Woman strokes fish. Fish squelshes. Man strokes fish. Fish squelshes. Woman strokes man. Woman strokes knife. Man strokes fish…. and so it goes on. I may reveal myself as an animation dunce when I say I had no previous knowledge of Pritt Parn’s work before attending the screening of his feature film Life Without Gabriella Ferri last night at the London Animation Festival.
It’s hard to say what the film is about, and perhaps it’s completely unnecessary. Life without Gabriella Ferri, fittingly, only briefly references Gabriella herself. There’s a one legged chicken, an impassible runner, a wandering spider, a thief, and a number of creepy ophthalmologists. While the drawings are scratchy and messy, there’s a precise, almost choreographed fluidity to the movements of the characters. The 44 minutes of the film are no easy watch. I experienced growing anxiety. Everything here, from the unrelenting soundscape to the neglected child with the bandaged hand, feeds a sense of unease, a clear message that something is wrong. And yet the film cultivates its own internal, inexorable logic, a weird structure in the chaos.
Yup, that’s Estonian animation for you. Tomorrow, light relief in the form of sexy zebras and clumsy undertakers when I review the LIAF programme of Siggraph Asia shorts.
Have you seen Pritt Parn’s work? I’d be interested to hear what you made of it.
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I’ve only seen Hotel E, but it’s magnificent. I think you can see it here:
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/CDvQ6huzqRM/
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Thanks for the link, will have to watch it once I’ve sufficiently recovered from Life without Gabriella Ferri
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I wrote my RCA dissertation on the work of Priit Pärn and other Estonian animators from his studio Joonisfilm (Priit Tender, Kaspar Jancis and Ülo Pikkov). I went over to Tallinn to ‘research’ it… basically hanging out with some of my animation heroes and drinking a LOT of vodka. I was also allowed unlimited access to a big cupboard containing all of their films on DigiBeta. Shortly afterwards I attended Priit’s workshop on ‘Designing Narrative’ at La Poudrière Animation Film School in France. His narratives are pretty unconventional, as anyone knows who has seen one of his films. The workshop was brilliant – a week of intensive exercises in inventing stories. Priit uses a kind of algebra to explain the way he builds a narrative. Thus, at its simplest, A + B becomes a love story – what happens when C comes along? (see Priit’s film Triangle [1982] and also Ülo Pikkov’s Bermuda [1998]) It was at this workshop that Priit met Olga Marchenko, the woman who recently became his wife and co-directed Life Without Gabriella Ferri. She is often overlooked in the partnership but knowing Priit and Olga’s work, I can see a lot of her in this film. She brings a new energy and sense of playful mischief to the film. It seems to me that Life Without Gabriella Ferri is about losing people… and finding people. A+B.
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Milo, it sounds like you were lucky to have privileged access to an intriguing director. I think this goes back to the point I was trying to make in another post… I’m increasingly finding film festival screenings dry and uninspiring. Not sure what an alternative could be, but there has to be something more engaging than sitting passively in a half empty cinema!
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience with us.
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If anyone is interested in finding out more about Priit and Joonisfilm I can recommend this brilliant book by Chris Robinson (AKA Animation **** of Ottawa Animation Festival): http://tiny.cc/s0OAQ
There’s an interesting ‘debate’ going on on Chris Landreth’s (Ryan, The Spine) blog too: http://films.nfb.ca/the-spine/blog/?p=228 (I left a comment that was deemed offensive so Mr Landreth removed it. We did have an interesting email conversation though)
You could also read my dissertation (disclaimer: may contain ********): http://sevenzeds.com/monkey.pdf (25MB)
There doesn’t seem to be that much of their work online but I did find VHS rips of the two films I mentioned above:
Triangle on YouTube: http://tiny.cc/UMwF1
And Bermuda on Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/1337733
And two of my favourites:
1895 by Priit Pärn: http://tiny.cc/Ap2su
Taste of Life by Ülo Pikkov: http://tiny.cc/NAy8P
and lastly there is this recent interview with Priit Pärn on YouTube (I haven’t watched all of it yet but it seems quite interesting): http://tiny.cc/HGB5l
Phew! I could keep this up all day. Better get back to work though
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBuRbw-lIqI
this video is my own work bringing together 15 animators from 15 different parts of the world… all to make people smile…
please have a gander
Leano
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