For my world animation presentation I will be focusing on the life and work of Jiří Trnka. He is one of my favourite animators of all time and is very influential figure in stop motion animation. I first watched his version of ‘Midsummer’s Night Dream’ when I was child and then later on in my teens I was shown ‘The Hand’. It left a big impact on me and is one of the films I would credit to me wanting to become an animator myself.
I have done work/presentations on ‘The Hand’ previously so had some base of understanding for Trunk’s life and art process. But with the brief for the project mentioning the effects of soil/political influences and impacts on animated films/series, I felt ‘The Hand’ would be prefect to discuss.
For my first bit of research, I visited the library, I know they have several copies of Animation: The Global History. This is a great resource as it shows Trnka’s impact on both Czech and European history.
Next, I looked online for articles and interviews discussing more about the making of ‘The Hand’ and the decisions leading up to it being released. Here are some I found below.
https://english.radio.cz/masters-czech-animated-film-8710154/1
https://english.radio.cz/jiri-trnka-100th-anniversary-birth-a-great-czech-animator-8556282
These are very interesting to me because of them includes an interview with his daughter who mentions that Trnka loved the children in his life to be involved with the films and highly valued their opinions. They were able to come into his studios when no one else was able to. This is very relevant to my presentation so I won’t include it but I felt like it paints Trnka in a new light for me.
If you have not yet watch ‘The Hand’, I highly recommend it. I have attached a link below 🙂