Different Techniques - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 150

way. Nor have I secured an agent or a management company. Agents make life easier, and are
the i rst to hear of any new i lms being planned. There were times years ago when I got caught
up with several commercials at once, each changing dates on a daily basis, and all getting
grumpy when I had to turn someone down. That's when an agent would have been great.
They're also better at opening doors to interested parties who might otherwise shut the door
to a giddy director clutching his latest project.
I owe the Brothers Quay a huge debt, as their i lm Leon Janacek - Intimate Excursions introduced
me to the music of the Czech composer Janacek. I have explored and loved the music as a
result, and it has become an ambition to i lm his opera The Cunning Little Vixen using puppets.
It has been animated as a cartoon, but the slight drawings and basic animation couldn't
manage to complement the richness and energy of the score. The story is complex and full
of sexual imagery, violence and rebirth, and to reduce it to a tale of cute singing animals is to
reduce it too much.
Outside animation and i lm, the Quays have given me some great nights at the theatre, their
designs for Opera North's Love of Three Oranges being a particular favourite.
Jan Svankmajer
In the same breath as the Brothers Quay one has to talk about the prolii c Jan Svankmajer,
although he needs a whole topic to himself. Like the Quays, Svankmajer has been challenging
the conventions of stop motion for decades. He has a background in theatre, and this shows in
his use of music and masks, and a real joy in theatrical presentation. He revels in getting
an interior life out of objects and materials, ranging from real organs such as liver, to food and
clay, often mixing live-action actors with animation. If it can move, Svankmajer will move it. His
work contains bleak messages and strong political ideas, and a lot of scenes with animating
of al are uncomfortable to watch, but I sit through every i lm, astonished at the imagination
and the output, and how the most ordinary object can be used to express something. Stop
motion is the perfect medium here, as its inherent roughness gives the appropriate edge
to the work. The i lms are so much about textures and contrasting textures, and the sheer
physicality of putting a cow's tongue in a small theatrical set, that I can't imagine these strong
images working in any other medium. The audience knows that is a real tongue animating, and
the feeling of revulsion wouldn't work if it was a computer-generated tongue, however well
animated it was.
My favourite Svankmajer i lm, and the most succinct and tightly structured, is Dark, Light, Dark ,
in which various clay organs and limbs gather themselves into a small room, bare except for
a suspended lightbulb. As other limbs join, they try to assemble themselves, going through
some frightening and hysterical combinations. Among the clay, a real tongue joins. I can only
imagine the discomfort of animating such an object under hot sweaty lights, but that's why
we do it. If we didn't want to enjoy the direct, tactile process, we would use other
methods. Slowly, all the limbs i nd their right positions, and a huge naked i gure
sits contorted and cramped into a tiny space, like a fully grown foetus, waiting for
whatever happens next. A stunning i lm, with all manner of messages to be read
into it, not least ideas about the creation of life and animation itself. When I last
spent time with Jan, he was on a quest round Buenos Aires for an armadillo shell.
Animators!