Dates of events
Venue :
Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts, Svoradova 2 (foyer), Bratislava
Screening of the film with the director Michael Dudok de Wit in person, introduced by the film histoirian Giannalberto Bendazzi, discussion.
THE RED TURTLE
La Tortue Rouge
France, Belgium, Japan, 2017, 80´
Director: Michael Dudok de Wit
Screenplay: Michael Dudok de Wit, Pascale Ferran
Music: Laurent Perez del Mar
A man marooned on a desert islands tries desperately to espace, until one day. He encounters a strange turtle that ill change his life.
Michael Dudok de Wit
Illustrator, artist and director of animated films (Netherlands)
He is a Dutch illustrator, artist and director of animations with a unique ink and watercolour style celebrated in his award-winning films. Alongside film production he writes and illustrates children´s books and teaches animation at art schools and universities. Michael Dudok de Wit caught international attention in mid-1990s with a six-minute film The Monk and the Fish (Le Moine et le poisson, 1994), which garnered numerous awards, including the Cézar, and was nominated for an Academy Award. The Oscar and dozens of awards were bestowed for his unforgettable nine-minute film Father and Daughter (2000). A children´s book bearing the same name was awarded the Golden Apple at the Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava (BIB). Another short film, The Aroma of Tea (2006) is inspired by Asian art and culture.
In 2016, he completed The Red Turtle, his latest film and feature debut w ith support from Ghibli, the Japanese studio. This film earned Michael Dudok de Wit another Academy Award nomination and received a host of other awards.
Some reflections on the films of Michael Dudok de Wit
Giannalberto Bendazzi, Film historian (Italy)
The Monk and the Fish (1994) is a vivacious animated short about a monk who obsessively goes after a fish. Its world-wide popularity and numerous awards mark the starting point of one of the most flattering careers in the world of animation.
The Monk and the Fish is as garrulous and profound as any other conte philosophique, and furthermore it shines with the rare gift of novelty in the beaten track of animated drawings. The characters’ staccato movements are a new step towards an evergreen grammar of the film.
Father and Daughter (2000) won all Grand Prix in every possible festival. It is probably the ultimate auteur film, acrobatically in line between sublime and maudlin. Painted with tea and in the rhythm of one of Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerti grossi, Dudok de Wit's abstract film The Aroma of Tea (2006) appears to be a sort of a formal and conceptual preparatory metaphor for his first feature film The Red Turtle (2016). The film, produced by the Ghibli Studio, Prima Linea and Wild Bunch, expresses once again the elaboration of Dudok de Wit's recurrent themes: those of a longing, of the ultimate desire, of the ultimate question.
Dudok de Wit is proud of every single frame he has drawn so far, whether it was intended for an independent film or for a TV commercial. In his system of values and approach to work there is no difference between high and low art. All his films have an artistic and artisan imprint of renaissance-like quality: every phase of animation is meditated over the storyboards for a long time.
Yet, this experienced, everywhere wined and dined filmmaker seems far from his goal. After watching his films in a row, the spectators are hungry for more. In 2018, after Postmodernism, a sincere artist still has his place and his fans.
Giannalberto Bendazzi
Film Historian, Italy
Giannalberto Bendazzi is an independent Italian film historian and animation history professor. His career began as a journalist and from the mid-1990s he has taught at prestigious universities around the world, including the University in Milan (Universita degli Studi di Milano) and as a visiting professor of animation history at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. He promotes animation through all possible channels, including books, articles, studies, essays, lectures and retrospectives.
Bassed on his most famous work, Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation, Giannalberto Bendazzi continued with a three-volume Animation: A World History. It follows animation history across all continents in over 90 countries and surprises readers with new insights on animators and their work, including current animation in Slovakia.
