ANIMATED FANTASIES

Rositsa Panayotova

The Sixth International Cartoon Festival, held in 1989 in the
Bulgarian town of Varna, once more provoked the critics to engage
in another round of endless debates on the interrelation between
science-fiction and animation. This relationship is undoubtedly
an integral part of both genres, and I should think this becomes
obvious, to a greater or lesser extent, once we cast aside the
general trapings of mass SF such as steely-eyed supermen,
rebelling robots and mad scientists. Suffice it to say that the
use of the fantastic is a time-honored tradition in mainstream
literature and in the so-called "serious" cinema, while cartoons,
depending as they do on the extrapolation at great lengths of the
otherwise obvious or natural are indelibly connected with SF. It
can also be pointed out that animation frequently uses the
negation of an event, and that, combined with the magical, not
only deciphers, but also enciphers its images.

And, to flesh out that theory, here are a few examples from the
Varna cartoon festival:

PURE IMAGE, a Hungarian film, was all about the battles waged by
a man's tattoos against his efforts to get rid of them.

WIND was a Russian anti-utopia about a military base in which all
doors with an "Exit" sign lead to different scenarios for a
nuclear winter, and man is just a pass number.

TOY FACTORY was the story of a random error in a toy plant's
machinery, resulting in the production of a human, and of the
special games which the other toys played with him.

NOCTURNOES was a very good Canadian SF film in which the cosmic
spirit of music materialised through the starlight into fantastic
visions from constellations like "The Hairs of Veronica" and
"Virgo".

A human leg sought its "freedom" in a Polish film made by Piotor
Dumala.

The attempts at visualising human fears were generally not so
much fear-inspiring or nightmarish as absurd and simply boring.
Thus OGRES AND BODIES, a film from Yougoslavia produced by Rastko
Chirich tries to convince the viewer that he could enjoy the most
dreadful monsters on the pages of the dictionary of Serbian
mythology but dismally fails to do so. Even THE LAST THEFT, a
Chzechoslovak film by Irzi Barta tried to achieve gothical horror
and suspense with the help of a genius thief and no less
ingenious vampires, and proved that modern man is not easily
scared, be it by extraterrestrial invasions, sons of the devil,
or other mundane horrors. Moreover, animation was rather
sparingly used, more in a bid to imitate the adventures of Bob
Hoskins and Roger the Rabbit, I suspect, than with the intention
of broadening the scope of animated art.

But the clearest and most dreadful facet of fear remains violence
in all its animated embodiments, and it achieves its aims without
the help of a fantasy cast or cosmic stage-props. Sometimes all
it takes is to introduce some unreal, incredible, and yet easy to
understand event in order to create an unnatural atmosphere for
our much too sensible minds. In MANY GAMES Ian Shvankmeier has
changed the basic aim of football - scoring more goals - with
that of destroying more rivals from the other team, and the
stadium appocalipsis is transferred into the flat of a fan who
watches the match on TV. The Soviet film LARGE SCALE TEN is about
a different kind of violence, in that of fighting over the truth.
The fast-paced picture swiftly switches view-points, skilfully
combining fantasy gag with plot and satirical parody, thus making
this Vladimir Goncharov film one of the best examples of new
political cinematography in the USSR. The film's success was
largely due to the happy end which was by no means overdone.
Although truth was disrobed and shown naked, which led to charges
of pornography being leveled against the film by Soviet
authorities, her head remained the one of that same old
bureaucrat.

Now let's take a look at some of the awarded pictures, most of
which were predominated by the fantastic.

STRANGERS IN HEAVEN, an Andrew Stavely film from Great Britain -
Adam and Eve have fallen into a modern heaven of sorts, or in
other words into a supermarket, where it turns out that the most
awful punishment for their transgression is to be the packaging
of two dolls and offering them for sales.

The Swiss film A THEME FOR A PICTURE, winner of one of the jury's
special awards, shows how an old man can become younger through a
painter's efforts, and, travelling through pictures and ages,
find the woman of his dreams.

And then there's of course Paul Driesen's film DEATH AND THE
WRITER which got the "Golden Kuker" Grand Award. This
fascinating, colorful and rich in texture battle between Life and
Death takes place in the Middle Ages - one of the most rewarding
epoch for fantasy writers.

One of the pleasant surprises was Rene Lallu's film GANDAHAR
based on a story by French SF writer Jean Pierre Andrevon.
Gandahar is a planet on which the successes and nightmares of
genetics co-exist. The battle between the Knight of Gandahar and
the most ambitious and satanic creation of genetics - The
Boilbrained Metamorph - ends happily, as in a fairy-tale, but
only after a redemptive appocalipsis has been suffered. This
opullent, exotic film carries some very valuable ideas but what's
more important, it makes the viewer think things over, which to
my mind is where its greatest strength lied.

The festival ended, but the films remain - be they good or bad,
experimental or traditional. Most of them found the public they
were intended for. Some didn't fare so well, but you just can't
succeed all of the time. In the world of animation it is easy to
go to extremes, for this is an art unsurpassed for yet
predominantly built on imagination and experiment.