovský who – just like Václav Havel – voiced themselves.

The films in the programme deal with the presentation of memory, tackle important social and political topics and show how the filmmakers get to grips with their own or someone else’s history by using different approaches and various animation techniques. While the key film The Sinking of the Lusitania by Winsor McCay still cannot shake off the look and feel of wartime propaganda, Trade Tattoo by Len Lye covers its marketing purpose already quite well with experimental visuals. War Story by Peter Lord, Silence by Orly Yadin and Sylvie Bringas and Ann Shenfield’s film A Saucer of Water for the Birds are all based on memories of World War II, but present the subject in three different ways. Hidden by David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn is their first film of a trilogy about illegal immigrants in Europe. The programme ends with a film about Norman McLaren who has been an important historical figure in the history of animated documentary.

The Sinking of the Lusitania
Director: Winsor McCay, USA, 1918, 12 min

Trade Tattoo
Director: Len Lye, UK, 1937, 5 min

Jute: Letter for Carter
Director: Gerrit van Dijk, NL, 1979, 6 min

War Story
Director: Peter Lord, UK, 1989, 5 min

Silence
Director: Orly Yadin, Sylvie Bringas, UK, 1998, 11 min

A Saucer of Water for the Birds
Director: Ann Shenfield, AUS, 1994, 9 min

Abductees
Director: Paul Vester, UK, 1995, 11 min

Hidden
Director: Hanna Heilborn, David Aronowitsch, Mat Johansson, SWE, 2002, 8 min

McLaren’s Negatives
Director: Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre CAN, 2006, 10 min

Anidoc is becoming more and more popular in the Czech Republic. To a large extent, we can see it in recent student films. This programme gives space to the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín – its students had an assignment to visually portray speeches of selected personalities from the fields of philosophy (Wandering Bondy, A Philosophical Discourse) and art (Definitiveness of a Line). Zlín itself is the setting of the impression by a Turkish director who studied here (Zlín Soup) and also of Urban Speech that captures the city’s sounds. Thematically and visually very different films Hypnagogia and Chase are connected by the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Both authors conceived their films as animated testimonies. Just like student of the Film and TV Academy of Performing Arts in Prague Diana Cam Van Nguyen with the currently most successful Czech anidoc Apart.

The theme of this year’s Anifilm also directed our looks into the history of Czech animation where anidoc showed up as early as in the interwar period from which we will screen the educational film The Adventures of a Ubiquitous Fellow. From recent history, our programme includes a film by Michaela Pavlátová who made several animated documentaries.

Všudybylova dobrodružství / The Adventures of a Ubiquitous Fellow
Director: Irena Dodalová, Karel Dodal, ČSR, 1936, 12 min

Filozofická rozprava / A Philosophical Discourse
Director: Kryštof Ulbert, CZ, 2018, 3 min

Mykokosmická symfonie / Mycocosmic Symphonie
Director: Seun Lee, CZ, 2016, 3 min

Egon Bondy o filozofii a vůbec / Wandering Bondy
Director: Veronika Zacharová, CZ, 2017, 2 min

… až na věky / Forever and Ever
Director: Michaela Pavlátová, Pavel Koutecký CZ, 1998, 14 min

Definitivnost čáry / Definitiveness of a Line
Director: Aliona Baranová, CZ, 2017, 1 min

Zlínská polévka / Zlín Soup
Director: Akile Nazli Kaya, CZ, 2007, 9 min

Hypnagogia
Režie / Director: Magdalena Kvasničková, CZ, 2017, 5 min

Štvanice / Chase
Director: Michaela Režová, CZ, 2017, 12 min

Řeč města / Urban Speech
Director: Šárka Zahálková, CZ, 2016, 5 min

Spolu sami / Apart
Director: Diana Cam Van Nguyen, CZ, 2018, 10 min

In 1980, Joyce Ann Brown was sentenced to life imprisonment for an armed robbery and a murder in Texas. Four years before that, Edward Baker was sentenced to life imprisonment for similar crimes in Pennsylvania, and Jimmy Landano, who committed an armed robbery and killed a police officer in 1976, also received a life sentence. Just like these three protagonists of Sheila M. Sofiano’s anidoc, dozens of people who actually haven’t committed any crimes spent decades in prison (or were executed). With the help of expert lawyers, criminologists and James McCloskey, founder of the Centurion Ministries organisation fighting for release and vindication of the unjustly sentenced, the director tries to shed some light on mistakes that resulted in fundamental judicial errors in America. Authentic recordings of interviews with the protagonists are supplemented with suggestive paint-on-glass animation and extremely surreal illustrations of trials based on erroneous evidence whose portrayal, along the portrayal of the prison environment, come to life with unpleasantly impressive details. Although Brown, Baker and Landano eventually managed to clear their names and were released after many years in prison, their cases became a warning to the deficient American justice system.

In her very personal film Chris the Swiss, director Anja Kofmel combines animated passages with archive and live-action footage. She draws inspiration from the dark and hard-to-believe story of her own cousin Christian. She decided to unravel and map it in the form of a documentary – almost twenty years after his body was found in the middle of the war rampage in Yugoslavia. In her remarkable reconstruction, Kofmel builds upon passages from Christian’s diaries and her own precisely executed and artistically elaborate animations. She documents not only her cousin’s mysterious fate, but also her efforts to get to know and uncover his personality and motivation. At the same time, she explores the former war conflicts. Christian, who has always been fascinated by war, ran away to join a South African militia when he was 17. A few years later, he went as a reporter to the Yugoslavian war zone where he subsequently joined a paramilitary unit of foreign volunteers whose Bolivian officer had been trained by the KGB. The film was screened during the International Critics’ Week at Cannes and won many nominations and awards at festivals of documentary as well as animated films.

With Frank Film by Frank Mouris, Ryan by Chris Landreth and The Moon and the Son by John Canemaker, you can enjoy three Academy Award winning films in this programme of very personal animated documentaries. Most of the films have an autobiographical note, but use many different techniques to display it. In Frank Film (preserved by the Academy Film Archive), you will be overwhelmed by the collages of images and words that are the life of Frank Mouris, while in The Moon and the Son the filmmaker enters into an imaginary dialogue with his father. Some filmmakers recorded and filmed themselves while using the animation to reflect on their thoughts about life and work. Others, like John and Faith Hubley in Moonbird, used recordings of their kids to animate a story around it. And Animated Self Portrait shows some of the most important animation filmmakers at their time from their own perspective, so it can be called an animated documentary, even though it was not made as such.

Doubled Up
Director: Samantha Moore, UK, 2004, 6 min

Animated Self-Portraits
Director: Jan Švankmajer, Jiří Barta, Osamu Tezuka and others, CAN, JAP, USA, CS, 1989, 8 min

Moonbird
Director: John Hubley, Faith Hubley, USA, 1959, 10 min

The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation
Director: John Canemaker, USA, 2005, 28 min

Interview
Director: Caroline Leaf, Veronika Soul,CAN, 1979, 14 min

Frank Film
Director: Frank Mouris, Caroline Mouris, USA, 1973, 9 min
(Frank Film je součástí archivního fondu americké Akademie filmového umění a věd. / Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.)

Ryan
Director: Chris Landreth, CAN, 2004, 14 min

Also the second programme block of Czech animated documentaries is composed primarily of student films. The viewers will have a chance to compare selected films from the Department of Animation of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague where anidocs have been included in assignments for several past years (Prague. A Foreigners Perspective, Here and Here, Our Number Eight).

But this genre didn’t appear in our cinema in the form of student film. We can find several examples for instance in the rich filmography of Jiří Brdečka (Man Under Water). And also Michaela Pavlátová who is included in the first block (This Could Be Me) and Pavel Koutský who likes to refer to our reality with various means (No Comment).

We would also like to draw your attention to titles from recent years that are somewhat unjustly ignored (Neighbours, The Chronicle of Oldřich S.). And to add something special to this block, we included fresh films (Advertising the Earth Radio – Stephen P. McGreevy’s VLF Cut-outs, Gambler) that prove that Czech anidoc authors are still exploring new ways of expression.

Člověk pod vodou / Man Under Water
Director: Jiří Brdečka, ČSSR, 1961, 18 min

No Comment – kuponová privatizace / No Comment – voucher privatization
Director: Pavel Koutský, CZ, 1994, 1 min

Praha očima cizinců / Prague. A Foreigner’s Perspective
Director: Daria Kashcheeva, CZ, 2017, 5 min

This Could Be Me
Director: Michaela Pavlátová, CZ, 1997, 3 min

No Comment – odsun ruských vojsk / No Comment – The Withdrawal of the Russian Troops
Director: Pavel Koutský, CZ, 1994, 1 min

Advertising the Earth Radio – Stephen P. McGreevy’s VLF Cut-outs
Director: Zbyšek Semelka, CZ, 2019, 6 min

Tu a tady / Here and Here
Director: Michaela Mihalyiova, CZ, 2017, 2 min

Sousedi (příběh Rudolfa Bělohoubka) / Neighbours (Story of Rudolf Bělohoubek)
Director: Martin Búřil, CZ, 2018, 9 min

Malá / The Little One
Director: Diana Cam Van Nguyen, CZ, 2017, 9 min

No Comment – zánik KF a. s. / No Comment – The Ending of KF a. s.
Director: Pavel Koutský, CZ, 1994, 1 min

Gambler
Director: Michaela Režová, Ivan Studený, CZ, 2018, 3 min

Naše osmičky / Our Number Eight
Director: Petr Mischinger, CZ, 2018, 4 min

Kronika Oldřicha S. / The Chronicle of Oldřich S.
Director: Rudolf Šmíd, CZ, 2011, 17 min

Animated documentaries are often used to explain how people deal with difficult circumstances or situations in their life. Here, animation is applied to conceal the identity of the protagonists, but still leaves room for their story. And it illustrates the feelings, but often also provides a bigger subtext to it, such as in films like Tying Your Own Shoes by Shira Avni or A is for Autism by Tim Webb, which both offer a deeper understanding of life with disabilities. Life outside of the norm in society is portrayed in films like Some Protection by Marjut Rimminen or The Wrong Trainers by Sarah Cox, where children explain what it means to be poor, while Survivors by Sheila Sofian offers an insight into the complexity of domestic abuse. And while Love on the Wing by Norman McLaren is a light-hearted animation advertisement that was made for the GPO in London, the film Never like the First Time by Jonas Odell could rather be called irritating, but revealing.

Love on the Wing
Director: Norman McLaren, UK, CAN, 1939, 5 min

Survivors
Director: Sheila M. Sofian, USA, 1979, 16 min

Some Protection
Director: Marjut Rimminen, UK, 1987, 9 min

Never Like the First Time!
Director: Jonas Odell, SWE, 2006, 15 min

Tying Your Own Shoes
Director: Shira Avni, CAN, 2009, 16 min

A Is for Autism
Director: Tim Webb, UK, 1992, 11 min

The Wrong Trainers - Keona and Chantelle
Director: Matthew Walker, UK, 2006, 4 min

The second feature film of director, screenwriter and producer Anca Damian, Crulic – The Path to Beyond, is a Polish-Romanian co-production. The film was screened at more than 150 festivals and attracted lots of attention in Locarno, London, Warsaw and Copenhagen. This ani-doc collage is an artistically and technologically daring film telling the story of Romanian Claudiu Crulic who died in a Polish prison during a hunger strike. He was only 33 years old. In her film, Damian has Crulic speak to the viewers from beyond the grave (with the voice of famous Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov). The disturbing film is dominated by a strong visual style based on a mix of hand drawing and painting, collage, stop-motion and cut-out animation… The collage of techniques and styles that the director created will surprise viewers with its compactness.

Graham Chapman, probably best remembered as “the dead one from Monty Python,” writes and stars in the animated film of his own life story, A Liar's Autobiography. He was born, he went to Cambridge and met John Cleese (not mentioning the meeting with the Queen Mother), he smoked a pipe, he became a doctor, he became a Python, he decided he was gay (well, 70/30, according to a survey he did on himself), he got drunk a lot, he stopped being drunk, he made some films, he had some sex (actually, a lot), and moved to Los Angeles. Finally, he was whisked up to space by aliens (although that might have been in a film). Although Chapman selfishly dropped dead in 1989, he had taken the trouble to record himself reading the book by which this film is inspired. Incredible? Yes. Surreal? Certainly! True? Who knows…? The only thing that is certain is that 14 different animation studios worked on this film using various techniques to depict the most significant chapters from Chapman’s life. Or at least what this crackpot anidoc balancing on the border with a mockumentary claims it to be.