Beat Bit https://beatbit.org/research Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:22:19 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.3 https://beatbit.org/research/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/beatbit.bmp Beat Bit https://beatbit.org/research 32 32 WRITING ANIMATION: MOMOKO SETO https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-momoko-seto/ https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-momoko-seto/#respond Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:17:55 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=4707
THEORY
MASTERCLASS

WRITING ANIMATION: MOMOKO SETO

Éthann Néon: I’m going to ask some questions about writing and animation relating to time, as that’s the research I’m currently working on. But first, as we usually do: could you briefly introduce yourself, your work and your working methods?

Momoko Seto (photo: Gabriel Hutchinson – source: Wikipedia)

Momoko Seto :

‘Animation’ is a strange word for me, because I don’t actually animate much myself. In other words, I don’t draw, I don’t do pixel art, and I don’t do stop-motion. In fact, I set up cameras to capture natural phenomena that are often imperceptible to the naked eye: plants growing, mould growing, fungi growing or dying. I compress these processes over time using the time-lapse technique. I’m somewhat on the fringes of animation.

When I write – since we’ve been talking a lot about writing in this discussion – it’s very carefully planned. People are surprised that it’s so meticulously prepared. All the shot breakdown, the timing, the elements we want to see develop within the shot, and the camera movements are extremely precise. Each shot requires very different equipment depending on whether it’s a tracking shot, a low-angle shot, a macro shot or a wide shot. So the cost per shot varies. Hiring a 25 mm lens isn’t the same as hiring a 65 mm macro lens. The script is extremely precise.

Extrait du story board de Planètes (tiré du making of de Mathieu Cayrou – CNRS / Miyu)

Ten years passed between the time Momoko Seto began writing and the release of the film *Planètes* (75 minutes, 2025, produced by Miyu, Ecce Films, Arte France Cinéma, UMedia, CNRS Images and Reepost).

The screenplay was written by Momoko Seto and Alain Layrac, in collaboration with Mariette Désert.

Filming lasted 260 days and took place in Iceland, France (notably at the CNRS premises in Roscoff, Brittany, and at Rambuteau Castle in Burgundy) and on Yakushima in Japan. The film comprises around 700 shots.

Miyu’s website describes the film as follows: Dendelion, Baraban, Léonto and Taraxa – four dandelion achenes that survive from a series of nuclear explosions destroying Earth – are propelled into the cosmos. After crash-landing on an unknown planet, they set out in search of soil where their species might survive. However, they must face countless obstacles: the elements, fauna, flora, the climate.

The film won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025, the Paul Grimault Prize at the Annecy Festival in 2025 and the Jury Prize at the Bucheon International Animation Festival in 2025.

Alain Layrac, co-scénariste de Planètes (photo : Unifrance)

Alain Layrac is a French screenwriter born in 1965, best known for co-creating the cult series Une famille formidable and for writing numerous feature films, such as *Mauvaises Fréquentations*. He is Head of Screenwriting at the European Conservatoire of Audiovisual Writing. He has also published several books on his craft, including Atelier d’écriture and Une vie de scénariste.

In my short films, for example, I’d take a photo of a bee, cut it out in Photoshop, set the framing, the background, the bee’s movement, the movement of the other bees arriving one by one, and the duration of the shot. We know you need a Phantom camera, capable of extreme slow motion. All the shots are meticulously planned out before filming. In the short films, the script is fairly simple in terms of the writing: for example, I follow the evolution of a planet as it thaws, then there’s global warming and the insects emerge from the iceberg.

I write out the script, and then I design the storyboard in Photoshop, shot by shot.

Extrait du story board (tiré du making of de Mathieu Cayrou – CNRS / Miyu)

For feature films, of course, it’s a bit different. We had 70 pages of script written (interior, daytime, close-up, etc.). It was a rather unusual script, very different from a traditional film script, but it still took that form. From there, I created the storyboard drawings – as Éthann mentioned, very rough sketches. There were 200 pages with six drawings per page – that was a lot. We had nearly 800 shots to start with, which were then cut during editing. Those shots were all drawn. I didn’t use Photoshop this time; I drew them by hand, because there was also a lot of compositing involved in my work.

Extrait du story board (tiré du making of de Mathieu Cayrou – CNRS / Miyu)

So I film the foreground – the insect that’s being filmed – then I film the background, then I create the animation on top of that, then I add the special effects – the smoke and all that sort of thing. All these layers are extremely detailed, written out, or at least specified. Out of the 800 shots, and once I’d drawn the storyboard for the feature film Planète, we’d done it all.

Extraits du story board (tiré du making of de Mathieu Cayrou – CNRS / Miyu)

I’ve created a map showing how the story unfolds geographically – north, south, west and east – as well as in relation to the light. The direction of the light is extremely important for compositing. You can’t film something with front lighting and then try to superimpose it onto a background that’s backlit – it’ll be obvious that they’re not part of the same image. So all these light directions are specified in great detail in relation to the map and the time of day – whether the sun is high in the sky or low on the horizon…

I drew a sketch of the map, and we modelled it in 3D – also very roughly – with the help of graphic designers. Then, within the 3D model, we placed 3D cameras so that we could create all the film’s shots as animation, in the form of an animatic: the movements, the wide shots, and so on.

Excerpts from the storyboard (taken from the ‘making of’ by Mathieu Cayrou – CNRS / Miyu)

We went through the script again with the editor. In animation, we edit before production begins. The editor comes in, has a look, and says: ‘We’re missing a close-up here, or we’re missing a wide shot’, and so on. He worked with Michel Klochendler. He’s more of a feature film editor; he’s worked on films by Alain Resnais, for example. As a fiction editor, he was more focused on the story and the characters. Once the editor has approved the animatic, we move on to production. The feature film took three years of writing and two years of preparation.

Michel Klochendler (photo : Makloch – source : Wikipedia)

Michel Klochendler has worked with François Truffaut, Maurice Pialat, Jacques Rivette, André Téchiné, Youssef Chahine and Claude Berri.

ÉN: That already goes some way towards answering some of the questions I had. But so, you’re saying it’s very precise in terms of the storyboard, as you explained, and also in terms of the filming time for each element that makes up the shots. You must find out how long it takes for a particular plant to grow, or a particular insect to develop, and so on, I imagine.

M : Exactly.

Excerpts from the storyboard (taken from the ‘making of’ by Mathieu Cayrou – CNRS / Miyu)

ÉN: So how does that work? Because that sort of information isn’t necessarily easy to come by, even on the internet.

MS : There are lots of plants that I feature in my work and that I already have at home. For example, oxalis or succulents. I’ve observed them to find out how long they take to grow. For more specific details, I work with a botanist, of course. That was the case in the film Planètes. I work a lot with scientists when it comes to animals: slugs, butterflies… All these animals require a filming period of between three days and two weeks, or even a month for slugs. It also involves rearing them in controlled conditions and understanding their behaviour. I visit researchers at the Natural History Museum, where I often read books or watch video tutorials on YouTube, and finally I observe them myself. I keep them at home in the run-up to filming. For example, I go and collect insects from my garden.

Image taken from Mathieu Cayrou’s ‘making of’ (CNRS / Miyu)

I’m going to observe them and try to film them with my director of photography. Take the behaviour of insects, for example: often, when we placed a stick there, we realised that the insect would climb up it rather than go down. They seemed more inclined to climb than to go back down the slope. So if we wanted to get them moving, we’d place the stick and tilt the camera in the direction of travel.

We’re working with living creatures, so we really need to understand them. And many animals are often nocturnal. So when we shine a 2 kW light on them, they stop moving. We have to balance these kinds of constraints with their natural behaviour. We also do a lot of preparatory work with researchers and by studying reference material.

Image taken from Mathieu Cayrou’s ‘making of’ (CNRS / Miyu)

ÉN: You’re actually creating a structure that combines different scales – whether spatial or temporal – because you play very strongly on the micro and the macro, between infinite space and the infinitely small, such as insects, and by shifting from one to the other in certain shots with some truly beautiful sequence shots. There’s one in particular in *Planète Σ* where you move from the stars to mould. And it’s absolutely stunning.

To bring different types of temporality together within a single shot, compositing is certainly one option, but when you’re planning it in advance, do you really just impose the elements because you’re interested in making them coexist, or do you genuinely consider the temporality of each element separately and how you’re going to bring them together within the same shot?

Planète Σ (2015, Les Films de l’Arlequin)
Planètes (2025, Miyu Productions, Arte France Cinéma, CNRS Images)

In terms of compositing, the film’s director of photography, Élie Levé, described it as follows during a talk at the Chefs O’ en Lumière Festival in Chalon-sur-Saône: This image is a composite of many individual images. We filmed a slug moving at real speed on the floor.’ The radishes on the left were filmed in another room using time-lapse. In the background, there are sets from Iceland, and we added vegetation growing via time-lapse.
We can add to this description the 3D-animated achenes created in Liège, Belgium. Momoko Seto is keen for everything else to be shot on location, with all the constraints that entails. Élie Levé: It’s a collage. The images aren’t in the same place at the same time, but they’re still natural images; it’s a montage.

Planètes

depicts supernatural shifts in scale, such as these giant tadpoles (filmed in slow motion in Burgundy; they measure just a few millimetres) flying over an Icelandic river lined with giant anemones (filmed against a blue screen, a year after the shoot in Iceland, by recreating, on a smaller scale, the movement of the drones) and propelling the 3D-animated achenes.

The anemones were filmed at the CNRS premises in Roscoff using underwater optics, namely a periscope camera, at an angle. As the two periscope camera systems purchased from a supplier had taken on water – the manufacturer had not yet fully tested them – the engineers working on the film created a customised diving suit using a 3D printer.

The periscope camera in its specially designed housing.
The river as filmed in Iceland using a drone.
The anemones filmed in Roscoff using a periscope camera that replicates the drone’s movement.
Tadpoles filmed in slow motion using macro photography at Rambuteau Castle in Burgundy.

As the film’s production spanned three years, the directors of photography kept a close eye on technological developments in filming equipment, even if it meant adapting the production schedule in line with new innovations coming onto the market.

The camera crew managed to overcome 90 to 95 per cent of the technical challenges posed by the script, as Élie Levé explained at the conference in Chalon-sur-Saône, but one scene could not be filmed: a scene nicknamed ‘The Valkyries’ by Levé, in which a swarm of 500 mosquitoes attacks a slug, due to the difficulty of filming even a single mosquito.

The oyster mushrooms, filmed in time-lapse against a blue background and which ended up in an omelette, were releasing spores that were clogging up the camera lenses.

MS: The challenge isn’t to say, ‘This is very slow and that’s very fast – how can we make them coexist?’ It’s more that the image itself is the driving force. The question is: how do we create a scene in which there’s a bee flying above some mould, which is a very different size to the bee? I have the image in my mind and I want to bring it to life, regardless of the different time scales involved.

So the question of time scales comes later. In fact, what’s interesting is when you start filming, for example, using time-lapse.

Planète Σ (2015, Les Films de l’Arlequin)

In Planète Σ, in a scene where pure white mould grows on strawberries, it took four days to make the strawberries go mouldy. I collect around 2,500 to 4,000 photos, which I compress in After Effects, and I manipulate the timing to make it both slower and faster. I can speed it up 300 or 400 times, or make it grow very slowly, to the very limit of what’s perceptible. And what interests me, for example, in the growth of a plant, is when it reminds me of something. In this case, the shot I really like in Planète Sigma is the one of the bee flying against a black background with that white flower growing. It reminded me of a field of flowers with a bird flying over it. The mould becomes a field of flowers because the way it grows and the way it blooms resembles a field of flowers in my imagination. The bee was slowed down to 1,500 frames. And when it flies, it looks more like a bird than an insect, because it’s so slow.

There are endless possibilities, and there comes a moment when you say to yourself: ‘That looks like something.’ It’s a juxtaposition of images we have of the world, which we transpose into a macro world that comes to resemble an imaginary universe.

Planète Σ (2015, Les Films de l’Arlequin)

Zepe:Are you familiar with Jean Painlevé’s work?

MS: Yes.

Jean Painlevé (Archives Jean Painlevé)

Jean Painlevé was a French filmmaker and biologist (1902–1989). He is best known for having made over 200 scientific documentaries. In 1936, he directed the first colour stop-motion animation film:  Barbe bleue.

Macro-cinema, as seen in Planète A, Planète Σ and Planète Z, originated as a practice developed within the field of scientific cinema by scientists who combined cameras and film equipment with microscopes to observe insects or plants, with the aim of making science accessible to the general public.
Looking back in time, we might mention Robert Hooke (1677–1683), an English polymath considered one of the greatest experimental scientists of the 17th century and a key figure in the scientific revolution of the modern era. He improved the capabilities of microscopes by adding lenses. In September 1665, he published his book, Micrographia, which contains numerous drawings produced using microscopes and telescopes.
Another notable figure is Jean Comandon (1877–1970), a French doctor and filmmaker who made 400 films, notably by attaching a camera to a microscope. He also studied the growth and movements of plants, taking images at intervals or using time-lapse photography.
Jan Cornelis Mol (1891–1954), a Dutch producer and director of scientific films, filmed plants, micro-organisms and minerals, using in particular the so-called Zeitraffer technique: at intervals of fifteen minutes or more.

Z : Do you ever find yourself taken by surprise by the unexpected ways in which forms develop? You talk a lot about post-production – I’m not sure whether you edit the sequences yourself or whether you supervise the compositing artists. Do you let yourself be surprised by what happens as living organisms evolve, and do you adjust the script accordingly?

MS : Yes. That’s happened to me a lot in my short films. In Planète Z, there’s a palm tree that secretes yellow spores. That wasn’t planned for the film. I found that palm tree whilst buying a small pot of moss; those little palm trees were the fruits of the moss. I thought to myself: ‘That really does look like a palm tree; I’ll include it in the film.’

Planète Z (2011, Sacrebleu)

In Planète Σ, bubbles rise very slowly from the water, burst and send plumes of smoke into the air. My production designer used dry ice to create the smoke. We thought it looked incredibly beautiful when filmed in extreme slow motion. I incorporated this into the film without disrupting the narrative too much, because there is, after all, a central thread running through the story. It’s not about upending everything we’ve tried to tell, but about integrating it.

Planète Σ (2015, Les Films de l’Arlequin)

Among the pioneers of slow motion in cinema was Lucien Bull (1876–1972), a Franco-British innovator in cinema and photography, a pioneer of chronophotography and a student of Étienne-Jules Marey. He developed ultra-high-speed cinematography: he achieved 1,200 frames per second in 1904 and 100,000 frames per second in 1928. He surpassed one million frames per second in 1951. Alongside ultra-high-speed cinematography, Lucien Bull invented the first microcinematography camera (which allowed for 8 to 10 times magnification) and a device for accelerated recording (images taken every 15 minutes).

The high-speed Phantom camera, used in Planètes, which enables slow-motion filming, captures 1,000 frames per second and requires more light, as the camera loses sensitivity when the frame rate is increased due to the considerably high shutter speed. This can reduce sensitivity to 1 or 2 ISO. Added to this is the fact that filming is done with macro lenses, which further reduce sensitivity. As a result, a significant amount of light is directed onto the film set, which makes it difficult to film live animals such as those used in the film – namely insects and slugs. Consequently, a fan system is used to cool these animals and keep them alive. The positioning of the lighting is carefully planned to accommodate certain animals that shy away from light.

For the feature film, a little less so. There were surprises, of course. I changed certain parts. For example, because of the behaviour of certain insects. In the script, the praying mantis was simply supposed to jump out and frighten the character. But in reality, praying mantises love climbing on leaves; they don’t stay on the ground. We couldn’t film it stationary on the ground – it was constantly climbing. So we incorporated it into the foliage, trying to catch the characters from above.

For the feature film, a little less so. There were surprises, of course. I changed certain parts. For example, because of the behaviour of certain insects. In the script, the praying mantis was simply supposed to jump out and frighten the character. But in reality, praying mantises love climbing on leaves; they don’t stay on the ground. We couldn’t film it stationary on the ground – it was constantly climbing. So we incorporated it into the foliage, trying to catch the characters from above.

Image taken from Mathieu Cayrou’s ‘making of’ video (CNRS / Miyu)

These are minor adjustments, but I can’t stray too far from the script, because on set, as I’ve explained, every shot is extremely costly and meticulously prepared. Given the background, the special effects and the animation that have been planned, if I add a shot and say, ‘Ah, that’s lovely, I’ll include that. ’ the whole production team will look at me and say, ‘But how are we going to do the background? What are we going to do with the character?’ It’s a shot where we’ll be integrating the main character in 3D, which means an extra pay slip for the graphic designer. There are too many financial implications and complications for me to be able to deviate as easily as I do in short films.

Z: To what extent does the production team get involved in the process? Do they ever, for example, steer the script towards something more ‘moral’ or more mainstream?

MS: I work with Myu, an animation production company in Paris run by Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, the producer, who was quite interventionist.

Emmanuel-Alain Raynal (source : Linkedin)

When it comes to editing, there are artistic considerations, of course, but also many economic factors, because that is, after all, their primary concern. For example, in the feature film, right at the very beginning – within the first three minutes – a bomb explodes. Is it a meteorite, or is it an atomic bomb? For me, it was very important that it be an atomic bomb, because it is humankind that destroys the Earth, of its own accord, and not nature. A falling meteor doesn’t convey the same message. When they read the script, they assumed it was a meteorite. I explained to them that it wasn’t. In terms of cost, it makes no difference. But the meaning changes. At the end of the discussion, they agreed with me.

Planètes (2025, Miyu Productions, Arte France Cinéma, CNRS Images)

Another example: we were still at the animatic stage; the main character arrives in a frozen world, tries to jump but can’t get a foothold, and then all the characters end up on the ground because it’s so slippery. So the hero helps his mates get back on their feet. And the production team told me that the main character should first help his friends get back on their feet, and only then try to get a foothold – the idea being that this character must help his friends first before thinking of himself, by trying to get a foothold on his own. I accepted these kinds of minor adjustments because it was a good idea, and it’s quite ethical: what message do we want to convey through the main character?

They would intervene regularly. This is just one example among fifty others, and it was sometimes positive. In the end, there were a lot of interventions and cuts.

Planètes (2025, Miyu Productions, Arte France Cinéma, CNRS Images)

The feature film cost 4 million euros, which is a low budget for an animated feature film. It was actually estimated at 4.5 million. We didn’t receive the European funding we’d been expecting. The production team came to see me and told me there was a shortfall of 500,000.00 euros. You can’t do everything. The film was 1 hour 20 minutes long to begin with. We inevitably had to make cuts. It’s not a question of making less beautiful shots, but of removing sequences. We sit round the table and ask ourselves which sequences to remove. It’s a decision that’s at once script-related, artistic and a matter for the production team.

ÉN: You mentioned the opening of *Planètes* with the atomic bomb. In Planète Σ, Planète Z and Planète A – which I rewatched at Le Frénoy – it seems to me that, each time, it ends with the decay or death of the elements. It starts with the birth of these elements and goes right through to their end. Whereas, in the feature film, it’s the opposite. It begins with the death of these elements and culminates in their re-establishment. Is this a conscious choice? Was it your intention to have reversed this paradigm in the feature film?

Planète Z (2011, Sacrebleu)

MS: I didn’t think to myself: “In my short films, I’ve killed them all. So, in the feature film, I’ll do the opposite”. What interests me is talking about life, in the sense of the metamorphosis of all these living beings. It’s not just because they die that they die; there’s more to it. I’m not talking about a philosophical or Buddhist perspective. It seems as though the plants are dead, but in fact they grow back, because the roots are still there. There’s a symbiosis with the fungi that breathe new life into them. What interests me is precisely shifting the focus away from the human perspective in all my films. It’s an aspect I pay very close attention to when writing. If it were a human story, someone dies, everyone cries, and that’s the end of it. If it’s a story about plants, death doesn’t have the same meaning as it does for us. Just because you cut down a tree trunk doesn’t mean it’s dead. It will sprout again because the roots are still there. I like the idea that the concepts of living, being born and dying do not have the same meaning as they do for humans. The perspective is shifted and focused on avoiding the dramatisation of life and death. There’s a quote by Emanuele Coccia that I really like: ‘Western philosophy has largely been written by men.’ Men, male philosophers. And there’s a lot of talk about death. Death is a very important theme in philosophy. He adds that if there had been many more female philosophers, perhaps there would have been more discussion of birth. That’s something that really struck me.

Emanuele Coccia (photo : Frank Perrin)

Emanuele Coccia (1976– ) is an Italian philosopher. His research focuses on the theory of the image and the nature of life. In 2020–2021, he was an artist-in-residence at Le Fresnoy, the National Studio for Contemporary Arts.

There is this tradition of dramatising death as a kind of end to be avoided, as a tragedy. When we look at plants, it’s not the same paradigm at all. It’s not about pitting men against women, but simply shifting our perspective by asking: ‘What does it mean to return one’s body to humus, to the soil, which will in turn give rise to other forms of life?’ This constant metamorphosis of all things is what interests me in storytelling. Short films don’t simply say ‘it lives and then it dies’, and the feature film doesn’t say ‘we’re going to kill, and then we’ll be reborn’. It’s simply a matter of saying that this cycle, this constant metamorphosis, interweaves all things.

ÉN: They’re almost films to be watched on a loop. The ending calls back to the beginning, on a more philosophical level.

MS: It takes the drama out of it. In Planète Z, everything rots away and we return to the ground we started from, and, in the end credits, the sound editor has included the sound of water welling up again. Everything has rotted away, but it carries on; it’s cyclical, just like the Earth itself, which is also cyclical in its metamorphosis and temperature. The sound of water takes the edge off the disappearance of the living beings we’ve just witnessed. It creates a sense of stepping back from what we’re currently experiencing.

Planète Z (2011, Sacrebleu)

ÉN : As Georges and I were saying, we didn’t get the chance to see Planète ∞. I wanted you to talk about it a bit more, particularly in terms of how it was made, because, as it’s filmed on glass, it’s 360°. Were there any aspects of the time-lapse filming that differed from your usual way of working?

Planète ∞ (2017, Barberousse Films, ARTE France, Awkeye)

Planet ∞ (or Planet Infinite) is an immersive virtual reality work designed to offer a multi-spatial experience. In a post-apocalyptic, desert-like world, life is beginning to reclaim its place. The film plunges us into the infinitely small, where fungi and mould are proliferating on the corpses of insects. Gradually, a change in the weather takes place: rain floods this arid landscape, giving rise to a teeming aquatic ecosystem populated by giant carnivorous tadpoles. The work won an award at the Berlinale, was honoured with the CNRS Crystal Medal, and has been exhibited in prestigious museums such as the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.

MS :

Yes, of course. A 360° shoot requires far more footage than a 2D shoot; you need shots from behind, in front, above and below. You have to film them; you have to visualise them. Often, VR and 360° films are either shot like documentaries, using a GoPro rig that captures everything around it, or produced in full 3D, because you can place a 360° rig within a 3D world. That’s what usually happens, and it’s the simplest approach.

In my case, when I’m doing macro photography, it’s impossible to use a 360° rig, because there are no macro 360° rigs available. There’s an optical conflict – in fact, a physical one. So I shoot in macro mode, and then I map these 2D images onto a 3D world. It’s a form of collage. It’s actually a dual creative process. I film all the elements one by one, like a craftsman.

The film begins with a field of black trumpet mushrooms, which we fly over, and we come across a clearing in this forest of mushrooms; we pass through a black trumpet mushroom and arrive at a huge mushroom that’s growing, and a dead insect bursts open. All of this is filmed in macro.

Planète ∞ (2017, Barberousse Films, ARTE France, Awkeye)

What I find interesting about 360° is the physical aspect of the experience; you have to look up to see these mushrooms, which isn’t the case in the cinema. In the cinema, even with a close-up, you’re always facing the screen. In VR, there’s a genuine physical experience. The concept of editing is different in 360°, as everything is continuous. There are no cuts; it’s conceived in long takes, and there’s no shot-reverse shot. The film, which lasts 7 minutes, comprises four long takes. In the first 2-minute long take, we arrive inside this mushroom; in the second sequence, we’re above an ocean and a multitude of ladybirds are falling into the water; then we dive into the water and enormous tadpoles come to try and eat us – they also appear in the feature film; finally, the underwater environment gives way to space. So I have four sequences. The film lasts 7 minutes.

Planète ∞ (2017, Barberousse Films, ARTE France, Awkeye)

Rendering the first 2-minute long take cost over €10,000.00 and took a week. Just the rendering.
As well as the filming and these composites, we had to render these images in 360°, and so create the texture. We had to hire a render farm in Eastern Europe – in Poland or Bulgaria – to process the shots. If there was a single setting we’d got wrong, we had to start all over again. It took three days to download the entire file from a server. I don’t know, I thought it was almost there. That was in 2017; it might be quicker now, but these production processes are a bit mad.

ÉN: In terms of writing, how did you conceive this 360° world? By guiding the viewers’ gaze? Or by trying to fill the space with the various narrative elements?

MS: I’ve always wanted to ensure that the sets are also characters in the film, with a few key elements, such as the mushroom, for example. I couldn’t grow all the mushrooms due to a lack of production resources. But there’s a corner of the field where they do actually grow, so I’ll draw the viewer’s attention to that area using sound. The basic technique of 360° filming is to direct the viewer’s gaze.

Planète ∞ (2017, Barberousse Films, ARTE France, Awkeye)

ÉN : At a conference, the topic came up that you used to watch Nausicaä de la Vallée du Vent on repeat when you were young. In interviews, you don’t deny the influence of Hayao Miyazaki, as far as I can tell. And, generally speaking, the way you use time-lapse reminds me of a shot in *My Neighbour Totoro*, where the Totoros, Satsuki and Mei make trees grow in a night-time scene. It’s almost a dreamlike scene, because the next day, everything has disappeared.
Do you have any other influences, including those outside the world of cinema?

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Hayao Miyazaki, 1984)

MS : Ce n’était vraiment pas conscient. J’avais 6 ans quand je regardais Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind en boucle, un des premiers films de Miyazaki en 1986. L’histoire de Nausicaä se situe après la troisième guerre mondiale, et l’humain a tout détruit. On ne peut plus respirer l’air de l’extérieur. On est obligé de porter un masque pour respirer, parce qu’il y a trop de spores, de champignons. C’est la moisissure qui domine ce monde, où la nature est détruite et les humains sont obligés de vivre dans un bunker, ou dans un vallée, où le vent évacue la moisissure et ils peuvent respirer.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Hayao Miyazaki, 1984)

Animals, particularly insects, have grown to enormous sizes. One of the insects, with a multitude of eyes, is as tall as a five-storey block of flats. There is also a giant dragonfly. It is an apocalyptic world, with deformities affecting living creatures. Someone pointed out to me the link with the metamorphosis of animals in my films, and with my obsession with fungi and spores.

I really like the shot of Totoro you describe; the acceleration of time is magical. Just like time-lapse footage of plants: by manipulating time, and scale too, it becomes magical, like in a dream.

Mon voisin Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1998)

A friend of mine, who’s seen my feature film and works in Cannes, described Planètes as a dream, because it’s a collage of things that exist all around us, but which are placed in a different context. Often, in dreams, we see our grandmother sitting on the bonnet of a car that we’d seen earlier that day. It’s a mix of familiar things placed in zany situations. That’s the link to Surrealism. The film features only familiar things, but on a different scale and in a different time. It elevates reality. Plants live just like us and become animals that move, talk to us and truly coexist with us.

Planètes (2025, Miyu Productions, Arte France Cinéma, CNRS Images)

As a side note, the Surrealists, fascinated by the unconscious and the marvellous, saw scientific cinema (particularly the use of the microscope, time-lapse and slow motion) as a means of revealing an invisible and poetic reality. They naturally included scientific films in their screenings.

Illustration no 71, Stephoidea from Kunstformen der Natur by Ernst Haeckel, 1904.

We should also mention, in terms of aesthetic influences, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), a German biologist, philosopher and freethinker who popularised Charles Darwin’s theories in Germany. One of his works, Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature, 1904), reveals Haeckel not only as a great researcher but also as a talented draughtsman; his illustrations and plates are striking for their fidelity to nature and their artistic quality.

Cucurbita, Karl Blossfeldt (1928)

In a similar vein, we might mention Karl Blossfeldt (1865–1932), a German photographer known for his catalogue of fundamental plant forms and structures. Karl Blossfeldt began studying sculpture in 1881 and went on to work as a moulder in a foundry. From that time onwards, he used tree leaves as motifs for ornaments.

Extrait du story board du Voyage dans la Lune, Georges Méliès (1902)

We cannot fail to mention this scene from Méliès’s (1861–1938) film, overrun with giant mushrooms, conceived by the tinkerer and brilliant inventor from the early days of cinema?

Le bar à oranges, Michel Blazy (2003-2007)

More recently, Michel Blazy (1966– ), a French artist who has, in particular, worked with mould to create pieces that take shape autonomously.

Marc-André Selosse, a biologist whose work I’m reading a lot at the moment, says that humans need things to resemble us – with eyes and a mouth – in order to elicit empathy; otherwise, we don’t understand. If it’s just a leaf or a flower, we don’t understand. If it’s a cat, that’s fine.

Marc-André Selosse (photo : 4Exodus4 – source : Wikipedia)

Marc-André Selosse (1968– ) is a French biologist and science communicator specialising in botany and mycology. He has carried out research into symbiosis, particularly in the fields of evolution and ecology.

Time-lapse also allows us to feel close to something we aren’t supposed to feel close to; it enables us to project a different image onto that particular plant – for example, as an animal, as a living being, like my dandelion seeds, which become characters just like us. And all of a sudden, empathy kicks in. Beyond this technique, it is also this elevation that leads us to say to ourselves: ‘We are in the world, and yet we are not quite in the world.’ And this is the threshold of the infraworld: ‘We are still here on Earth, but we are no longer quite here on Earth.’ ’ It’s the poetic stratosphere – as when Edgar Morin speaks of pragmatism and the poetic; it lifts us up. The stratosphere lies beyond the atmosphere; it’s a thrill of the unknown. We’re still on Earth, yet we see things as if we were dreaming. This threshold of the infraworld fascinates me and moves us.

Planètes (2025, Miyu Productions, Arte France Cinéma, CNRS Images)

GEORGES SIFIANOS: The issue of empathy is very important. What is your background? What did you study? Are you a biologist? How did you end up working in science films? What is your relationship with Japan, and with France?

MS: I was born in Japan in the 1980s, and I studied art at the Beaux-Arts in Marseille, France. After that, I attended the École du Fresnoy in Tourcoing, in northern France, for two years.

Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing
 (photo : Velvet – source : Wikipedia)

Founded in October 1997 in Tourcoing, the Studio national aims to enable young artists from all over the world to create works using professional technical resources and by breaking down the barriers between different forms of expression.

I have no scientific training whatsoever, apart from the scientific baccalaureate I obtained at the age of 18.
I currently work at the CNRS, the scientific research centre in France, in a laboratory, as a film-maker, not as a researcher. I assist researchers in producing video corpora or conducting interviews in the field of the humanities and social sciences. I am not involved in biology. I’ve been working with art historians and philosophers for 20 years.
You’re going to ask me where this interest comes from. My final-year film at Le Fresnoy featured salt crystals and the metamorphosis of these crystals, which I found truly fascinating because they form a perfect square. It’s a way of seeing nature as a completely mathematical, completely organised phenomenon. We get the impression that it’s not organised at all, that it’s organic in a sense that’s the opposite of mathematics, but in fact, it’s very close to mathematics, on a fractal level, on an arithmetic level. That aspect of nature fascinates me; it has a logic and an existence that is beyond us humans, which we cannot see, because it operates on different scales, as in a metaverse. It is that aspect of nature that interests me, rather than necessarily its ecological aspect or its beauty.

Planète A (2008, Le Fresnoy)

 Planète A depicts a world that has become a vast salt desert, where the intensive and excessive cultivation of cotton has caused severe drought. This dystopian fiction directly echoes the real-life ecological disaster of the Aral Sea, highlighting human responsibility and economic greed. The film was directed by Momoko Seto whilst she was studying at Le Fresnoy – National Studio for Contemporary Arts.

I work a lot with biologists, thanks to the films. I visit the Natural History Museum regularly. I’ve also taken an interest in philosophy: what do we need to understand today about the world we live in? So ecology, sociology, or anthropology – with Anna Lowenhaupt Tsin, The Mushroom at the End of the World, with Baptiste Morizot, or, in Belgium, Vinciane Desprez, who also talks a great deal about nature. That’s the route I took, and that’s how I discovered Darwin, Selosse and all those incredible biologists.

Le champignon de la fin du monde – Sur la possibilité de vivre dans les ruines du capitalisme by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2017)

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (1952– ) is an American professor of anthropology. She works at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the Division of Humanities, the Department of Feminist Studies and the Department of Environmental Studies.

Baptiste Morizot (1983– ) is a French philosopher. His research focuses primarily on the relationships between humans and the rest of the living world.

Vinciane Despret (1959– ) is a Belgian psychologist and philosopher of science. She works in the fields of psychology and ethology.

Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) was a British naturalist and palaeontologist whose work on the evolution of living species revolutionised biology.

Also worth mentioning among Momoko Seto’s references and reading material is Christian Sardet (1946–), a French biologist and artist. His research and artistic works focus on cells, embryos and plankton.

And Philippe Descola (1949–), a French anthropologist. His fieldwork in the Ecuadorian Amazon, amongst the Achuar Jivaro people, has established him as one of the leading figures in Americanist anthropology and ethnology.

What I love about real biologists is that they tear philosophy to shreds, saying: ‘Those are just ideas, they’re just concepts. In real life, it doesn’t really work like that. ”

GS: Could you elaborate on that?

MS: Yes. There’s a book by Marc-André Sellosse that I’m currently reading, which shatters all preconceptions about nature. For example, he writes: ‘Nature is well-made’, then crosses out that sentence. It’s wrong: ‘Nature isn’t well-made. ’ He then spends the whole chapter explaining why nature isn’t well-made. He hates it when people say: ‘Plants communicate with one another.’ He says: ‘Plants don’t communicate with one another. They don’t help one another.’ He hates anthropomorphism. When a plant is attacked by an insect, it releases chemicals. This isn’t to warn its neighbour of danger; rather, it produces these chemicals anyway, and the neighbour picks up the residual signals. This is what a biologist says. He breaks away from the formalism and anthropomorphism into which philosophers tend to fall. On the subject of plant communication, he tries to be more precise in the chemical and biological sense of the term. I like this reality, which is different from the reality we have embellished. There is a great deal of wastage in nature: 90 per cent of seeds are eaten. Nature is cruel, as he explains in a whole chapter, pointing out that in the Middle Ages, life expectancy was 40 years because most children died. There are viruses and bacteria – he is a specialist in bacteria. He sets the record straight.

Nature et préjugés – Convier l’humanité dans l’histoire naturelle
by Marc-André Selosse (Actes Sud, 2024)

In this essay, biologist Marc-André Selosse debunks common misconceptions and cultural myths (such as the Aristotelian view or the cliché of a ‘perfect nature’) that have historically separated human beings from their environment. Drawing on concrete examples — from the tricks of orchids to the strategies of viruses, via our own microbiota — he demonstrates that humanity is neither above nor separate from nature, but is an inseparable part of it, dependent on both internal and external ecosystems. The author thus calls for the reintegration of the humanities into natural history, so that our future actions (in agriculture, health and urban planning) are based on the observation of living organisms rather than on our domination of them.

In my film, I don’t want to portray nature as something beautiful either: it’s there to be eaten, and parasitism is everywhere. It’s also a form of life, which isn’t what we might conceive of as something beautiful or good. It’s about doing away with these Christian notions of good and evil. I’m from Japan; I’ve never read the Bible. Living in Europe, I’ve come to realise that we don’t share the same concept of good and evil. Not only are there intra-cultural differences in thinking, but also, amongst living beings, there are those who operate according to a completely different logic.

GS: How is this logic viewed in Japan, which tends to follow an animist tradition? Is nature well-ordered, or not?

MS: Nature is dangerous in Japan, as we’re regularly devastated by earthquakes, tsunamis and natural disasters beyond our control. There are earthquakes every day in Japan – small tremors that we don’t even feel. Japan sits on three tectonic plates; it’s constantly shaking, and all Japanese people are always prepared for major earthquakes at any moment. We keep small tins of food to hand at all times. We live with the constant possibility of destruction, because that’s how it’s always been in Japan.

Yakushima (image satellite : NASA – source : Wikipedia)
Image taken from Mathieu Cayrou’s ‘making of’ video (CNRS / Miyu)

For the feature film, I lived for two months on an island in southern Japan called Yakushima. This island is supplied by a boat that brings food, and it rains 360 days a year. It rains all the time. There are typhoons all the time, and the boat often doesn’t arrive. After three days, there’s nothing left in the supermarkets. And when it rains so heavily, there’s no school, they can’t drive. If you go outside, you get swept away. They live with this, and we don’t decide what we’re going to do today. The weather tells us what to do. And I like that subordination.

Yakushima National Park (photo: Yosemite – source: Wikipedia)
Filming in Yakushima. Images taken from the making-of by Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)

The Yakushima forest, which inspired Miyazaki for Princess Mononoke. What interested Momoko Seto about this site were the ancient mosses that grow there. The aim wasn’t to collect the moss, but to install on-site recording, time-lapse, and video systems around the mosses. Another form of temporality (after those of growth, time-lapse photography, accelerated motion, and slow motion) is invoked here: that of nature formed over millions of years.

Beyond the flora, there was also an interest in collecting the fauna: dung beetles, butterflies, and so on. To collect the dung beetles, cow dung had been placed in certain locations, and the cinematographer, Élie Levé, would come in the morning to capture some specimens.

The phosphorescent squid washed up in March in Toyama, western Japan, where they were collected for the film, along with fireflies. Lacking studios, these insect shots were filmed in hotel rooms: the insects were collected from the wild, filmed, and then released back into nature.

What really shocked me when I came to Europe was this desire to control nature, in tradition too, in philosophy, in the garden—it’s very controlled. There are other forms of gardening in Asia, which are different from this perfect symmetrical control. Everything is trimmed. I was at the French school in Japan, so I had to read all the maps. There’s this desire to dominate, to establish a pyramid of importance: humans at the very top, then large animals, then small animals, then plants, then bacteria, and then everything we see at the very bottom. In Japan, as you said, in our animistic tradition, objects are very important. When I was on Yakushima Island, I enrolled my children in the local elementary school. And the school’s slogan, written in huge letters, is: “Pay attention to your friends, to humans. Pay attention to nature. Pay attention to objects.” “Objects are just as important as nature and friends. That’s because they also have a soul. They’re not just objects. I thought that the paradigm of the importance of things goes even further. It’s our vision of the world.”

Yakushima. Images taken from the making-of by Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)

In Japan, in the 1980s, we were still under the influence of the United States. We had been colonized by the US since 1950. There was a large military base. All of American culture arrived; it was the Americans who changed our entire constitution. There’s still a lot left over. We eat McDonald’s. In the 1980s, on top of that, there was an economic boom. We consumed plastic, and tomatoes were available 360 ​​days a year. There was a lot of industrialization, which skewed things. Despite all that, there’s always a fundamental concern, and that’s what I love about Miyazaki’s films: he always talks about how to coexist with nature, even in Princess Mononoke or Kiki’s Delivery Service. How do we coexist with the tree, with the forest that we’re destroying?

Princesse Mononoké (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)

Before becoming a symbol of Hayao Miyazaki’s film, the kodama (谺) was a creature from Japanese folklore. Literally, its name means “tree spirit” or “echo,” and it belongs to the large family of yōkai. In the West, these deities are the equivalent of forest spirits, so much so that, in the Studio Ghibli feature film, that’s how they are called in the French version.

It’s a question that keeps coming up, and that’s what resonates with me, because the real tragedy isn’t that the other is killed, it’s that we’re destroying our habitat. It’s something I also wanted to incorporate into my filmmaking.

EN: Yesterday I was listening to a researcher, Camille de Ginestel, who is also an artist, explaining that she exhibited a tree at the Grand Palais in Paris. Despite the tree having all the right conditions for survival—light, water, a probe planted in the ground collecting electrical data for her artwork and to interact with the public—this probe detected, at one point, that the tree was declining. She consulted a botanist who told her that the environment in an exhibition space and in a forest are not the same. Atmosphere, in the context of a forest, isn’t just a trivial word; it’s a term from the scientific community. For a plant, atmosphere encompasses all the negative ions produced by the forest and a great many other things we don’t perceive. This simple shift in context created a message completely contrary to what she intended to convey in her work.

I was wondering if, in relation to your films, you encountered any ambivalences, such as deploying enormous technological resources to capture extremely small and simple phenomena. Did this ambivalence—between the means employed and, not the end result (because the image is indeed incredible), the phenomenon unfolding under the camera—lead you to question yourself at certain points in the creative process?

MS: I’m not sure I fully understood the question because I feel like there are two things involved.

The conditions created for filming the elements to achieve the desired image, and the contrast between technical and production resources.

EN: Indeed, there are two things.

MS: And I get the impression that the second part of your question is more ethical. So I’ll start with the end: we have technical resources, but they aren’t huge. Even if we had a robotic arm that cost 25,000 francs, it’s not enormous, to be honest. Even if we had 20 cameras running, it wasn’t enormous either. We made sure that we didn’t need artificial lighting, air conditioning, or temperature control equipment to grow and boost the plants, like in laboratories. That’s exactly what I wanted to avoid. We filmed in a greenhouse, and all the shots were linked to the seasons. That is to say, one plant was filmed in the spring, more specifically in April, while another was filmed in June, because that was its optimal condition. The less artifice involved, the better the living things thrive. You still need a camera to capture the images, though. So, we did the bare minimum to do it.

Image tirée du making of de Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)

Regarding the first part of your question, there were times when I thought the conditions were perfect. But not at all. For example, we couldn’t get the dandelion to bloom for a long time. I kept thinking, “A dandelion is amazing; you can cut one off in the street, put it in a glass of water, and it will still bloom. It’s impossible that it wouldn’t bloom in front of the camera.” We watered it, but we rarely got shots where it was actually blooming. Funny thing is, I found the solution by reading a book by Goethe. People teased me, because all botanists knew this story. Basically, if you want a flower to bloom, you shouldn’t water it. And that’s what Goethe said. I recounted this, as if it were a revelation, at a conference during a study day. A botanist told me, “But everyone knows that. You must have read Goethe!” When you stop watering a plant, it enters a critical phase of its existence. There’s no more water, no more nutrients, and it flowers because it’s forced to give everything for its offspring. Whereas if you water it, it’s perfectly fine; why bother trying to flower? It can wait a little longer. This stems once again from that form of anthropomorphism that biologists detest.

Rafaella Tringali, botanical scenographer.
Image taken from the making-of video by Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)
Filming at Rambuteau Castle.
Image taken from the making-of video by Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)

Filming in the castle’s orangery took advantage of the glass roof to allow access to sunlight during the day. Plasma screens plunged the room into darkness to harmonize the light intensity for the photographs. The panel closed automatically for one second, just long enough to take a picture, and then allowed sunlight to enter for the remaining 59 seconds to allow the plants to grow. Seven studios, each approximately 9 square meters, were set up in the space and equipped with multiple cameras—up to five cameras, some mounted on a 400 kg robotic arm—synchronized with flashes and irrigation systems placed at the base of the plants, in the soil, to avoid spraying the plants, which would cause image distortion. All 25 cameras, used on different sets, were desynchronized so that flashes wouldn’t interfere with each other’s shooting, given the limited space. Uncertainty remained about how the plants would grow. A single shoot could last three months: if the plant obstructed the lens, the shot couldn’t be reshot because, given the plant’s seasonality, it would have taken a year to reshoot. A ton and a half of soil was used to create the plant models. In January, at the start of filming, the greenhouse reached -10 degrees Celsius, requiring the recreation of a favorable environment for the plants, and 35 degrees Celsius in July. Nearly 1.5 million photos were taken in this orangery during the nine months of filming, representing 1,000 terabytes of data (backed up twice).
This filming setup therefore involves three temporalities: that of nature, which makes the plant grow; that of the camera, which captures the plant’s growth at specific points; and that of the time-lapse and its accelerated progression. Compositing further multiplies this accumulation of differentiated temporal rhythms by combining slow motion, fast motion, real time, and animation, just as it blends a multitude of distant spaces at radically different scales.

Similarly, Rambuteau’s shooting setup takes into account three distinct types of light: natural light, sunlight, and the spotlight that illuminates intermittently during filming, along with the obscuration of the sun and the projection of the composited and color-graded film (whereas a traditional film relies on only two types of light: the shooting light, which can synchronously combine natural and artificial light, and the projection light).

However, light was meticulously considered during filming so that the composite elements could be integrated into the compositing and color grading, which would unify everything using digital effects and color adjustments.

An endoscopic camera, housed in a tube, was used to film the animals and to easily perform forward and backward tracking shots. As a fun fact, each animal had its own nickname; this frog, for example, was named Nick Cave because of its Australian origin.

To film the slugs, a shoot that lasted two and a half months, the environment in which the slugs had to move was modeled in 3D and 3D printed to give the impression that they were clinging to the scenery. One shot in the film shows a giant slug walking along a waterfall, filmed in Iceland and recreated in a 3D-modeled setting.

GS: I’d like to discuss the question of empathy and identification. In a feature film, to keep a broad audience engaged, as you intend, it’s necessary to create identification. What are the strategies for achieving this identification? Let me give you an example related to the choice of technique. Timelapse is a performance that unfolds before our eyes. Computer-generated imagery is another. In the case of timelapse, the plant is filmed growing, little by little, and this produces an impressive and potentially moving feat.

Let’s take another example with a 2-meter line. If I draw it by hand, with a pencil, on paper or on a wall, it’s perfectly straight, which can inspire admiration. If this line is created mechanically, it’s commonplace.

I’d like you to explain the methods used to help viewers identify with and follow the film on an emotional level.

MS: How do you feel the human element? You were talking about lines: a line is drawn, using an industrial process, it’s straight, but it doesn’t resonate. A line that trembles slightly, drawn by someone who has put in a bit of effort, evokes empathy. That’s the whole point of my characters, who are computer-generated. Again, producers are very sensitive, because it still needs to generate revenue. People mustn’t get bored. Beautiful images aren’t enough. So, how do you ultimately feel the human element behind it? What seems completely contradictory, in relation to everything we’ve just said, in relation to this desire to decenter, is that we’re forced to refocus on the human element, to feel the human element, because it’s made for humans. That’s what my sound engineer told me, saying that if the film was made for seeds, we wouldn’t use the same sounds as if it were made for humans. Humans need to feel human through others. There has to be, at the very least, a point of entry, a minimum of empathy. Empathy is what I see in others. I didn’t want to give my characters eyes, a mouth, arms. That’s what they used to do, in Disney films, in the Silly Symphonies, where you’d see trees with eyes and mouths. I didn’t want to do that anymore.

Silly symphonies – Flowers and trees (Burton Gillett, 1932)

So, where do we draw the line? Will they walk like humans? Yes, but they don’t have legs. They’ll still fly like seeds, though. Will they speak, like humans? No, we won’t use words, but we’ll use a kind of language, as if they were communicating with each other, even if we humans don’t understand them, but we sense that they are words. When they meet, the characters hug each other; they don’t have arms, but they still give each other a kind of embrace.

We always add a little bit of humanity, but we also remove some, so it’s not too human, just enough for us to understand the intention. That’s the balance we maintain, whether in the writing, the animation, the sound, or the image composition. It’s funny you used the example of line, because my characters are like a stem with feathers. I was convinced that with a stem, you could cry, laugh, and feel empathy, through trembling, for example. When the stem suddenly faces danger and starts to tremble, you feel its emotion, its fear, its fragility. To express its joy, the stem stiffens and begins to jump. It’s gestural.

Planètes (2025, Miyu Productions, Arte France Cinéma, CNRS Images)

Before using computer animation, I hired two actresses and an actor to portray the characters. They did a lot of mime, theater, and dance as well.

The question arose of how the body can express emotion without words, how to feel human, because it’s intended for humans. In the time-lapses, the plants end up resembling animals, which are closer to humans, and that evokes empathy. We only have these human lenses; it’s our only sensory experience, it’s a human vocabulary.

Oriane Lautel, Maxime Lévêque, Victoire Legois et Anne Steffens pendant les sessions d’acting. Image tirée du making of de Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)

EN: The botanists you work with don’t have that kind of relationship at all. They’re perhaps more interested in the plant’s strangeness, in the fact that it’s a separate entity, that doesn’t function in the same way.

MS: Exactly, when I was talking with this botanist, who is anti-empathic, anti-humanizing, in any case, he said that at the same time, we have to humanize in order to raise awareness. It’s as if he were telling me that Artemis 2 has to circle the Earth twice to be able to fly. We have to use that kind of vocabulary to be taken elsewhere. And even this biologist was aware of that.

Z: The public’s engagement also stems from the characters’ journeys, often framed in very simple and easily understandable narrative structures: failure, success, the initiatory journey, redemption, etc.

EN: Let’s go back to timelapse. Timelapse is often used to show the acceleration of time, to make events pass quickly and to transport the viewer to another place. When you use it, you don’t get that feeling of acceleration at all. You’re truly somewhere else, in a present-day temporality, even though you’re seeing something happening extremely fast. You explained, in particular, that the light is extremely directed, and that contributes to the fact that you don’t get that feeling of acceleration. It’s also due to studio techniques: to achieve that kind of relationship, outside the time frame of the event you’re seeing, you have to move out of the place you’re filming, or remove the element from its location.

Tournage en Islande.
Images tirées du making of de Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu).

Filming took place over three years, depending on the seasonality required by the script. Access to the Icelandic ice cave is only possible at specific times. Reaching these glaciers requires a 45-minute to one-hour hike in extreme cold conditions that test battery life, with winds that make piloting drones difficult.

Planètes (2025, Miyu Productions, Arte France Cinéma, CNRS Images)

In the making-of, we see that you went to greenhouses, which are places primarily dedicated to plant cultivation, but you also filmed plants on location in Japan, creating mini-studios. All of this leads back to the timelapse. Are you interested in it for the movement it creates or for its connection to the extended timeframe of filming, between the moment of shooting, which can last several months, and the moment of viewing, which is only a few seconds on screen?

MS: You don’t necessarily see that it’s timelapse, because we remember timelapse sequences where we often see plants growing very quickly while moving frantically in all directions. I avoid that effect. If the movement is more reminiscent of an animal, again like a metaphor for another living being familiar to us, like a snake, we don’t think it’s timelapse; we think, “This plant is moving like a snake.” “So, we already have this code within us, in our image capital, in our memory.

Image tirée du making of de Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)

What interests me about timelapse is the idea that the plant ceases to be a plant, or that the crystals cease to be crystals. It’s about transforming these elements into something else, as if with a magic wand: “You, salt crystals, you will become a plant, or you, succulent, you will become an animal.” And it’s this change of name, of meaning, of definition, that we can achieve thanks to these tools.

Timelapse produces images we’ve never seen before, like, for example, a plant filmed for one or two months. There are a great many plants whose movement we don’t know. There’s a kind of movement in living things that we discover thanks to this tool, since no one has done it before.

EN: Like the hatching of a tadpole egg.

Momoko Seto sélectionnant un œuf de têtard susceptible d’éclore pendant la prise de vue.
 Image tirée du making of de Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)

GS: I wanted to come back to the topic of minerals and plants. You said, “Unfortunately, we identify with them.” You were lamenting this kind of anthropomorphism in our perception of plants. We also discussed minerals. There’s a difference in attitude: we can admire a mineral, but we can project ourselves more onto a plant. We can’t identify with a mineral; it’s more distant. Art, in general, is anthropocentric. If the universe weren’t the biosphere—after all, the biosphere is an exception—the universe is more mineral, and it will probably continue on its own, without knowing where it comes from or how far it will go. Do you have any thoughts or comments on this polarity between mineral and plant, and what we, humans and nature, do in the face of this polarity?

Planète A (2008, Le Fresnoy)

MS: Yes. Minerals go even further, since they don’t even contain carbon. Whereas everything organic contains carbon. First, let’s take, for example, using techniques like time-lapse, where the mineral becomes almost like a plant because the minerals grow. This theoretically brings us closer to humans, since it brings them closer to plants. It brings them closer to animals, it brings them closer to humans. The technique makes this metamorphosis more visible, closer.

Second, minerals are indeed distant from us. But when reading about garden theory in Asia, in China and Japan, we see that a rock, in a Zen or Chinese garden, is considered a character. Yolaine Escande, a researcher at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), wrote a book, Jardin de sagesse, where she explains that a rock is often represented in the garden as a spirit, as a god, as a character, sometimes heroic, or historical, like a war hero. That’s the complete opposite of what you just said: the rock is a character. Optical techniques and cinematic shooting time can make us feel that the mineral is also close.

Jardin de sagesse de Yolaine Escande (Seuil, 2013)

In this aesthetic and philosophical essay, sinologist Yolaine Escande explores the world of traditional Chinese and Japanese gardens to reveal their spiritual and practical dimensions. Far from being mere pleasure spaces or miniature reproductions of nature, these enclosed gardens are conceived as protective microcosms, conducive to contemplation and self-cultivation.

EN: Underlying this vision is that life is identified with movement, on the part of humans, whereas, in an animistic perception, what is inert is alive. Just because something is inert doesn’t mean it’s dead. In this case, in the garden, the rock has its own soul. And from a cinematic perspective, movement reveals the inner life of beings. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call it a shift in perspective, moving towards animism, rather than trying to reduce animism to something visible?

MS: It’s not the same framework. In the context of a film, where viewers are subjected to a story for an hour and a half, we’re forced to move towards Bazouk Art.

EN: How did you conceive of the garden you’re creating, which we were discussing at the beginning of the conversation?

MS: I was actually more into Bazouk Art, setting things in motion to understand that everything is alive. I forced it with the tools. I find it admirable that, in a garden, you can spend two hours looking at a rock and thinking about a hero from a past story. It requires even more availability, more openness, than people who eat popcorn while watching a 90-minute movie. Unfortunately, it’s not the same setting, it’s not the same viewer. Each work depends on its setting and its viewer. We don’t use the same vocabulary. In Japan, in terms of animism, there are many inanimate things that have great value. After a certain age, a kind of belt is placed around a tree to signify that it has become an exceptional living being. Among Shintoists, there are several gods, and everyone can be a god. You can be a god one day, if you transcend a normal stage. The tree, having lived for 5,000 years, has transcended this stage and become a god. The girdle signifies that this part is in a divine phase, and this inspires great respect. It is a value in itself.

Festival International des Jardins – The garden the star of the show

The International Garden Festival is a world-renowned annual event held since 1992 at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire (Loir-et-Cher, France). Considered a true laboratory of contemporary design and landscape architecture, it offers a unique perspective each year on the evolution of our relationship with the living world. It spans more than six months, from the end of April to the very beginning of November.

Planets, Momoko Seto’s garden as part of the International Garden Festival – The garden the star of the show (photos: Éric Sander – source: Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire)

On the island where I filmed, Yakushima, there are 8,000-year-old cedar trees from the Jōmon period. Travelers come to this island and walk for 10 hours to, and I quote, “meet the tree.” They are not allowed to touch it, and therefore cannot hug it, but this encounter with the tree, which has survived in a superhuman timescale, moves them. It’s clear that it’s not the physical exertion that captivates us, but the transcendence. Because it’s God. It’s no longer within the human realm, but it still touches us. So, it’s interesting because it ties into Georges’s concern with empathy. I said earlier that it has to be human to move us, but it can be God, to move us even more, but God is the human who created.

Jomon Sugi in Yakushima (photo: Chris 73 – source :Wikipedia)

GS: The word “transcendence” evokes transcendence, as we say in the vocabulary of philosophy. But it’s a human concept. It doesn’t concern minerals, it doesn’t concern the cosmos, which is outside of us. It’s a process of bringing them down to earth, of creating an emotion, because we do like to see ourselves in a mirror, we like things that resemble us.

MS: Yes. I’m going to add another layer to your reflection on empathy: it’s truly about emotion. If you don’t feel empathy, you don’t feel humanity, you don’t feel emotion.

GS: What kind of emotion?

MS: All sorts of emotions affect us: anger, sadness, wonder… you may not know a person you see on screen, but it triggers an emotion and reminds you of an event in your life. In the millions of films we watch, what we remember is the emotion, and we often forget the story itself. We remember an actor’s face or an emotion that resonated with us.
While making this feature film, I was constantly attentive to the emotional intensity. What we feel, what perhaps transcends the human figure.

Planètes (2025, Miyu Productions, Arte France Cinéma, CNRS Images)

GS: It’s what the figure, the image, and what the image contains evoke.

MS: Not necessarily. Yes, it evokes emotion. I like your example of the 2-meter line you drew on the wall. The line is straight, then it trembles, it goes beyond it, you can feel that it’s been erased, then redrawn: there’s a story there.

GS: I’ll give a more concrete example. You were talking earlier about different types of animation. At Disney, they often add arms and eyes to make it look human. But there are other types of animation. I’m thinking of John Lasseter’s film, for example, with the two lamps.

Z: Luxo Jr.

Luxo Jr, John Lasseter (Pixar, 1986)

GS: That’s it. In the way they position themselves and thanks to the rhythm of the movement, we understand and feel the feelings. Looking at the making of Planètes, we see that the animation goes in this direction of evocation through the postures of dandelion seeds, flowers, achenes. When the achene curves, it gives us an understanding, it evokes the feelings it may have. It’s not literally reported. He lets us deduce the character’s feelings through attitudes, and not through symbols or signs plastered on them.

MS: Yes, obviously, it’s evocation.

GS: Was it a choice?

MS: It’s definitely a choice. And it’s more of an artistic challenge, because we have to communicate our message with fewer tools.

Planètes (2025, Miyu Productions, Arte France Cinéma, CNRS Images)

The main characters of Planètes: Dendelion, Baraban, Taraxa, and Leonto, who are dandelion achenes, form the 300 seeds of the dandelion ball at the end of its development. Each character is characterized by a unique way of moving, a distinct personality, and a unique behavior.

The different stages of compositing, colorimetry and integration of characters in post-production (images taken from the conference Meeting the Cinema of Momoko Seto given by Élie Levé (director of photography) and Mathieu Cayrou (assistant cameraman) during the Festival Chefs Op’ en Lumière in Chalon-sur-Saône.

Nicolas Becker, our sound engineer, added breath to the achenes—human breaths, which, for me, are the most sensitive vehicle of emotion that humans can emit. Just a breath is enough to understand if a person is happy, sad, or angry. It’s very subtle. We don’t know if the breath Nicolas added is the wind or the achene’s body. It’s also evocative; nothing is explicitly stated. We understand not through signifiers, but through the senses in a more visceral way.

Nicolas Becker (photo: Arte Radio)

Nicolas Becker has worked on films such as Mathieu Kassovitz’s La haine, Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. He received an Oscar for his work on Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal at the 2021 Academy Awards ceremony.

Below: some images of the sound design for Planètes, taken from the conference Meeting the Cinema of Momoko Seto, given by Élie Levé (director of photography) and Mathieu Cayrou (camera assistant) at the Chefs Op’ en Lumière Festival in Chalon-sur-Saône. The composer of the music, Quentin Sirjacq, is also featured. Unusual instruments were incorporated into the score, including the crystal baschet, Indonesian gamelan (for the squid scene, for example), Ondes Martenot, Japanese taiko drum, marimbas, xylophone, and the Shakuashi, Eddie Ruscha’s electronic instruments, all blended with compositions written for the Brussels Film Orchestra and recorded at Studio Dada in Brussels.

Quentin Sirjacq is a French composer and pianist, renowned for his compositions that blend contemporary classical music, jazz, and minimalist influences. He has composed numerous film scores and regularly collaborates with directors such as Benoît Jacquot and Emmanuel Mouret.

Z: I would draw a parallel with Len Lye, especially with Tusalava. It’s a black and white film where organic, almost visceral forms move like primitive organisms. The graphic style evokes Aboriginal art, but what’s most striking is this very strong, almost animistic presence: you get the impression that the forms breathe, that they are permeated by an inner energy.

And in Free Radicals, it’s even more evident: the lines drawn, scratched directly onto the film, convey kinesthetic sensations, rhythms, jolts, like so many manifestations of the body. With McLaren, we always remain very close to the human. His rhythms and metamorphoses retain something of gesture, of breath, of emotion.

Tusalava, Len Lye (The Film Society, 1929)

GS : I saw that, in Planètes, Guionne Leroy was animator, an excellent animator, and Nicolas Becker was the sound effects artist, an excellent sound effects artist. How did they get involved in the production?

Guionne Leroy.
Image taken from the making-of of Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)

Guionne Leroy is a Belgian film director and animator. She directed the short films La Traviata (1993) and Arthur (1997). She worked as an animator on John Lasseter’s Toy Story, Henry Selick’s James and the Giant Peach, Nick Park and Peter Lord’s Chicken Run, Samuel and Frédéric Guillaume’s Max & Co, and Henry Selick’s Coraline.

MS :A dream casting! I contacted Nicolas Becker via the editor, Michel Klochendler, who had known him since he was 20. He is someone who researches, he has a researcher’s, experimental approach, he does a lot of field recording, recording in Antarctica for example. When I contacted him, he was recording the sound of mold at the École Normale Supérieure. I told him: “I film mold and you record it!” » I spoke to him about the film, saying that there was no direct sound recording, he said to me: “But it’s a dream, you have to invent everything. It’s a blank page that you’re offering me! »
And Guyonne Leroy came thanks to the Belgian co-production, Umedia. She worked at Pixar and on Chicken Run, she’s excellent and she has a lot of sensitivity. She said to me: “You’re asking me to create emotion with a rod! » For an animator, this is a challenge. There are no eyes, or body, there is only movement.
I met and discovered a whole series of people thanks to the project, with whom I really formed friendships. I hope we will work together again.

The animation team.
Image taken from the making-of video by Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)
Compositing at Reepost in Paris.
Image taken from the making-of video by Mathieu Cayrou (CNRS / Miyu)
Two compositing steps.

William Henne: Aside from the garden project, are there any other projects?

MS: Yes. I’m currently writing a series.

I’ve also curated an exhibition on insects, which is touring Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

And I’m continuing to make short films for the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research).

To explore further:

Conference: À la rencontre du cinéma de Momoko Seto, given by Élie Levé (Director of Photography) and Mathieu Cayrou (Assistant Camera Operator) at the Chefs Op’ en Lumière Festival in Chalon-sur-Saône (Moderators: Pascal Mieszala and Nicolas Bouillard).

Making Planètes, l’art de façonner des mondes, a film by Mathieu Cayrou produced by Miyu Productions.

]]> https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-momoko-seto/feed/ 0 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BLACK HOLE https://beatbit.org/research/the-philosophical-black-hole/ https://beatbit.org/research/the-philosophical-black-hole/#respond Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:36:25 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=4441
THEORY
MASTERCLASS

THE PHILOSOPHICAL BLACK HOLE

A conference on generative AI to be held on 16 May 2026 at the Nova cinema in Brussels.

William Henne : Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming, and thank you to the Nova for welcoming us. Before introducing Nicolas, I’d like to point out that this discussion session has been organised by Yann Bonin, a director in the world of animation, in partnership with the Nova cinema, which also organised the first part of the event with Olivier Smolders.

Nicolas Dufresne, known as Duduf, has been living in Savoie for some time now. He’s a very versatile chap, as he’s both a teacher and a film director. He’s set up a co-operative called Rainbox Production, dedicated to animation production, as well as an association, RX Laboratori, where he develops open-source programmes. He creates all sorts of things and also writes books. He’ll no doubt be bringing us a novel one day or another.

Above all – and this is the link to tonight’s event – he hosts a brilliant podcast called Une fourmi dans la coquille. The first series, available online, was devoted to artificial intelligence. The second series focuses on colour, attempting to explore all the aspects it can raise. Tonight, he’ll be talking to us more specifically about artificial intelligence, from the perspective of the philosophical black hole.

Nicolas Dufresne : Good evening. To start with, I’ve taken the opportunity to put on my Savoyard costume. I wanted to talk about hiking, but I think I’ve come to the wrong event. Never mind, I’m going to talk about it anyway, because you’ll see that the link with artificial intelligence isn’t all that unexpected. Since there’s a computer in the picture, we’ll also be talking about computing.

There’s even a photo of me on the screen, taken at home when it’s cold. It’s theatre, so I don’t know if what I’m about to tell you is true; it’s up to you to make up your own mind. Whether we’re at the cinema or the theatre, the truth isn’t necessarily our priority.

Hiking is a cornerstone of my life. It’s a time for introspection, a necessary break from the world, from schedules and time constraints. After a week alone in nature, you end up living at your own pace; that’s how I experience it, anyway. It’s an essential chance to step back from our city life. I come from the city, and I used to suffer a great deal because of it.

As William said, I wear many hats. Coding is one of them. My interest in computing dates back to the 1990s, when I was 12 or 13, and we got our first family computer. My older brother was passionate about computing and I was drawn right into it. From my teenage years onwards, I played around with languages like Basic, developed by Microsoft to help everyone learn to code. I created simple programmes where the computer would ask questions: ‘What’s your name?’, ‘My name is Nicolas’. The computer would reply, and I thought that was brilliant.

I soon realised there were two ways to design a conversational bot like that. Either I could analyse the syntax, grammar and vocabulary so that the programme would actually ‘understand’ the sentences — a linguistic approach that seemed too complex to me at the time — or I could anticipate everything the user might say and pre-record the responses. I decided I’d sit my mum down at the computer, tell her to try out my programme, and watch her. And every time she said something I hadn’t anticipated, I’d make a note of it and try to predict everything else she might say. I’d programme in everything—absolutely everything—that people might say to my programme, which would eventually have to find correlations and commonalities, but I’d pre-record it all. That way, it’ll be able to respond to anything we say to it. I fancied giving that a go. But then again, I realised it was going to be a right pain to do and not a very interesting job. I realised that the first method was too difficult for me, and the second was tedious and uninteresting. A few decades later, I realised that these were exactly the two approaches the early AI developers were faced with: an AI based on logical rules, or a statistical AI based on a huge amount of pre-recorded data.

I went on to study at an engineering school, but I grew tired of it. I was more drawn to my mother’s work – she’d studied Fine Art and was an illustrator – so I decided to get into animated film. I set up a production company and directed films. I’ve chosen four examples of very artisanal films, with a warm, hand-drawn style, a far cry from cold digital animation. These are the sort of films I love to produce. I see myself more as a craftsman of animated film.

Interface of Duik Angela

Furthermore, my IT skills have enabled me to develop open-source tools for character animation. It’s a community I’ve been part of since the early days of computing: we share code, and it’s free. It’s been quite successful. These days, I juggle these two careers: film and coding. AI is, in a way, the convergence of the two. It’s not a sudden revolution – we’ve seen it coming for a long time – but the level it has reached and the way it has been marketed to us have sparked new topics of conversation.

I became fascinated by the subject, so I started reading and summarising articles for myself, to understand it. After two years, I had pages of notes on cross-cutting topics: the environment, politics, society, creativity, consciousness and the brain. I decided to do something with them. I wrote a book and, as publishing a book is a complex process, I also launched a podcast, Une fourmi dans la coquille. I spent two years thinking about AI before taking the plunge. I was worried that my ideas might become outdated, as everything moves so quickly, but there’s such a disconnect between the prevailing discourse and the reality of technological development that my work has remained entirely relevant. So, time is passing, and that’s what we’re going to talk about now. We’ve got an hour ahead of us.

lafourmi.media

Since we’re on the subject of time, I’m going to give a brief introduction that I find very interesting, to put things into perspective. Don’t worry, we’ll get round to politics later. I sensed that some of you in the room were keen to dive straight in, and we’ll get there. But we can’t tackle environmental, social, creative or political issues without laying the groundwork first. And I want to go back over all this, because it’s not something that’s just sprung up overnight.

This young man you see here is a Greek philosopher called Archytas, a close friend of Plato in the 4th century BC. Archytas said: ‘It certainly seems that the art of calculation, when applied to philosophy, is far superior to the other arts, owing to its ability to deal with any problem with greater certainty than even geometry can.’ As a Pythagorean, he revered mathematics and believed that calculation enabled one to attain certainties in philosophy. At that time, the word ‘science’ did not exist; people spoke of philosophy. I find it fascinating that, as early as the 4th century BC, some people were already considering the use of mathematical calculation to construct arguments. The idea is by no means a modern one.

The image opposite depicts ‘Archytas the fly’. I discovered this entirely by chance three days ago whilst preparing for this lecture. Thanks to Wikipedia, I learnt of the existence of this fly. I should point out that I prepare my lectures without AI, as I was keen to verify the quote from Archytas myself. By carrying out this manual research, I came across a new piece of information — this fly — which I would never have found via AI, as it would simply have given me the quote I asked for.

Representation of the Maharal of Prague and the Golem. Illustration by Mikoláš Aleš for a short story by Josef Svátek published in the magazine Květy (1899), National Gallery, Prague.

All this to say that the idea of an artificial being is not new; it is deeply rooted in our folklore and mythology. Think of the Golem from the early Middle Ages. What is fascinating is that the word ‘Emet’ is inscribed on its forehead, which means ‘truth’ in Hebrew. If you remove the first letter, the aleph, you are left with ‘Met’, which means ‘death’. There is, therefore, a reflection on truth and the calculation of truth. This was taken up by Raymond Lulle in 1305. He envisaged a machine with dials and levers capable of proving any philosophical truth. It is interesting to note that, from the outset, in this logical calculation, the result is often predetermined.

Raymond Lulle (circa 1232-1315)

In 1666, we saw the true birth of artificial intelligence with Leibniz, my idol. He theorised what he called the calculus ratiocinator; in fact, he envisaged the computer as we know it today. He took his thinking so far as to create a symbolic language — a sort of programming language — which he called the ‘universal characteristic’. This idea inspired languages that we still use in AI today, such as Prolog in the 1970s. So OpenAI isn’t really a revolution.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

The first AI programme dates back to 1956; the Logic Theorist helped mathematicians prove theorems. The first conversational robot, meanwhile, appeared in 1966 with ELIZA. This programme simulated a psychotherapist. The key point was that the computer did not need to actually ‘understand’: it simply had to rephrase the user’s words and detect keywords such as ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ in order to ask reflective questions. The aim was to pass the ‘Turing test’. Turing, a visionary as early as the 1940s and 1950s, proposed having a human converse with a computer and another human without knowing who was who. If the human could not tell the difference, then the computer would demonstrate true intelligence. ELIZA passed this test in short conversations.

What’s interesting is that time — always time — has changed the methods. Back then, computers had very little memory, so you had to be clever and use what’s known as symbolic AI: a form of intelligence that understood rules and made predictions based on them.

Alan Turing (1912-1954)

For those involved in animated film, this ties in with what are known as simulations. In film, when you want an explosion, you simulate it. You use a physics engine into which you incorporate Newton’s laws. It’s as simple as that. You tell it how gravity, air resistance and smoke behave using very complex equations. We don’t write these equations ourselves; the developers do. Once the initial conditions have been defined, we press a button and the computer applies these rules to predict what will happen. If I fire a cannonball at a wall, the computer is able to predict how the wall will shatter. These early forms of AI therefore applied rules; they contained genuine human knowledge. As a programmer and director, I think that’s brilliant, because the computer uses the laws of physics discovered by humans to produce something new.

The other approach is what is known as statistical artificial intelligence, which is based on neural networks. It’s a bit of a marketing term, as there are no neurons, nor any biology, in computers. Historically, in the 1930s, it was thought that neurons functioned like what we now call logic gates in computing. It was imagined that a neuron was an element receiving various input signals and responding with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. In reality, it is far more complex than that, but this belief laid the foundations. As Turing’s computers operate in the same way, using 0s and 1s, researchers very quickly thought they could recreate the brain’s functioning using digital components. Statistical artificial intelligence involves taking this logic to its logical conclusion by writing a programme that simulates this neural communication.

There was a genuine scientific ambition behind this early research: to understand how the brain works. Yet it didn’t really work. Why? Because the human brain has 86 billion neurons, which we were unable to simulate at the time. We could get about fifteen of them to function, but no more. The artificial neuron of the time was called the ‘perceptron’. This method fell somewhat out of favour before coming back into vogue in the 1990s, when the combination of the two approaches

It wasn’t until the 2010s that two conditions were met: high-speed internet to collect massive amounts of data, and the computing power needed to process it. It was students, who were keen fans of video games such as Counter-Strike, who came up with the idea of using graphics processing units (GPUs). They realised that neural networks worked in the same way as graphics cards calculate pixels on screen. They tried it out with a project called AlexNet, and it worked very well.

AlexNet est un modèle de classification d’images qui a transformé l’apprentissage profond. Il a été introduit par Geoffrey Hinton et son équipe en 2012 et a marqué un événement clé dans l’histoire de l’apprentissage profond, mettant en valeur les atouts des architectures CNN et ses vastes applications.

It took ten years of development, particularly at Google, to work on the two pillars of AI: image analysis – often funded by the US military for espionage purposes – and language analysis. Following this breakthrough in the 2010s, we have now reached the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI. What is fascinating – and I’ll leave it at that regarding the history of AI – is that virtually all the techniques and innovations used today had already been scientifically theorised as far back as the 1960s.

The only thing that was new was the scale – that is, the ability of certain companies to build ever-larger systems. It worked very well, and we have forgotten about so-called ‘symbolic’ artificial intelligence – the kind I was talking about, which understands rules and is intellectually stimulating – in favour of this approach, which I find fundamentally lacking. Hoarding a huge amount of data is a crude method; it works, of course, but it teaches us nothing. As a programmer, I find that a shame. There’s a trend to claim that everything must be open source because it’s ‘brilliant’. But why should it be? AI code teaches me nothing: it’s been around since the 1960s and is based solely on optimisation. It’s interesting to see how engineers have optimised these systems, even if that goes beyond my area of expertise, but the way in which an AI generates language remains a black box. It’s purely statistical; there are no linguistic rules governing how ChatGPT works. This AI can’t teach us anything about language, even though it’s very adept at manipulating it.

It is precisely because this system operates on a different scale that it raises all the current issues. Everything digital has an environmental impact, something we tend to forget because we believe it all happens in the ‘cloud’. But digital technology isn’t in the clouds; it’s in the mines. It’s metal, plastic and oil – it’s extremely tangible. It’s electricity in wires and photons in optical fibres that need to be produced. Artificial intelligence replicates these very same problems, but on an absurdly larger scale.

A rising tide lifts all bots (Rose Willis & Kathryn Conrad – betterimagesofai.org)
Distorted sand mine (Lone Thomasky & Bits&Baüme – betterimagesofai.org)

When we talk about catastrophic environmental impact, we need to be precise about the figures. Let’s take the example of a proposed AI data centre in France, with an estimated cost of 50 billion euros. This centre is expected to consume 1.4 gigawatts of electricity – equivalent to the output of a single nuclear reactor. There are currently between 400 and 500 data centre projects in France. If we want to move away from oil by electrifying our cars, we will have to make choices: we will not be able to power ChatGPT, image generators and electric cars all at the same time.

Le data center de Digital Realty à la Courneuve (photo : Digital realty).

The problem is that the electricity grid isn’t ready. As it takes years to build a nuclear reactor, the data centres being built today are often powered by natural gas turbines. Microsoft has, in fact, signed a contract to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor – the site of one of the most serious nuclear disasters in the US – because new power stations cannot be built quickly enough to meet demand. The environmental disaster is therefore not an abstraction or a mere opinion; it is an immediate, tangible reality. I’m sorry to sound so gloomy; I didn’t mean to get you down.

Three Mile Island nuclear power station, circa 1979. The Three Mile Island accident was caused by a partial meltdown of the core of reactor No. 2 (TMI-2) at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station, situated on the Susquehanna River in Londonderry Township, Dauphin County, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (photo: US Department of Energy).

The problem with these AI companies is that they know they are unprofitable, but they do not want to disappear because they wield immense power. They are funded by capital, not by profitability. Investors buy their shares in the hope of capital gains, which drives these companies to put on a show to make themselves indispensable for as long as possible, before reality catches up with fiction. To this end, they invest in sectors where they become indispensable, such as defence. They have contracts with all the armed forces, including Mistral in Europe: their systems are integrated into fighter jets and missiles. If they were to go under, the state would be forced to bail them out, as it needs to maintain control over its own armaments.

Soap bubble and a cloud (Oleg Yunakov, 2022) 

The problem with these AI companies is that they know they are not profitable, but they do not want to disappear because they wield immense power. They are funded by capital, not by profitability. Investors buy their shares in the hope of capital gains, which drives these companies to put on a show to make themselves indispensable for as long as possible, before reality catches up with fiction. To this end, they invest in sectors where they become indispensable, such as defence. They have contracts with all the armed forces, including those in Europe: their systems are integrated into fighter jets and missiles. If they were to go under, the state would be forced to bail them out, as it needs to maintain control over its own armaments.

The enchanted merry-go-round of artificial intelligence: Lordon describes the mechanics with clinical precision. OpenAI has secured a $122 billion funding round, $50 billion of which was committed by Amazon. In return, OpenAI has committed to $100 billion worth of orders from Amazon Web Services. OpenAI and AWS place massive orders for chips with Nvidia, which in turn invests 30 billion in OpenAI’s funding round. This is not a Ponzi scheme, but an ouroboros: the serpent biting its own tail. And for the circle to hold, there must be no breaks. Yet OpenAI has still not made a single dollar. The company lost between six and eight billion last year, plans to spend 600 billion by 2030, and is asking the public to believe that by then, profits will materialise. An analyst note from HSBC, on the other hand, estimates that there will still be a cumulative shortfall of 200 billion dollars to fill, which will require ‘a major refinancing fix’. Major investors are sending out signals. Warren Buffett has methodically liquidated all his holdings over the past eighteen months and is sitting on 325 billion in cash, ‘completely safe’. Peter Thiel has sold off his Nvidia shares, and Michael Burry has taken out put options on Nvidia to bet that it will ‘crash and burn’ (source: Elucid).

The final aspect I’ve been working on is the social impact. Beyond the loss of jobs for coders in Europe, there is a far bleaker reality. Take, for example, an AI designed to recognise cats in images. The human brain is fascinating: a child only needs to see a few examples to identify a cat, whereas an AI requires millions of images.

These images must be sorted, extracted and prepared by humans. It is estimated that there are between 150 and 400 million of these ‘click workers’ worldwide. These are people who carry out micro-tasks, often for low pay, to continuously train the systems.

Wheel of progress (Leo Lau & Digit – betterimagesofai.org)

Sometimes, it goes much further than that. In a report entitled ‘Will AI Kill the Internet?’, we saw a woman in an African country – who didn’t even know which company she was working for – who had to trace wounds on corpses to teach an AI to distinguish between gunshot and stab wounds. Every AI application relies, at some point, on a human doing the work in its place. This isn’t a reduction in work; it’s a shift of that work to where it is cheaper and better hidden.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we should throw everything away. Making a medical diagnosis isn’t daft, but we need to weigh up the benefits against the risks. Is it worth it just to make a TikTok video? The question is what we consider useful in our society – and at what cost. It’s a question of production, a societal issue that goes far beyond the scope of AI. Right, I’ve finished the introduction.

To get back to my line of work, once these questions of impact had been raised and understood, I said to myself: ‘All right, AI is here’. There’s a fatalistic view that claims we have no choice, as it’s being imposed by the GAFAM. At one point, I felt like saying that this might be the only time in my life I’ve seen a catastrophic phenomenon on the horizon — although we need to put it into perspective, as everything is relative when compared to air pollution, for example. I wish I’d been around when we could have fought against the advent of the car – which is a dream for me, living in the mountains and owning neither a car nor a driving licence. I’m here to witness the arrival of AI, and I felt a surge of rebellion: ‘Let’s go for it! Let’s say no; for once, we’ll manage to stand up to progress.’ But I think it’s already too late. I have a glimmer of hope that the economic bubble might rid us of it to some extent, but we’re going to have to live with it.

Chronos cutting off Cupid’s wings (Pierre Mignard, 1694)

It is interesting to consider how this affects my work as a creator and director, whether in advertising or visual production. I included a scene showing Chronos cutting off Cupid’s wings, because I am talking about time, and the main selling point of AI is that it saves time. However, I’m not talking about arthouse films, but about the purpose for which AI was designed. The developers of these systems see art as a flaw, just as they regard my presentation this evening as a flaw; they’d probably prefer me to keep quiet. AI should not be a tool I have to fight against, just as I do not fight against my paintbrush. The paintbrush has its limitations, but I am aware of them and I am the one who decides. AI, on the other hand, tries to prevent me from doing my job.

The demand to work faster, to produce ever more, is entirely incompatible with artistic creation. The philosopher Ivan Illich, who observed the advent of the car, theorised the ‘radical monopoly of machines’. He explained that the tool eventually comes to dominate the individual and bind them to the social body: whilst a tool should be emancipatory and promote autonomy, it becomes counterproductive when it achieves such a monopoly that we no longer have a choice. His example was the car: its widespread adoption led to the construction of motorways, which ultimately prevented us from travelling by any means other than by car. He also calculated that if we include

Ivan Illich (1926-2002)

During my hike, I climbed Le Brévent, facing Mont Blanc. After a gruelling ascent, I reached the summit and found a tourist in flip-flops eating an ice cream, who’d arrived by cable car. It reminded me of the feeling I get when I see my nephew creating Ghibli-style images with just two clicks. It’s the same disconnect: he took his Instagram photo and left, whereas my memory of the climb is deeply ingrained because the ‘act of doing’ takes precedence over the destination. You shouldn’t write a novel because you picture yourself holding the finished product, but because you want to write. If you use AI to bypass the process, the result is meaningless. Time doesn’t just allow for quality; it is quality itself.

Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (Caspar David Friedrich, 1818, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg)

Finally, time allows for quality. When you take that away, you don’t see things through to the end. Unless I’m boring you, just let me know. I fancy pottering about; I’ve got loads to tell you and, in fact, time is the one and only argument in favour of AI: it’ll make things go faster. I want to emphasise this point. I don’t think AI is capable of doing anything else. Let me come back to the artistic side for a moment. Here’s Turner, a 19th-century Romantic painter whom I adore.

Fishermen at sea (Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1796)

Edmund Burke, an Enlightenment philosopher, explored the concepts of beauty and the sublime. He conceptualised the sublime, which lies beyond beauty. The sublime is what one feels when faced with the immensity of a mountain or a raging sea. It is what humans feel when confronted with incredible beauty mixed with mortal danger. When will an AI be able to understand this sort of concept? It’s impossible. AI cannot be used for that.

So I wonder whether it’s worth the effort, given all its implications. If it were capable of creating the sublime, then perhaps we could have a discussion. We could say that it enables us to achieve astonishing things, works that will stand the test of time. But we all agree that it won’t be able to do that. If it’s incapable of doing so, is it worth the effort?

Edmund Burke (1729- 1797)

I’ll take the example of advertising or children’s cartoons, because AI is sneaking in through the back door, where there’s no budget. That’s how I see it. Animaj, a company founded in 2022, has bought the rights to Maya the Bee and Pocoyo to release one AI-generated episode a day on YouTube for children. We tolerate it because it’s for children – it’s not for adults yet – but that’s the way it’s coming. Not only do I question the value of this, but it’s also taking hold in advertising.

A friend who works in advertising sent me a photo from a construction company in an Arab country. I’ve blurred the faces and logos for privacy reasons, but I should point out that these are Arab people. The company needed to convert the photo to a portrait format and used AI to generate the missing parts. That’s the easiest way to do it these days with Photoshop: you click, and ask it to fill in the gaps.

Here’s the result, and it’s a problem. That was the first generation to come out, I promise you.

In other test shots, misshapen feet were found – the very same flaws that can be seen in Olivier Smolders’ film. This is the only version in which the legs appeared to be correct.

Souvenirs d’un ami (Olivier Smolders, prod. : Le Scarabée/WIP, 2025)

I also asked an AI to generate a family photo for me, to see what I was up against. You can understand its biases by looking at what it produces. The result is interesting: they’re beautiful, certainly, but they’re very white, even very fair-haired — even the dog is fair-haired.

I call that fascist, and I don’t say that lightly. The cult of the perfect body, the perfect family, normativity and the uniformity of representations – it wasn’t just anyone who wrote that: it was Mussolini. He would have loved AI, because that’s exactly what it does. This is an important point, because we’re talking about a supposedly creative tool that imposes this sort of representation on us, which is a terrible form of narrow-mindedness. I work in the world of animation and advertising, and in the 2010s, there was a real sense of a desire for inclusivity. We were starting to ask ourselves whether, in lingerie adverts, we might feature people who were a bit curvier, or whether, in group photos, we might make sure to include all skin colours. We were a long way from achieving that, but there was a growing awareness: we were trying to represent people as they really are.

AI has ruined everything. Because we have to work quickly, and because clients are demanding we use it to cut costs, we no longer have time to correct these errors. The aim is to be the first to publish the content, and the client no longer has any regard for these issues. It’s worse than we realise. All graphic designers and animators make an effort to include diversity, but clients ask for it to be removed. I’ve seen with my own eyes a client’s feedback saying: ‘No, but a female mechanic? We’re not going to go that far, are we? ’ It’s completely uninhibited. AI facilitates this, as it operates on a statistical average. As the global average is dominated by certain representations, the result is inevitably normative.

It’s all white! There are so many Swedes!

A family is more like the one you see in Jean Forest’s film, Réunion de famille.

Réunion de famille (Jean Forest, prod. : Rayuela productions, Supermouche productions & Zorobabel, 2025)

There’s a real problem with this kitsch imagery generated by AI, and I genuinely see a step backwards that we won’t be able to fight against. This is no trivial matter, and the same applies to text. A study was recently published showing that simple autocomplete — the fact that AI finishes our sentences for us — alters people’s opinions. When you see what this produces, you realise it’s problematic. It isn’t necessarily a deliberate conspiracy, but AI systems are inherently biased; neutrality doesn’t exist. Even if we correct the bias towards a white family, we’ll create another bias.

To conclude with this family photo, when I asked for a ‘racialised’ family, the AI refused, claiming that I had no right to use that term. As well as being prescriptive, it censors. Why ban me from using that word? It deprives us of the language that allows us to think about the victims of racism. The war of words is important.

And it isn’t Gemini (Google) or Claude (Anthropic); it’s Adobe — the software company behind every image in the world — that has censored the word ‘racialised’. There isn’t a single image you see anywhere in the world that hasn’t been processed by Adobe software, and it is this company that has implemented this censorship. I’ll leave you to think about that for yourselves.

With Adobe Firefly technology, it is possible to add an element to an image in Photoshop simply by entering a prompt.

To return to a more artistic aspect, here is an example I’ve borrowed from The Hotmeal, a comic-book artist who is very successful in the United States. It is Christina’s World, a painting by Andrew Wyeth. In it, the painter depicted his neighbour, who suffered from an illness that paralysed her and caused her pain whenever she moved; he sought to illustrate this suffering through her journey from her bed to her kitchen. I’d very much like to see this painting in person, as it has a distinctive feature. For a start, an AI wouldn’t really be able to do this, as it doesn’t know how to compose outside the classical conventions to shift the focus away from the subject. But above all, the painter painted every blade of grass and every strand of hair with tiny brushes, spending an infinite amount of time on these details. Unlike an AI, which effortlessly generates ultra-detailed images, the painter spent all that time because he wanted to put himself in the same state of suffering as his subject. His creative process tells a story; it is an integral part of the work.

Christina’s World (Andrew Wyeth, 1948)

This is why the choice of production technique in animated film is, in itself, a narrative choice. That is why it is tiresome for those in the industry to hear that AI is going to ‘replace all jobs’. That would deprive us of an essential narrative choice: the choice of how we make things.

Mathieu Kassovitz at the World AI Film Festival (WAIFF) as part of the ‘Different Perspectives on AI in Cinema’ talk with Claude Lellouch

Finally, I can’t help but mention Mathieu Kassovitz. He has said that digital special effects are so pervasive in films that he no longer knows what he’s watching. According to him, when he watches a film with special effects, he doesn’t know whether the snow, the car or the stunt are real, which robs him of any emotion. I want to reply: ‘Mathieu, it’s cinema. Cinema is, by definition, an illusion.’ He uses this fallacious argument to justify the fact that he is currently directing a feature film made entirely using AI, claiming that with this technology, we are no longer dealing with ‘pretence’ but with the ‘recreation of reality’.

Ultimately, this is a worrying situation. These are influential people, whose views are listened to and amplified by media outlets such as France Culture. It’s problematic to see public figures who are supposed to champion cinema making such statements; it frightens me a little.

Nosferatu, Murnau (1922)

To conclude, I studied film and I teach animation. Like any student, we practise film analysis. Let’s take Murnau’s Nosferatu, released around 1920. It’s a German expressionist film in which, although it’s shot on location, everything is extremely carefully thought out and artificial. This ties in with my work as an animator: in animation, every single pixel is chosen. We create everything. There’s an intention, a narrative choice, in every detail, such as the way the hero descends a staircase from light into shadow. I love analysing these intentions. However, if I’m presented with an image created by AI, I find myself faced with a problem. As a film critic, I’m at a loss, because I don’t know where to draw the line between what is intentional and what is simply an artefact of the AI. Do we need to ask for the prompts and the ‘making-of’ details for each shot in order to understand the work?

Souvenirs d’un ami (Olivier Smolders, prod. : Le Scarabée/WIP, 2025)

That’s what I found myself wondering whilst watching Olivier Smolders’ film Souvenir d’un ami. The fact that it was created using AI is made clear, and that’s very interesting. I’m very interested in memory and the way it becomes distorted over time. Yet, throughout the film, I was torn: are the distortions in the image intentional on the part of the human, or are they random errors produced by the machine? I found it hard to make up my mind, with the feeling that the AI dilutes the human element in the film. I can’t think of any other techniques where the dilution is quite so pronounced. It’s a way of creating images that raises questions for me and which, for me, remains a grey area.

La sortie de l’opéra en l’an 2000, Albert Robida (vers 1902)

There are plenty of other topics I cover in my book and my podcast, but I’ll finish with a little story. An American scientist with a deep knowledge of physics, Daniel Whiteson (Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe), is eagerly awaiting the arrival of aliens on Earth. He hopes they’ll be more advanced than us and that they’ll answer all his scientific questions. No, it’s not going to happen like that. So let’s imagine that an alien civilisation arrives on Earth, having travelled millions of light-years. Everyone is stunned. They’re so far ahead that they have a universal translator. They’re billions of years ahead of us. We finally ask them for their secrets: how did they achieve propulsion and interstellar travel? How does their spacecraft work? And do you know what they reply? ‘AI did it.’

Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe: an entertaining podcast dedicated to the big, mind-boggling and unanswered questions about the Universe. In each episode, Daniel Whiteson (a physicist working at CERN) and Jorge Cham (a hugely popular online cartoonist) tackle some of the simple yet profound questions that humanity has been asking for thousands of years, explaining the science in a fun, relaxed way, free from jargon. danielandjorge.com

That’s my conclusion. And this brings me back to my point about rules in AI. That’s what worries me: fundamentally, there’s a loss of knowledge in AI.

Elliot and E.T. cosplayer, Gage Skidmore (2016)

Question from the audience: Thank you – it was a real pleasure to hear you speak and to learn so much from what you’ve shared. Given that AI ultimately has a philosophical dimension, in relation to three key aspects of our time on Earth – uncertainty, finitude and loneliness – what does it offer us?

Nicolas Dufresne: That’s a very simple question, and I’m not quite sure how to answer it. I don’t think it takes us very far on these subjects, or even on a philosophical level. I’d been hopeful. AI was created, as I said earlier, with the aim of understanding the brain. There was a scientific approach before it became a tool used by technicians in Silicon Valley; there was a desire to understand the human mind. These questions – which I haven’t mentioned because they seem to me to be off-topic, such as whether AI can have consciousness or access something else – sometimes allow us to ask genuine philosophical questions about the replication of the mind. But we must demystify AI: it remains a statistical tool, a system that works very well for what we ask of it, but it is a serious mistake to believe that there is anything behind it. It is a run-of-the-mill generator. I attach no philosophical significance to AI as such. I am interested in its impact on society, not in what it fundamentally is, as long as it does not become something else — and that’s not likely to happen any time soon.

Frédéric Lordon, “IA krach ?”, Les blogs du Diplo, 1 July 2026, blog.mondediplo.net/ia-krach
In this article published on 1 July 2026 on the Le Monde diplomatique blog, economist Frédéric Lordon analyses the possibility of a financial collapse linked to artificial intelligence, fuelled by a stock market valuation bubble and a credit bubble. He highlights the critical disconnect between the astronomical investments made by tech giants and the lack of clear returns on investment, marked by growing scepticism among corporate clients in the face of soaring costs. Finally, the author explains that the erosion of collective beliefs regarding the economic potential of AI, combined with rising competition from China, could cause the sector to shift from blind enthusiasm to particularly brutal financial write-downs.

Nicolas Dufresne : I refer you to the article by Frédéric Lordon that I mentioned, as he is far more of an expert on the subject than I am. But it is true that we must understand that, in addition to their desire to make themselves indispensable, these companies are seeking to position themselves at the heart of the system. To take a less dramatic example from an animation studio, we are being pushed from all sides to use AI: by clients, by the government, which wants to justify its investments in 50-billion data centres, and even by producers who want to cut costs. Companies are adapting their production methods to these tools. When the bubble bursts, it will drag all these companies down with it, because there will be no going back: we will already have made staff redundant who have been replaced by AI, and we will already have slashed our rates. This is why the bubble is dangerous: it’s a very real threat to companies that have already started replacing humans with automated systems.

William Henne : And yes, it’s a financial bubble reaching unprecedented heights in terms of investment, even compared to 2008, and it simply cannot be profitable.

Nicolas Dufresne : hat’s impossible. This isn’t just a matter of opinion: if you look at OpenAI’s figures, their debt already runs into the hundreds of billions. To become profitable, they would need to earn enough to pay off that debt whilst continuing to operate over the next ten years. No one can objectively believe that’s possible.

Question from the audience: I’d heard, when it was first released, that the Chinese AI DeepSeek was much more efficient and used less energy. Do you know anything about this? It could offer a solution to the environmental problem.

Nicolas Dufresne: It turned out that the first version of DeepSeek was a hoax, which explains why there was less talk of it. They’ve recently released a V2 with the same claim. I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but it doesn’t make much difference: we’re facing such astronomical levels of energy consumption that simply being ‘a little less’ energy-intensive isn’t enough. We’d need to drastically reduce consumption. We’re dealing with orders of magnitude that go far beyond the simple need for reduction. Digital technology was already an environmental problem before AI; in animation studios, the National Film Centre was already requiring us to carry out carbon assessments of our computers in order to obtain grants. I wonder how they’re going to factor in AI, because as soon as an image is generated by AI, the carbon assessment becomes obsolete.

Question from the audience: Thank you for the talk; I had a good laugh, especially towards the end with the image of the family. I’m going to attempt a critique of the talk from a left-wing perspective, through a Marxist lens. On the philosophical question of what AI is capable of, my view used to boil down to this: it’s just a calculating machine, a statistical tool, and it won’t be able to think for itself. But recently, a YouTuber, Mr Phi, has shaken my convictions a little. The more we increase the power of the models, the more new possibilities are created, which is mind-boggling. However, this does not call into question my fundamental analysis: AI is merely an acceleration of capitalist society. We, the ‘cultural bourgeoisie’ in cultural production, are now discovering the instability that blue-collar workers experienced with mechanisation, automation and proletarianisation. We are in the process of becoming redundant. The fundamental critique remains that any technology developed within capitalism is aimed at acceleration for the profit of capital. Finally, on the ecological front, I would point to the rebound effect, or Jevons’ paradox, according to which improving a machine’s efficiency does not reduce energy consumption, but increases the overall use of such machines.

William Stanley Jevons. In his 1865 book, The Coal Question, Jevons observed that British coal consumption rose sharply after James Watt introduced his steam engine. Watt’s innovations made coal a more cost-effective source of energy, leading to the widespread adoption of his steam engine in factories. Rather than reducing total coal consumption, technological improvements and gains in efficiency led to an increase in total coal consumption, hence the paradox.

Nicolas Dufresne : That is exactly the Jevons paradox. I fully agree with your analysis of the automation of labour.

As for the cognitive capabilities of AI that some people believe in, we need to be very cautious. To come back to Mr Phi, I’m currently working on the lobbying activities of AI companies. Some time ago, Mr Phi mentioned tests applied to AI, known as ARC-AGI*. Companies are designing AI specifically to pass these tests, much like in the ‘dieselgate’ scandal, where engines were rigged to pass emissions tests without actually reducing pollution. Furthermore, these companies are consciously and deliberately using marketing techniques inherited from the tobacco industry: flooding the world with scientific studies, even those of dubious quality, to dilute genuine knowledge. We must be highly critical of articles published on archive.org that have not been peer-reviewed, or were reviewed too late, or even those published in prestigious journals such as Nature, which had to retract – a very rare occurrence – a bogus meta-study on the positive impact of AI in education. We are in the midst of the post-truth era, where scientific truth is no longer the issue. At the very least, we must maintain a diversity of opinions and be wary of anything that is too extreme, whether it is overly pro-AI or overly anti-AI. The furore will probably die down along with the economic bubble, but in the meantime, we are right in the eye of the storm.

* ARC-AGI, Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus for Artificial General Intelligence. This benchmark is designed to evaluate a program’s ability to solve simple problems in visual recognition and logic.

Question from the audience: Thank you very much for the talk. We haven’t discussed geopolitics tonight. Yet we’re constantly being told that we must be the first to master AI so as not to be overtaken by the United States or China, in the name of the arms race. To what extent is this a justification for colossal investments, or a real threat? Aren’t we repeating the same pattern we saw with nuclear power, and how concerned should we be?

Nicolas Dufresne: There are several parts to the answer. First, we can look at who is making these claims and what their interests are. Second, if we consider the environmental crisis and the economic bubble, is this really the smartest strategy? It’s not the small players who will be resilient; OpenAI will survive the bubble, but building a structure robust enough to withstand a crisis is another matter entirely. Personally, I live without a car, without a smartphone, and without AI deep in the countryside, and I’m very happy. Many countries—and even some European ones—don’t make the “AI race” a priority, and that’s okay. We need to take a step back. I’m no expert on geopolitics, and I’m more of an anti-militarist, so arguments about missile balance don’t convince me, but everyone is free to form their own opinion.

Nosferatu, Murnau (1922)

Olivier Smolders : Thank you for this talk and these insights. I’d like to return to the area where I have expertise: creativity. You mentioned that the intention of a director, a cinematographer, or a technical crew in a film like Nosferatu reassures you and creates a connection with the audience. That’s true, but it’s a perspective rooted in classical cinema. Since then, across all the arts, the question of the author’s intention has been set aside. Similarly, in literature, we ask what the text says rather than what the author meant to say. I get the impression that all of us—myself included—instinctively recoil from an image produced by AI, under the pretext that there is no intention behind it. Yet an AI-generated image in a film is the result of a series of technical and aesthetic choices. Don’t we have an intuitive reflex to reject it so as not to be seduced by a machine?

Nicolas Dufresne: It’s clear that we have this deep-seated reaction of rejection. That said, coming from the world of animated film, we have the unique advantage of creating everything from scratch, which leads us to think long and hard about every choice regarding lighting or staging to maintain narrative coherence. When it comes to using AI, I’m concerned—especially for my students—about the introduction of uncontrolled elements that could undermine their intended message without them even realizing it. Above all, within the context of the culture industry as defined by Adorno and the Frankfurt School (we’re feeling very neo-Marxist tonight), aside from the auteur cinema movement, of course, AI is marketed under a demand for speed that prevents us from taking the time to reflect on what we’re doing. That, to me, is where the fundamental problem lies, and that is also the source of my rejection of it.

Christina’s World (Andrew Wyeth, 1948 – detail)

William Henne : In animated film, we love the hard work; the audience loves to see the effort. There’s a certain romanticism to it. It’s a bit like that 1948 Wyeth painting we saw earlier: he painted every single blade of grass with a brush made of horsehair. There’s a certain romanticism in identifying with the hard work that must have gone into it.

Nicolas Dufresne: Yes, that’s right. There’s also an admiration—even if we don’t want to admit it—for the ability to create the piece. And if it’s easy, it loses its appeal. Does it lose its appeal if it’s easy? It turns out that’s the case when we look at it. People are disappointed if an image was easy to make. It loses some of its appeal, especially when it’s hyper-polished like what AI produces. The paradox is that AI gives us an image that’s technically perfect. The family photo, for example, is beautifully lit, there aren’t six fingers, everything is perfect—and perfectly white. That perfection loses its appeal if it wasn’t difficult to create.

Question from the audience: Thank you for the conference. I heard Alain Damasio speak about a year ago. He was working on the topic of AI and came across a novel written by an AI. He read it and said, “Wow, I kind of feel like I wrote it myself.” He was reflecting on what that implies for art and creativity. On the other hand, there’s a widespread willingness to relinquish control over the creative process. For example, many students produce entire sections of their theses using AI. Professors are trained to spot it, and everyone wastes time. It’s ridiculous. The question is: why? We’re in such a selective system that we feel we have to conform to the norm, and this standardizing system seems ideal for that. We need to find a way to celebrate singularity—what isn’t polished. It feels like we’re not succeeding at all. I often show my students films from the 1970s with slightly “gritty” images. It’s fascinating because today, we no longer see that kind of imagery; everything has been smoothed out. We’re fascinated by smooth images.

Nicolas Dufresne : Yes, and that’s incredibly normative. It’s incredibly important. I don’t really have an answer, but as far as Damasio is concerned, I find it interesting. Nick Cave, the Australian singer, faced exactly the same problem. He received a song written by ChatGPT that imitated his style. He posted a very insightful response on his blog, The Red Hand Files. First, he immediately sees that it’s not Nick Cave; he’s not fooled. Then he comes back to this idea of hard work: for him, a song is the result of suffering, and what gives it value is also the fact that someone created it. It’s very abstract because, in reality, we won’t be able to tell the difference, but knowing that makes a difference.

La bête est morte, Edmond-François Calvo & Victor Dancette (Éditions G.P., 1944)

William Henne : There are a few creators who are embracing AI with a genuine reflection on the algorithm and what it can produce, and who are creating things that are absolutely relevant. It won’t be a Mathieu Kassovitz film, I think, but maybe he’ll make a film that takes a fairly straightforward approach to using the tool.

Nicolas Dufresne : He wants to make a movie about rabbits waging war against the big bad wolf during World War II—with the big bad wolf representing the Nazis. Filming rabbits was too complicated; he wouldn’t have been able to do it without AI.

William Henne : It’s based on the comic book by Edmond-François Calvo and Victor Dancette, La bête est morte, published in 1944.

Nicolas Dufresne : It’s going to be great. I can’t wait to see it in theaters!

elucid.media/economie/quelque-chose-de-gros-se-prepare-avec-la-finance-frederic-lordon

William Henne : Thank you very much, Nicolas. Did Yann want to say something?

Yann Bonin : Thank you all for coming. For those who find it difficult to read Frédéric Lordon in Le Monde diplomatique, please know that he often explains his writings in videos. Following the study on the AI financial bubble, if you go to the elucid.media website, he explains it all there in a way that’s easier to understand. Thank you again.

Nicolas Dufresne – Le trou noir philosophique. Conséquences des I.A. statistiques sur la connaissance

lafourmi.media

]]> https://beatbit.org/research/the-philosophical-black-hole/feed/ 0 WRITING ANIMATION: OLGA & PRIIT PARN PART II https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-olga-priit-parn-part-ii/ https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-olga-priit-parn-part-ii/#respond Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:33:33 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=4181
THEORY
MASTERCLASS

WRITING ANIMATION: OLGA & PRIIT PARN PART II

Zepe: Before beginning the interview, just a small detail otherwise I won’t sleep well because I don’t understand very well why in the film 1985, with Lumière, there is a scene where Lumière kills a very small penguin of 10 cm high.

1985 (1995)

Olga Pärn: It’s the bad penguin from The wrong trousers. 

Z: Oh, come on. I didn’t even think about that. It’s so sad. I was quite impressed. 

OP: It’s a small inside joke for animators. 

William Henne: We have an initial line of thought: the question of sound takes on its full meaning in a film like Divers in the Rain, in the sense that the film constantly shifts from one space to another, from one place to another, from one action to another, from one narrative register to another: comedy, daily chronicle, day, dream, sleep, and sometimes these intersect. This makes it a particularly interesting playground for a sound designer. This range of spaces and actions is also found in Luna Rossa.

Georges Sifianos: Before we begin, I would like to ask another question. I read all the earlier discussion, the first part of your masterclass,  and I think we can explore the subject of movement itself in greater depth. And I would also like to ask a question at the end of the discussion: what question would you like to be asked that you haven’t been asked yet?

Priit Pärn: What is the question? How are you?

OP: At the end, Priit!
Indeed Divers in the Rain is a very good subject. Do you remember what we started with to make the film, Priit?

PP: After we made Life without Gabriela Ferri, our sound designer was not disappointed with the sound, but he was not entirely satisfied because of all the music. We told him not to worry, the next film will be made specially for you without any music. It was a joke of course. We started this film fairly quickly.

OP: Yes, we came up with an idea pretty quickly. Every day, I draw little characters in my sketchbook. We live near the sea, and when we drive to our studio, we drive along the coast. One day, I saw a group of divers through the window, probably practising.

PP: We were passing by quite quickly, so it was drawn from memory.

OP: It was a very brief moment, but I found it very interesting to see twelve divers gathered in a circle.

PP: They didn’t have heavy equipment like in the film, just snorkels and masks.

OP: There were several of them standing together, like in a kindergarten, or at least that’s the image I have of it. That was the starting point, and the fact that we wanted to make a film based on sound. These divers were an inspiration for ships and sea life.

PP: There was also the idea that it rains constantly here. I don’t remember very well.

OP: There are two completely different worlds, as William so aptly put it: that of the woman who sleeps and that of the man who faces reality. He must survive in this Estonian reality of November, where it rains incessantly and it is cold. He must work, but nothing yields results. He must save the ship that is sinking.

PP: They don’t really know what they can do to help the ship; it’s not that clear.
At a certain point, we realised that we were describing the world of men.
We had planned to make a trilogy. The second film, Pilots on the way home, deals with the world of men, and the third has not yet been made.

OP: But it has just been staged as a play. In mid-September, Priit’s script for the third part of this trilogy was adapted into a play by actor Tanel Saar.

GS: At which moment came the idea to do a trilogy?

PP: Maybe during the making of Divers in the rain.

OP: Or even after, just before Pilots on the Way Home, when we realised the three films are connected: divers, pilots and then fiddlers. 

PP: It’s hard to say. So many ideas are rushing through my head. I don’t really remember. 

OP: Our Estonian sound designer for Divers in the rain, Horret Kuus did a fantastic work for Life without Gabriella Ferri. For Divers in the rain, I remember very well that he constructed the sound of the men’s world like a live-action film. He was very skillful with the sound of rain, which is constant, to give the impression of permanent depression.

PP: In fact, the sound of rain is like background music.

OP: When we did the final mix, I was impressed by how cleverly Horret designed all these different levels of rain. It’s not always the same sound. We always feel that our ears are ready to accept it, not as something boring, but as something that keeps us in the rain. And for the woman’s world, she is asleep. While talking with Horret, we realised that the very important aspect that needed to be developed was that all the sounds that occur in her dream give the impression that she is underwater. It’s like a huge filter covering the woman’s dreams, because in reality, she is a diver. It’s not something you can clearly perceive, but it gives the impression that she is underwater. At the beginning, after the scene where the drops fall one by one, she is underwater during all these dreams, with a very distinctive soundscape in these parts of the film. Just before this scene, at the beginning, when they are together, we are still in reality, marked by Éric Satie’s music, the Gymnopédies, which returns at the end of the film. It is like a frame around the story. And within that frame, you have the woman’s dream, the man’s reality and the boat, of course. Everyone on board the boat is waiting to be rescued.

Z: I noticed that sometimes these soundtracks are associated with objects, reactions, footsteps. But many sounds are found behind the sound of rain itself. Sometimes rain is in the centre, sometimes in the background. The background sound is closer to us and is not completely behind the sound design created for the objects.
Why didn’t you use sound in this film and others as a metaphor? Many of the scenes you depict are quite strange, like the one with a man and a pencil. All these scenes are sometimes not just direct information. They are related to the film in a very particular way, but normally the sounds are quite energetic in this film. When someone walks, you can really hear footsteps. Is this a choice to make the sound more real than what the images show?

PP: This refers to the part that deals with reality, as in a live-action film or documentary: in the background, you can hear the sound of traffic and perhaps the sounds of the city with its houses. It is an extremely realistic sound that contrasts with the part devoted to the woman’s dream.

OP: Every dream is constructed in this way. I remember very well how Priit and I decided to keep the dreams very minimalistic. The main goal was to create a sound that would wake her up.

PP:  A disturbing noise that eventually prevents her from sleeping. She keeps leaving, searching for a new, quiet place.

OP: And it repeats every time, and in dreams, it’s always the same pattern. She sleeps and something happens. Priit and I were looking for these disturbing sounds. I remember, for example, that we were on a huge boat heading for Finland in the autumn. The sea was not calm, it was rough. The bottles in the shop and the glasses in the bars made this very distinctive sound.

PP: Thousands of bottles clinking together.

OP: This extremely distinctive and strange sound gave us a feeling of danger, of something being wrong. It inspired Priit to design the two scary chairs. We talked about it with Horret and he built something that was very close to the sound that had inspired us.
During the storyboarding of Divers in the rain, we saw Satoshi Kon’s film Paprika at the cinema in Tallinn. That film is also about dreams, and I remember that when we got home, we said to ourselves that this was exactly what we didn’t want to do. We wanted to limit the dreams part as much as possible and make it really minimalist so that we could focus on the sound.
There is an absurd joke in the film, because the situation is impossible.
It was a pleasure to build and draw them. They are quite simple, but it is important to see how they evolve until they reach their disturbing point.

Paprika, Satoshi Kon (2006)

Z: I’d like to talk about how the story was constructed. You were inspired by a scene you saw while driving by the sea. The whole fabric of the story was built around that situation. I assume you didn’t have a definitive storyboard from the outset. It was probably a collage of sequences that could be moved around and replaced. Can you explain the different stages of the film until it was almost finished? I don’t understand how the script was constructed from that starting point and how it evolved and developed.

GS: I’d like to add a question to Zepe’s: when did the idea of parallel threads come to you? Was it at the beginning or later on? 

PP: Right at the beginning. I even drew a rough outline of the film’s plot. I always imagine things. I teach my students the same method, explaining how to manage events over time using this process: by drawing a line and dividing it up.
At the beginning of the film, A and B are together. Then they lead their lives in parallel. She goes home and tries to sleep. In her dreams, she probably moves from one place to another, looking for a quiet spot, and ends up on this boat.

OP: She needs to sleep. She finally finds a place to sleep, which is none other than the sinking boat.

PP: I divided this line into sequences: she/he/she/he. It’s as simple as that. I had to fill these sequences with events taking place by the sea. Everything happens in a single day: they arrive, collect their equipment and prepare to dive.
Why does he need to dive? We don’t know. We are trying to convey the feeling of someone watching a team of ten people doing physical work, such as building a road with shovels, while eight people stand around watching, as if they were lazy. If you are doing physical work, you cannot do it for eight hours without a break. Perhaps what they are doing is perfectly normal. We can see that they are preparing this boat and that they have equipment that is probably not in very good condition.

I added a few jokes and gags. I tried to be subtle, without overdoing it. The character design makes them look very clumsy. It seems like their clothes protect them from the rain, but at the same time, they are quite ugly and don’t move much. 

OP: Priit developed a special technique for drawing these characters in the film. The world of men is very brutal, as are the drawings and lines.
We developed a whole system: they were drawn on two levels. On the first level, they were drawn very roughly with a marker. On the second level, we added colour to clean them up. Then we put them together. It was a special creative technique.
In the part where it’s raining, there are a lot of bystanders.
It’s a dialogue with Luna Rossa. In both films we used a lot of bystanders.
In Divers in the rain, Priit drew them watching, sitting or standing, often with their backs to the spectators. When you see a company constructing a building, there are always people standing around watching the scene, taking a break or thinking. It’s a constant phenomenon.

In Luna Rossa, it’s different: the bystanders are watching the camera and the characters.

Luna Rossa (2024)

Z: In my opinion, the sound works very well in this film because it is mixed and treated like cut paper. Normally, in cinema and animated films, the sound has space to enter at the beginning of a sequence and exit at the end. In this particular film, the sound is cut like with a knife. It’s very abrupt. It’s there, and then there’s nothing. It works because the characters stop and act like cut-out puppets: they move and then suddenly stop moving at all.

PP: Except at the beginning and at the end of the film where we can hear the music of Satie, there is no music in the film, but the rhythm of drops makes a kind of strange music.

Otto Alder: You explained how you developed the story and showed us the chart illustrating how you arranged the scenes. If I remember correctly, you usually work with a script. If so, at what stage of production was there a script? I remember very well reading your scripts, which were already extremely entertaining and funny.

PP: We need a script. It’s essential if you want to get funding for the production. When I think about the film, especially the dream sequences, which are so visual that I don’t describe them with words, but immediately start drawing them.
There are distinct scenes: near the sea, the car accident, etc. There is a gradual development: all the cars stop, then this quiet driver arrives and has a heart attack, etc. I don’t even remember what the script looked like, I mainly created the film scene by scene.

OP: I remember very well that Priit drew and started with the design and style. There were lots of preparatory drawings and a large storyboard when we asked for funding. I remember the sequence with the ship where the sailors try to save the boat.
The character of the diver himself is Fellini, sitting there like a director on a film set. This character with his diving suit was a great source of inspiration. A close friend of Priit’s, Finnish photographer Timo Viljakainen, has a grandfather who was a real diver in Finland.

PP: Not in the sea, on the lake.

Timo Viljakainen

OP: Priit used some photos left behind by Timmo’s grandfather, which he sent to us. He pointed out that the suit was the actual work suit. I remember Priit drawing the main character looking at this picture. It was a lot of inspiration.

PP: Another character inspired us: during a war between two gangs in Japan, a general sat on a chair on a hill, watching the fighting unfold. He didn’t move, he just observed, smoking his last cigarette, and we tried to use that image for our main hero. 

OP: Even in the synopsis used by Priit, we don’t know when the last cigarette will come. So there were many different inspirations, and I clearly remember that we built the graphic universe of the men and the sleeping woman in parallel in order to differentiate them graphically. It was very important to distinguish them visually from each other…

PP: … And to create such a ridiculous situation, when the other diver has a heart attack, they put him in the ambulance.
The divers’ team is working together. The journalist comes to request an interview, but it doesn’t work out and they send him away.

OP: There was one dream with an elephant on a rope, who moves his legs with a terrible sound and falls down. 

PP: The rope cut him into two pieces. 

OP: We saw the film on the big screen at a festival somewhere, and we both felt that this dream was too much, so we removed it. So we remade the film. We removed that sequence and replaced it with the sequence of the cormorants standing in the rain. We created the graphic pattern of falling rain, without characters or background, with the sounds of the cormorants. The film as a whole was better once that sequence with the elephant was deleted.

GS: Can you explain why this sequence was too much for you?

PP: You could compare it to one person having a beautiful nose and another having two beautiful noses. It’s just an impression. It’s not a very long film. If you have a new idea, you always have to compare it to what you already have.
There may be a similar situation with Pilots on the way home, with the Kamasutra night. Robert Marcel Lepage, the Canadian composer, composed various pieces and a piece of Indian music in the Bollywood style that was so funny in the scene that we both felt it really didn’t fit.

Pilots on the way home (2014)

OP: Because the overall mood of the film is nostalgic. We asked him to redo it in a more neutral way, even though our producer, Julie Roy, thought it was a very good scene.
I think that in Divers in the rain, the film’s progression reached its climax when the woman boards the ship in her dreams and, at the same time, when the superhuman diver arrives and has a heart attack. The scene with the elephant distracted from the main plot. The story is tragic in the end.

PP: You can explain everything but it’s more a question of feeling.

OP: We both had this feeling so that we understood that was the right thing to do. We had the courage to throw it away even though it was a very nice scene. 

GS: At the end of the dreams, the lady throws a stork out of the window. You could put this elephant scene in that place…

PP: No. For the stork, the feeling is clear. I had a beautiful dream: I was in an aeroplane or perhaps a helicopter. Sitting opposite me was a stork named Anna. The stork flew up into the sky. And I woke up.

OP: I remember Priit telling me about his dream and me drawing it. It was obvious that this scene had to be in the film.

GS: It’s related to the noise that the stork makes, that annoying noise that we’d be very happy if it would stop, wouldn’t we?

WH: This stork is sounding like crickets.

PP: No, they are making such a kind sound. 

OP: It’s a very specific sound. But this stork is not a realistic stork. It’s a constructed sound. You’re right. 

PP: She throws it like a wrestler, lifting it by the waist. I have a wrestler background.

OA: In Germany the stork symbolizes the animal which is bringing the babies. And I had the idea that this may be connected.

PP: Don’t think too much, Otto!

OA: When Priit lost kaya, he drew large charcoal illustrations, one of which depicted a large bird with a long beak killing a young girl. In Life without Gabriela Ferri, a stork kills a runner. So I think, Otto, that the stork is part of his mythology.

PP: In some mythology the stork is connected to death.

OA: In Egyptian mythology, the god of death, Toth, is a bird, an Ibis which is close to a stork.

PP: But in our films there are no symbols. It is just a stork.

OA: The spectator can find some.

OP: Absolutely!

PP: But it’s their problem.

OA: This couple is actually never coming together. So they have no chance to have children anyway because they have no time to really meet.
At which state of story development are you introducing your sound designer? In Divers in the rain for example?

PP: I don’t remember about this film.

OP: We had just finished the film Life without Gabriela Ferri, a major project, and we knew exactly what the sound designer was capable of. We didn’t talk to him right from the start, but we began gathering sound ideas to submit to him. It was the same with Luna Rossa and Olivier Calvert. We knew what he was capable of.

PP: Horret Kuus, for Divers in the rain, and Olivier Calvert, for Luna Rossa, are both highly sought after because they work very well, especially for live-action films.
If you have a few animated sequences, there’s no point in showing them at this stage.
On the other hand, with a composer, I always keep them informed from the outset. They read the script. But in reality, they only start working once the film has been edited.
Luna Rossa was shown to Olivier Calvert in an unfinished state; there were no backgrounds, just markers. He didn’t have all the information, but he still did a fantastic job.

Images taken from the making of Luna Rossa

OP: We had a long meeting with Olivier and he wrote everything. For example, the characters are dancing on the street, what kind of ground are they dancing on? We knew already and we told him every detail.

PP: We finished the sound in February, when he came to Estonia. Then we went to France together for the final mix. At the same time, we worked on the backgrounds until August. The film has evolved a lot visually, and the backgrounds evoke emotions, especially in a film like this, which depicts a city bathed in sunshine.

OP: In Luna Rossa, in the room where the detective is sitting, there is a sound of a fly.

PP: I tried to explain to Olivier that the detective’s hat rolled around the room throughout the film. I asked him if it was possible to keep an almost imperceptible sound, like that of a fly in the room. We don’t show the hat. It’s not important. But we can still hear its sound. Olivier didn’t understand and thought it would be a good idea to put a fly in the room. And it sounded great and worked. 

OP: It’s exactly what Zepe was saying: the sound of the fly in the room of the detective is going to this hat sound. Even if we play the game that it is in the same room, it is in fact in some other room. There is the hat moving and the sound of destiny. On a big screen you hear very well that there is in the detective room a small sound of a fly coming to a strong sound of a head.

PP: This leads to a great catastrophe. On the contrary, in the end, it simply falls with a tiny sound. It’s the best sound a falling hat could make. You can feel it. Nothing else could produce such a double sound. It’s very exciting.

OP: We start with this tragic version of Luna Rossa which is the grand finale. 

 

GS: This means that this structural element in your mind has gradually disappeared behind the new sounds. There are different levels of construction in your mind. This sound, which was structural at first, disappears and the spectator only notices it from time to time. 

 

OP: No, it’s still there. 

 

PP: It was there from the beginning. What is the grand finale of this film? We actually expect a major catastrophe with the plane crashing and exploding. But it’s a disappointing ending. Nothing serious happens. He simply takes his hat and puts it on his head.
In a classic dramatic theatrical story, if you see a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, there will be a shooting in the last act. We did the opposite.

GS: Yes, it is a quote attributed to Anton Chekhov.

PP: Yes. Since Chekov, the world is changing and some rules can be reversed.

GS: The scheme representing the whole film of Divers in the rain is very rough. Can you explain it? 

PP: I don’t remember in what context I drew this. Maybe I was explaining the structure to somebody. When I work with students, I always draw these lines. 

OA: In Divers in the rain, in the dream of the woman on the ship, beside the stork is also a suitcase with apples and the apples follow the wave of the ship. What idea did you have in mind when you developed this part?

PP: This is, of course, related to the movement of the boat. The stork arrives and makes a racket, the woman throws it out, and suddenly, silence reigns. She is in the same ship. Maybe it’s in her dream, but now she’s sleeping in a sinking ship. It’s peaceful. Then a diver is going to take the bus. The way it is going under the water is visually similar to this ship. Maybe they can meet somewhere. This is a question mark at the end of the film.

GS: The scheme with the two chairs, I suppose, is about the evolution of the action with separators.

 

OA: This is a plan for a scene.

PP: I use it to explain to animators what’s going on.

The chairs are using their legs like animals moving and are making steps to the direction of this box with bottles. In this drawing I made very precise timing of the scene:
The X chair is making one step to the direction of the box. 
Then the box shakes for three seconds then breaks. 
And the chair takes a step back. 
Then it’s silent for three seconds and nothing happens. 
Then the chair on the right side is making a step to the direction of the box for 3 seconds and back and then again 3 seconds. 
The X chair steps for one second, then shakes. 
Then the X chair jumps back in half a second. 
The final note means falling.

OP: You see below that there are 1B to 2B, 2B to 4B, and the end is 7B to 13B, when the woman is going away so there is a parallel scene with the woman sleeping.

PP: I give these explanations and diagrams to the animators, along with the exact positions of the chairs, the distance travelled, the length of the steps, etc. The animators’ freedom is limited. Before entrusting them with the work, I have developed a precise representation of the scene in my mind and I described it in detail.

Z: On the Koji Yamamura invitation for the film Four seasons, you did an animation with pieces of graphites and charcoal about a couple of a man and a woman. It makes me think about Michaela Pavlattova’s Repete. The subject is similar. Sometimes you stop the movement of the drawing and you are just still animating the texture. The lines and the texture are separated, that’s what I like in this film. Do you remember?

PP: It was created with various techniques. The scene where the fish jumps out of the water towards the men’s heads was created using graphite and eraser on paper, on the same page, under the camera. If I use the eraser very roughly, I don’t clean it up. If you create the next drawing, the paper may move even if it is fixed in place.

The Koji Yamamura’s project Four seasons brought together Priit & Olga Pärn (summer), Atsushi Wada (autumn), Theodore Ushev (winter) and Anna Budanova (spring).

Z: In the scene where the woman and men appear with the soup, the texture moves on its own and the drawing does not move at all. When it becomes very dirty, I think it becomes very interesting. 

OP: We agree. We discovered this technique at this moment. 

The Vivaldi music was performed by a live orchestra. Otto Alder came to see it with us in Tallinn.
Koji Yamamura sent us an excerpt of Vivaldi’s Summer recording. I filmed Priit drawing an apple with a big charcoal on an A0 page. We put it on the computer with the music, and the charcoal lines being drawn matched the movements of the violin bow. It was moving! We wanted to preserve the liveliness, the dirtiness and all those unexpected movements of the paper.
When Priit is working with charcoal, he is fixing the charcoal.

PP: Traditionally charcoal is used for live model drawing. It is fixed with fixative. When I was drawing, I fixed the charcoal maybe 10 or 15 times. I was making a move and fixed the lines immediately. A very special pattern appeared on the surface. 

OP: It is not only dirtiness that was appearing but also darkness.

PP: Sometimes I use a piece of apple or banana skin to achieve a beautiful finish. Some colors are obtained with red wine and black tea.

OP: We did not use this in the film.
The fixing of the drawing of the apple generated some strange spots which were disappearing. 

PP: The drying process altered the result. 

OP: Priit also used a hairdryer which was blowing and moving the surface of the paper.

PP: I was living.

Z: Yes, the time of the surface is mixed with the time of the movement of the film and produces a third sense. You can obtain this with echolins or watercolours under the camera.

OP: The film was made after Vivaldi’s Summer and commissioned by a japanese university (editor’s note : Tokyo University of the Arts, Department of Instrumental Music). We explored what summer means to the Japanese and are using imagery accordingly.

Suikawarii (Photo: Wikipedia)

They have a game called Suikawarii, a summer game played on the beach that involves splitting or crushing a watermelon with a stick while blindfolded. Then the watermelon is eaten. This blow to the watermelon is already a summer storm that corresponds to Vivaldi; it is, in fact, poetry. The Japanese audience really enjoyed it because they recognised the game.

Z: This game exists in Portugal.

OP: A Mexican student told us about Piñata with the idea of breaking a container filled with treats. It is all about movement and animation or drawing, it makes it universal.

GS: In Breakfast on the grass, there is the scene of the man drinking from a bottle and crashing the bottle down. He opens his jacket and in the continuity the background opens in the same way to reveal a new background of starry sky where he stands alone with the cat from the previous background. The man kicks the cat which goes up to the stars. The man turns on himself and falls. And during his fall the sky background folds and we retrieve the first background.
This is the kind of nice scene I like a lot.

Breakfast on the grass (1987)

That’s the introduction for the movement because if we take all your films, we can see that the movement is not just the classic cartoon movement which is mainly based on elasticity. But there are a lot of different movements. For example a hand comes over a cloth and the cloth comes to the hand instead. Other example: we just have vibrating lines. Other example: the image is static, the shape is static. Or a sachadic movement as we can see in Pilots on the Way Home. Sometimes you use childish jerking movements. Sometimes it is choreography but functioning.
In my teaching, I try to link graphic design to movement, to bring out a kind of movement from a specific graphic design. In a watercolour graphic, you have a different kind of movement than pen lines. In the Beat Bit website, we have the similar idea of the graphic form that creates or produces certain kinds of movement.
In Luna Rossa for example, it is clear that the movement mainly comes from the dramaturgy rather than the texture. How do you decide the kind of movement you will use?

PP: It’s different for every film. The story, which is like the foundations of a building, tells us the character design. Some character designs can have a high level of abstraction, a very high level of stilization. In the first part of Breakfast on the grass, the drawing is very simple and the woman who is losing her face has a very realistic drawing. Movement correlates with the level of stylisation. In classic celluloid animation, drawings are outlined with lines and then coloured within those lines.

If you’re working with animators and you watch the line test, you have to imagine and the line is dominative. When the color is dominative, we can see spots. Every film has a different approach.
Luna Rossa has a totally different production.If we compare it with, for example, 1895 or Breakfast on the grass.

OP: For example in Life without Gabriella Ferri, a girl named Berta jumps off a bridge at the beginning. When she is standing on the bridge, she is animated correctly, like a still image. But after jumping into the deep water, she starts moving strangely.

Life without Gabriella Ferri (2008)

GS: Yes, in a disorganised and incoherent manner, with jerky movements.

PP: In Divers in the rain, I animated by myself. I mainly work with animators. I give them layouts but in Life without Gabriella Ferri, I animated this scene with Berta by myself and I didn’t flip the drawings to control the movement. So I drew the girl’s position on the first sheet of paper, then put it away without looking at it. And I drew the next drawing. The first time I did this was for an advertisement. I didn’t look at the previous drawing. There is a movement to be made between position A and position B, and between these two positions, the movement is not linear but chaotic. So it becomes completely crazy, but the spectator is still able to follow what is happening.

OP: What matters in this type of animation is the spot of colour: your eye always follows the spot. We did an experiment. At Priit’s daughter’s wedding, Maria wore a bright red dress. I took hundreds of photos.

PP: There were maybe 20-25 people who went through the city to a restaurant. The backgrounds are changing all the time.

OP: As Maria wore a red dress, you always see her. Your eyes are following her and the red spot.

In this type of animation, when you colour a moving character or object drawn in such a way that its size cannot be controlled, your eye follows the patch of colour and you always recognise the same character or object. 

PP: It may not be very pleasant to watch for half an hour.

OP: In The life without Gabriella Ferri, there is only one character who dances like this. It is the character’s personality. Some people might say, ‘Oh, I know that person, she’s just like my mother!’

GS: It is between an expressive intention and a formal experimentation. It is an intention to express a character with this original way of moving. 

OP: This is an example of how animation can be used in a specific way.

In The triangle, Julia’s face is always changing but you still recognize her, she’s representing all the women in the world.

The triangle (1982).

PP: Her face is changing like a collage. Julia’s body changes, sometimes very slim, sometimes the opposite but the  dress and the colors are the same.

Z: In the films you have made previously, depending on the technique, story or narrative, you decided that the characters would evolve in their own way. In Divers in the Rain, the woman moves differently from the men. In ancient Japanese theatre, a code dictates the characters’ reactions in order to express certain moods, and if you don’t know this code because you are unfamiliar with this culture, you cannot understand it.
Your films seem more accessible — for instance, color carries a great deal of expression. Following what we discussed about movement as a kind of code, do you also think of color — or even sound or texture — as codes specific to each character, as if each one were moving through a different dimension?

PP: In animation short films, what we call character is more like a sign: a young man, a fire man, a fat lady… if a character is graphically simplified and  stylized, we can call this a code. In The triangle, men and women are typical as family clichés. The man is reading the newspaper, she’s cooking for him…
Why was it interesting to make this film? because we created how it’s happening and it was a lot of fun to make this. The collage, the cut out faces are brutal, it is not realistic. Finally they are not characters.

OP: They are archetypes.

PP: Yes. In Breakfast on the grass, Anna, the poor woman, is gray, without color and she has to serve other people.

OP: In the system. 

PP: I draw her in a very simple way. I draw her maybe like 50 or 100 times to work it out. The body is just two lines. She was almost invisible.
Another woman, Bertha, lost her face. It’s quite anatomical, with a lot of lines. We spent much time and energy drawing this woman. She was probably important. She maybe was an artist, She was beautiful. It’s part of the story.

OP: When you start to work out the pattern or the code of a character, it’s connected to the technique of animation and to sound. Because that’s what you want to express.

In Breakfast on the grass, the sequence with the painting in the opening sequence, with George, the beautiful man…

PP: He was called George because we tried to find an international name.

OP: He expressed the richness of life before the Soviet Union.

PP: In the Soviet Union, it’s not George, it’s Georgi.

OP: The change in technique and the change in animation style have an impact on the story.

PP: The first version of Breakfast on the grass had only one story. When I started to write I understood that it’s going to be maybe too complicated to understand. Then I came to the idea that there could be four stories. This game also offers all the possibility to use different styles. George, Georgi, is probably very rich, he’s living in a fantastic place with a view to the sea from the window. We shot this sequence with one of the animators. The photographs were handled by Mati Kütt. And it was painted using photographs blown up on the crossover. The music is very classical music and the voices are so beautiful.
When something is happening, this world is destroyed. He had to wear this black jacket and white trousers. His drawing is very simple. He’s flat. And this beautiful world was crushed.
The character design and movements are conceived in a naturalistic way: the beautiful George moves like a normal person anatomically and realistically. And when he is represented with a flat simple drawing, he is very badly animated.

GS: What question would you like us to ask you that we haven’t asked you yet?

PP: Do you want a cup of coffee?

]]> https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-olga-priit-parn-part-ii/feed/ 0 WRITING ANIMATION: GEORGES SCHWIZGEBEL https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-georges-schwizgebel/ https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-georges-schwizgebel/#respond Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:21:54 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=4116
THEORY
MASTERCLASS

WRITING ANIMATION: GEORGES SCHWIZGEBEL

Georges Schwizgebel (photo : CTVM)

Georges Sifianos:How many films have you made so far, Georges?

Georges Schwizgebel: This will be my 22nd, but it’s not finished yet. Since 1974. The first three films I made didn’t receive any support; there was no film funding in Switzerland at the time. That came later. In the 1980s, it was possible to draw up a budget and a proposal and find funding from the Swiss Confederation and television. I made the first three films outside of my working hours, and then it became my main activity until now.

GS: You’ve managed to make a living from your films. That was quite rare when you started out; not many people could make a living from animation.

GSch:Yes, I’ve been lucky.

Le journal de Darwin (2020)

GS: My first question is only half serious: your work is hugely successful. Yet it isn’t narrative. In France right now, everyone swears by narrative. Your work could be described as poetic, musical, dance-like, and even experimental. What’s the secret to its success? What’s your recipe in a nutshell?

GSch: I can’t say why people like it. When I make a film, I hope people will like it. But that’s not my motivation. My motivation is to find a visual idea. Sometimes it’s narrative. Quite rarely, it’s true. It depends on the starting point. It could be a novel, so it usually becomes narrative. Or it could be a visual idea or the desire to interpret music through drawing.
I’ve never used dialogue. This creates continuity between my films.
They are described as experimental in China and the United States, as opposed to mainstream films.

Romance (2011)

GS: What do you think appeals to viewers in your films?

GSch:Perhaps it’s the continuity. There are often no cuts. You can really immerse yourself in the images because there’s no dialogue. You’re drawn in as if in a dream, following the logic of dreams where you move from one scene to another without interruption. Maybe that’s what appeals to people.

GS: What is this logic?

GSch:When I make a film based on music, the rhythm and structure of the film are determined by the music. If I make a film based on a visual idea or a narrative, I like to give the animation a rhythm, as in music, and I avoid cuts. These are constraints that I set for myself.

GS: Is this fluidity enough to explain the audience’s enthusiasm?

GSch:Not everyone is enthusiastic. One of my films was shown in the United States because of the Oscar lobbying strategy. Usually, it’s mainly those who liked the film who come and talk to me, but in this case I heard the opinions of lots of people, and many said they didn’t understand it at all.

Retouches (2008)

GS: Can you recall any other negative reviews?

GSch: There was some negative feedback for one of my early films, the third one I directed, Hors jeu. It was at the Annecy festival. The film is made up of different cycles. It was a bit long, around 7 to 8 minutes, and it wasn’t selected for competition. I thought they were wrong. It was such a magnificent film. I had just made it, so I didn’t have an opinion on it yet. It was shown at 11 p.m., during a non-competitive screening, when people had eaten well and had a few drinks. And after a few minutes, they started throwing paper airplanes in front of the screen. And I realized that my film was too long. I cut a minute and a half to keep only 6 minutes.

Hors-jeu (1977)

Ethann Néon: The paper airplanes in Annecy are not necessarily a sign that the film is not appreciated.

GSch: No, but in this case, it was obvious that it wasn’t applause.

Story board de Hors-jeu (extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

William Henne: The constraint of fluidity allows for the implementation of a rather specific principle of animation, that of metamorphosis and metaphor, because there is an identification between the transformed object and the transforming object. This is evident in D’une peinture… à l’autre where formal links have been established between two paintings and sometimes between two different pictorial universes. There are thematic links with transitions in the form of camera movements over a painting to arrive at another part of that painting, perform a transformation, and move on to another painting. This is where, in general, your films touch on the specificity of animation. And when you mention music, sound is fully taken into account in its cinematic dimension.

Le sujet du tableau (1989)

Story board of Le sujet du tableau (extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

GSch: I once made a film with cuts because it was narrative, Le sujet du tableau. When I wrote the screenplay, in which everything that happens is explained, it was very clear. It’s the story of an old man who is rejuvenated in a portrait painted by an artist. He then travels from one painting to another in search of Marguerite. But when you watch the film, you don’t understand the story at all. Neither did I, for that matter. And I wanted the next film to be understood. It’s an adaptation of a Chinese fable, L’année du daim. And there, I clearly made cuts between scenes. The film is divided into four parts. You can see the progression because the rhythm is the same in each cut. I wrote a script, but I didn’t give any explanations, just the images, to see if people would understand. And indeed, the film is very understandable. It’s easier when you make cuts. It’s a more classic style of film editing. It’s the only film I’ve made this way. However, Le Sujet du tableau, this half-successful film, still gave rise to two other films, La Course à l’abîme and Retouches.

Le journal de Darwin (2020)

Dessin préparatoire pour Le journal de Darwin
(extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

In one of the recent films, Le journal de Darwin, natives return to their country by boat after being kidnapped for three years and tell Darwin what happened. Their story is a long, uncut black-and-white shot. But once they arrived home, I edited it in a more traditional way with cuts.

WH: Indeed, in another fairly narrative film like L’homme sans ombre, we can see this constant search for transitions between scenes. Even in very narrative films, we find the fundamental principles of animation with these movements and metamorphoses.

L’homme sans ombre (2004)

GSch: Yes, that’s what was specific to animation before digital technology and special effects. It was movement in space, because in live action filming it was complicated; you needed a crane and a lot of equipment. The same went for transformations and cycles.
Even though we can now do all that with computers, I’ve continued to work in the traditional way. Partly because I don’t know how to use a computer. But mainly to implement these processes specific to animation, to move from one shot to another without cuts.

Preparatory drawing for L’homme sans ombre
(excerpt from Filmonographie 1974-2020)

GS : It reminds me of Eisenstein’s theory, which is the opposite of this fluidity, but seeks to find another form of fluidity. He believes that meaning comes from conflict and tries to put all the elements in conflict: the shots, their duration, the lighting, the composition within the shots, and so on.
Generally speaking, you champion the hypnotic effect of cinema.

EN : In D’une peinture… à l’autre, and in several of your films, there are many pictorial references and many works of art in general. The paintings obviously existed before. How, in the process of writing D’une peinture… à l’autre, did you decide on the order of the paintings in the script and storyboard? Was the order determined by visual or narrative elements?

La Blanche et la Noire de Félix Vallotton

GSch : Initially, I wanted to make a film based on this piece of music that I had heard and really liked [Editor’s note: Danza de la Paloma Enamorada by Atahualpa Yupanqui (1954), performed here by Roberto Aussel]. The music is divided into two parts. I didn’t want to tell a story at all, I just wanted to put images that I liked to this music. I quickly thought of these two paintings, which are on the same subject, painted 50 years apart. So Olympia by Édouard Manet and La Blanche et la Noire by Félix Vallotton. I looked at the other images I had chosen because I liked them. I thought to myself that no one would understand anything. What does this film mean? And I decided that I was going to include paintings with people of color, like in Olympia, where there is a servant. And, with a few exceptions, I included 19th-century paintings with Olympia and 20th-century paintings with Vallotton’s painting. We see people of color, and they are on the same level as in his painting, where the African woman is not a servant but rather his companion. I grouped these 19th-century and 20th-century paintings together and added images of things I drew. Whether people understand it or not, I emphasized the difference between these two paintings from a sociological point of view.

Olympia d’Édouard Manet

EN : What was the main criterion for determining the order?

GSch :The question was mainly about how to transition from one painting to another. It wasn’t dictated by the logic of the theme, namely the social conditions of people of color. Visually, it was more obvious to move from the reflections in the water in one painting to another. The music induces regular transitions, then suddenly longer ones.

WH : Some transitions may seem arbitrary and purely formal, but others are very meaningful. At one point, rocks half submerged in the waves are arbitrarily transformed, through a kind of morphing, into a painter’s palette, and this palette becomes the bouquet of flowers held by Olympia’s maid. It is obvious that the bouquet of flowers she is holding is also the painter’s palette, since a bouquet of flowers is also a collection of splashes of color, as if Manet were establishing a metaphor between the painter’s palette and the bouquet of flowers.

D’une peinture… à l’autre (2023)

GSch :These are ideas that come up while working. I didn’t think of that right away. The film is largely constructed as you go along. Since I work alone, it’s an advantage to be able to build the film little by little.

WH : Yes, it allows you to surprise yourself and not get bored.

GSch :Otherwise, you have to be able to explain to other people what you want to do, which is less obvious.

GS : Can you tell us about your work process? What are the first steps? How do you build the film? Do you throw things away or do you keep everything?

GSch :I spend a lot of time on the stage called the line test. I have an old device that allows me to see the entire film, but only with sketches. I spend a good year changing and correcting drawings, either with or without music. I do line tests before I do the storyboard so that I have a clearer idea of what I’m going to tell when I submit my application to the institutions.

Line test pour Le journal de Darwin
(extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

Once it’s ready, I don’t throw much away because it takes a long time to animate and then paint. To give an example, in La jeune fille et les nuages (The girl and the clouds), the idea came to me when we moved our studio. We’re on the 13th floor, and I could see beautiful sunsets and clouds. I wanted to make a film about changing clouds. I thought it might be boring.

 La jeune fille et les nuages (2000)

And I read Jacques Roubaud’s book, Ciel et terre et ciel et terre, et ciel (Sky and Earth and sky and Earth, and sky). It tells the story of an elderly man who, as a child, had been hidden in an attic during the last war because of his Jewish origins. All he could see from the skylight were clouds. Much later, in London, he visits an exhibition at the Tate Gallery of cloud studies by Constable, and it reminds him of his childhood. That gave me the idea of telling a story with clouds that act as punctuation marks to move from one shot to another. I’m not retelling the story from Jacques Roubaud’s book, but the form I gave to the film came from that book.

Ciel et terre et ciel et terre, et ciel, Jacques Roubaud (1997)

GS : From the beginning, your graphic universe has consisted of a dark background on which you work with brighter colors. Do you remember making that choice?

GSch :That choice was perhaps a little naive: I thought that in cinema, the background is black and the light comes from above, unlike a white sheet of paper on which we write. Hence the splashes of color on a black background. I sometimes used a blue background or a fairly dark color. It’s true, I’ve always used acrylic paint, which is slightly transparent, and when you put it on a colored background or a black background, it brings everything together.

L’homme sans ombre (2004)

Zepe : What appeals to viewers, of course, are the camera movements and unique perspectives, but I also think it’s the subject matter. I wondered why the subject matter is so appealing. I remember a festival poster with a man writing on a table.

Affiche pour le GSFA (Groupement Suisse du Film d’animation), 1993

In films, the black on which you paint, and which Georges Sifianos talked about, gives color a physicality when we see it moving on screen.
I don’t think, as was said earlier, that these films, with their transitions from one scene to another, follow the logic of dreams, because the magic of these transitions does not come from the fact that, as in dreams, we move from one place to another, but from the fact that these transitions take place through matter.

Séquence extraite du Sujet du tableau (1989)

Georges Sifianos evoked Eisenstein with his counterpoints and contrasts between shots. He made very poetic short films before we knew him, with transformations that were closer to dreams than to the theorizing he did later on. What is important is that when he talks about shots, as Georges Sifianos mentioned, he is talking about the metrics of the shot, he is talking about editing, but also about the internal rhythm of each shot. He talks about the vibration of matter and the changes within each shot. If the background behind the characters consists of undulating water, the rhythm is faster than if there were, for example, a grid. He takes into account the density specific to the rhythm. And in your films, the viewer is not only caught up in the flow of images, but also in the material.

Séquence extraite de Retouches (2008)

GSch :The poster was created for the Swiss Animation Film Group, and it was the first time I had used pastels on sandpaper, which requires a lot of color because it catches the pigment. I used uniform anthracite sandpaper. I then used this technique in a few films for the sets.
It may not look like it, but sandpaper is transparent, so you can see through it with a light table if you darken the room. This allows you to transfer the drawings for animation. I used it a little in La jeune fille et les nuages, a lot in Fugue, and entirely in Zig zag.

Zig Zag (1996)

Otherwise, the material of my films is more like acrylic paint on acetate.

Photos : Cécilia Menge, 2015

Photo : Georges Schwizgebel, 2017

WH : To echo what Zepe says, there are transformations that are indeed geometric or involve patterns that are graphically associated. But also, at certain moments, the material and color allow the forms to be diluted and brought towards other patterns, passing through non-figurative drawings.

Séquence extraite de Perspectives (1975)

GSch :Yes. I also like each image to stand on its own, but sometimes that’s difficult when there’s movement in space or simply a tracking shot. It works when you watch the movement. But if you just take a single frame, it might not be interesting. However, I like to show the drawings from the films and then exhibit or sell them.
I also like high-angle shots, as they provide more information on screen. If a character is filmed from above, you can see their shadow, more details, their location.

78 tours (1975)

GS : In Hollywood films, for example, any vibration is banned. In your films, the vibrations of the paint, the traces left by the brushes, are organized in different ways. Sometimes you pause, freeze the image. Sometimes the vibration pulsates more quickly and vividly. Sometimes the animation moves in jerks, every four or six frames. It’s an approach that is both musical and choreographic.

 La jeune fille et les nuages (2000)

GSch :For example, in the film La jeune fille et les nuages, the backgrounds move at a rate of 16 frames of the same painting per 16 frames of the next painting, while the rhythm of the music (tempo 90) and the animation overlay are normal (2 frames per 2 frames). I often use sound rhythms to create these movements. In La course à l’abîme (The race to the abyss), I made two-part backgrounds, one part where you mainly see the background, the sky and the ground, which I wanted to avoid making vibrate. So I made 16 different paintings that you could call backgrounds. On top of that was the animation, 144 paintings. But to move the backgrounds, I again used the rhythm of the music, tempo 160, 9 frames by 9 frames, so that it moves in time with the music. So it’s deliberate. It’s not a flaw. In this film, the animation is 1 frame by 1 frame, so 24 different frames per second.

Dessins préparatoires et line test pour La jeune fille et les nuages
(extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

GS : Why avoid this vibration at times? Why seek it out at other times?

GSch :In general, there is always vibration, except when the set remains on screen a little longer, as in La jeune fille et les nuages. When there is movement in space, the entire set is redrawn. Vibrations are inevitable.

GS : Sometimes the vibrations are gentler, and sometimes they are very abrupt. In La course à l’abîme, the characters are very smooth. I can’t remember which films have the most intense vibrations.

La course à l’abîme (1992)

GSch : In L’homme sans ombre (The man without a shadow), I wanted to imitate the effect of images painted directly under the camera, as in the films of Florence Miailhe or Alexander Petrov, where you can see traces of previous brushstrokes on part of the animated image. I like to control everything before making the film and not improvise as you would when working directly under the camera. That requires a lot of experience, and in L’homme sans ombre, I did a first painting. Then I superimposed another cello and only changed what needed to move. So most of the time, there are about six drawings superimposed.

L’homme sans ombre (2004)

GS : It’s a way of setting painting to music, that is, giving it different rhythms, different tensions, and so on. Is this conscious?

GSch :When I make large drawings, when you look at them from a distance, they vibrate a little. When you’re up close, at 12 frames per second, they vibrate a lot. It also depends on the subject. If there is a flat surface, there will be less vibration than if there is a lot going on. On the contrary, if there are elements that move, we see the movement of these elements more than the vibrations, in the sense that the vibration is more obvious and visible in a more static scene.

L’année du daim (1995)

EN : I was wondering when these camera movements were made. Some films can be summed up as a large animated picture in which you move around before a big zoom out reveals the whole picture. How was all this planned in advance during the writing stage? Has it evolved in line with current techniques and technologies compared to what was available in 1974?

GSch :In the film Le sujet du tableau, at one point we see grass moving, trees swaying in the wind, and birds in the sky. I simply created a one-and-a-half-second animation and then moved the camera in a spiral from the wheat field to the trees and the sky.

Le sujet du tableau (1989)

That’s what gave me the idea for La course à l’abîme. It’s a very large drawing divided into 36 rectangles, and you move in a spiral from one square to another. But the square itself also moves, so you don’t see that you’re moving from one square to another; it transforms, and every six seconds, you’re in a different place. So, throughout the journey, you can’t see that it’s a cycle. And when you step back and see the whole thing, you may or may not understand that it’s an image that repeats itself every six seconds, or 144 drawings. You see the beginning and the end of the film at the same time.

La course à l’abîme (1992, excerpt from Filmonographie 1974-2020)

I reused the process 14 years later in the film Jeu, also with large drawings divided into only nine parts. The idea is that when you finish the spiral and step back to see the whole, that whole itself is one-ninth of another cycle, and so on. I made nine different cycles to music by Prokofiev. The rhythm of the music corresponds to a tempo of 160. This corresponds to 4 x 9 = 36. That’s why I made cycles of 36 images, which respond to the rhythm of the music.

Jeu (2006)

The music never matches the image exactly because it wasn’t a computer playing it, and sometimes I have to double or delete an image to stay in sync. While doing this, I thought I could do the same thing but in reverse. So at the end of the film, you see the same animation but in reverse order. I didn’t think of that at first. I thought of it later when I was filming.

Schémas et dessins préparatoires pour Jeu
(extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

I also used this technique in Le roi des Aulnes (The Erl-King). At the beginning, there is a cycle of galloping horses, we zoom in on one of the horses and the film continues like a classic animation. And, at the end, we zoom out and come to another cycle that corresponds to the end of the film. So, it’s the opposite. We start with a small image and then arrive at the whole, and the film ends with a second cycle.

Le roi des Aulnes (2015)

Preparatory drawings, animation, and storyboard for Le roi des Aulnes
(excerpt from Filmonographie 1974-2020)

Obsessed with this idea of movement on a cycle, I also made another film based on Paolo Uccello’s painting, La bataille de San Romano (The Battle of San Romano). Unlike La course à l’abîme, for which I only had the music and this visual idea, I started with an existing image with the idea of destroying it and rebuilding it by creating a spiral inside it. There are also only 36 drawings, but they are large, and the music was composed afterwards by Judith Gruber-Stitzer.

La bataille de San Romano (2020)

In Le portrait de Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray), two different cycles tell a story. And I had this idea before I had a script. So I needed a story that was divided into two parts. In the first cycle, there is an image that is common to the other cycle, which is very different. This means that we move from one cycle to the other without realizing it. The dominant color is different, but we don’t know when the transition takes place. There’s the bright side of this young man who looks so handsome and innocent. And the other side that readers of the book know about, which explains why he stays young.
I think I’m going to stop with this idea of shifting cycles; this will be the last one I do like this.

Preparatory drawings for La bataille de San Romano
(excerpt from Filmonographie 1974-2020)

Z : I really like La bataille de San Romano. It’s one of my favorite films that you’ve made, and I can watch it over and over again.
There’s a very powerful effect when pieces of objects move in one direction in an anamorphic way and then reverse to return to their origin. It reminds me of Étienne-Jules Marey’s photographs. When you photograph a bird, for example, in some individual frames you can no longer recognize the object because it’s so distorted. It becomes a shape. You use this method of atomizing objects. The painting brings together all these objects in a single image in specific positions, which, in space, are very different from one another if you change their position. Like particles that make up a painting. This contributes to the very powerful hypnotic effect that you have exploited so well in the film.

Animation for La bataille de San Romano
(excerpt from Filmonographie 1974-2020)

GSch :It’s also one of my favorite films. Well, I was greatly helped by this magnificent painting. I bought a large reproduction of the painting when I was in my twenties and went to Florence with the Fine Arts school. I’m happy with the result of the film and the music too.

Z : You might find this absurd, but Gil Alkabetz’s film, Da Vinci Code, based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, also gives me the same feeling of uniqueness and diffusion in terms of rhythm and image decomposition, but in La bataille de San Romano, it’s a more magical universe. It’s more hypnotic, with this constant anamorphosis and the vertigo of objects moving back and forth.

Da Vinci Code, Gil Alkabetz (2009)

GSch : I loved this film by Gil Alkabetz, made in 2009, before La bataille de San Romano, which dates from 2017. 

GS : When did you decide to use a cycle of 36 drawings, for example?

GSch :There is a lot of correspondence between tempos per minute and the classic rhythm of 24 frames per second in cinema. The best known is the tempo of 60 for the number of seconds per minute, or 120 for the number of half-seconds per minute. There are also 8 frames, 9 frames, 10 frames, 12 frames, 16 frames, 18, 20, 24, and 32 frames that correspond to tempos. In the film Retouches, I started with the idea of a long cycle, i.e., a wave, of 48 frames going out and 48 frames coming back, for a total cycle of 96 frames. But within this cycle, there were also 32, 24, 16, 12, and 8. Everything that happens in the film is based on different cycles, but all of them can be included in 96: a tennis player, a runner, birds… The hurdle jump is done in 8 frames, 8 frames, 16 frames, and so on, to complete the course. I made the entire film without music, and then Normand Roger composed the music for the film. He didn’t follow the logic of the images exactly; he used a ternary rhythm, even though 16 cannot be divided into three. But it was a good idea. It creates a distance between the drawings and the music. I was very happy with the music he composed for this film.

Retouches (2008)

Schéma pour Retouches

GS : Visually, with this arithmetic, if you put very contrasting images, in black and white for example, and next to them, on the same rhythmic canvas, you put very pale images with little contrast, it produces a different feeling. This is perhaps where a graphic universe (I don’t like to use the word “style”) comes into play, quite assertive with the dark background and colors added on top.

GSch :Yes. There is no white, or very rarely. I’m more concerned with how to move from one shot to another in the most elegant way possible, or in a way that I like. The question of contrast depends on the subjects. I choose colors that I like. There are no rules.

GS : The spirals and proportions you use are forms that can also be found in music. Do you sometimes consciously try to reproduce, for example, the form of the sonata, or the form of the fugue with structures such as inversion, repetition, variation on a theme, symmetry, which music uses a lot?

Fugue (1998)

GSch : I’m not a musician, but I use musical structures such as intertwined rhythms, like two eighth notes that make a quarter note, two quarter notes that make a half note. I do the same thing with the rhythms of animation. Even if I don’t have music, I like to respect these rhythms and this regularity in animation. And if I do have music, it gives the rhythm and the whole structure of the film.

Animation pour Fugue
(extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

WH :Returning to the question of contrasts raised by Georges Sifianos, there is one film in which the choice of colors is not simply a matter of taste. This is Fugue, which mainly features scenes with bold colors—blue, yellow, or red—contrasting with certain sequences in black and white. This produces highly contrasting images, in the style of the Fauves.

Fugue (1998)

GSch : For Fugue, the initial idea was to make a drawn fugue. But since I’m not a musician, what I made wasn’t a fugue. Then, the idea was to take the primary colors—red, blue, and yellow—and gradually mix them together to get all the colors. But I liked the result with the primary colors so much that I ended up making almost the entire film using only those three colors. Michèle Bokanowski, whom I had met at the Annecy festival during a retrospective of her husband Patrick Bokanowski’s work, was to compose the music for the film. I really liked Patrick Bokanowski’s films and I realized that it was his wife who did the music. I asked her if she would agree to do the music for my film, Fugue. But when I finished the film and she saw the images, she told me that it wasn’t a fugue, but rather variations. And so she did the music. I had previously edited my film to Beethoven’s Heroic Variations and Fugues, thinking that if I didn’t like her music, I could always fall back on that as a Plan B. But in the end, even though she didn’t compose a fugue, but variations, I chose her music. It’s better to have original music that I found very beautiful.

Michèle Bokanowski (photo : Patrick Bokanowski)

GS : You have stated several times that you are not a musician, yet practically all your films are based on music. All your films are musical. You are immersed in a musical world, and you have a son who is now very well known as a musician.

GSch :Yes. I listen to classical music all the time, but I’m not a musician. When I see a painting, I know immediately what it is, what period it’s from, and who the artist is. With music, it’s vague. I either like it or I don’t. I find it difficult to analyze. My son has helped me understand musical phrases and the composition of a piece more easily. Otherwise, I have to listen to it many times to understand it. I don’t play an instrument. I don’t have a very good ear either.

Louis Schwizgebel-Wang (photo : Tatler)

Isabel Aboim Inglez :This conversation reminds me of Kandinsky. In Georges’ films and Kandinsky’s paintings, there is a tension with music and an understanding of music. I don’t know if Kandinsky was a musician. Unlike Georges, it’s not always figurative, but the use of colors, without contours, is sometimes similar. The way the shapes dissolve.

Improvisation 3, Vassily Kandinsky (1909)

WH : The use of geometry also brings Kandinsky to mind.

GS : In some of Kandinsky’s early works, there are dark backgrounds and light colors, and the shapes are outlined against the background.
Have you ever thought about the connection with Kandinsky?

GSch :No, not really, but I really like painting, and when I make a film, I do my research, I look at lots of images and paintings that give me ideas.

WH :Generally speaking, even if there is no immediate reference to Kandinsky, there is the whole legacy of modernism and all those painters who explored matter, color, and form. Except that in Georges Schwizgebel’s work, this is brought into play through movement, metamorphosis, anamorphosis, cycles, and loops, thanks to the specific mechanisms of animation.

D’une peinture… à l’autre (2023)

GS : Well, you may not be a musician, but do you feel like a dancer? Because in your films, the camera dances, the space dances almost constantly. This mobility of space, sometimes more naturalistic, sometimes more abstract, is a very important ingredient in your films. 

GSch : Dance and animation share the dimension of movement, the visual dimension, and the relationship to music.

Chemin faisant (2012)

GS : Norman McLaren wanted to be a dancer, but since he was shy, he took refuge behind drawing and the camera.

GSch :I like dancing. Or rather, I used to like dancing. I don’t dance much anymore. I see this connection between animation and dance. Choreography is also important for animation.

Animation pour Chemin faisant
(extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

GS : But it’s not a choreography of dancing elements, it’s a choreography of space. It’s the space that dances, or the camera in a way.

GSch :Precisely, since we’re working in two dimensions, we want to imitate the third dimension, to make movements in space. When I talk about camera movements, it’s not the camera that moves, but the drawing that imitates camera movements more or less accurately.
With computers, it was a bit the opposite: there are so many possibilities that you have to choose. Whereas when you only have a pencil and paper, you have to try to go beyond those possibilities.

WH : There is a real tension, as in modernist painting, between flatness and depth. And in certain sequences of transformation, the viewer’s gaze is trapped in this transition between depth and ultimately something that reveals itself as a flat drawing. This produces spaces à la Maurits Cornelis Escher, which create hollowed-out spaces that are not entirely realistic, but rather geometric or abstract in nature.

Séquence extraite de 78 tours (1985)

GS :Does this connection with Escher’s universe speak to you?

GSch :People have often told me that it’s like animated Escher, because I also like impossible shapes. When I was working in an advertising agency, I designed a poster for the European Leisure Biennial featuring an impossible triangle. In Fugue, there are impossible volumes and unusual movements in space.

Poster for the European Leisure Biennial (1970)

Fugue (1998)

Z : There are many publications on the relationship between painting and music. One of the most relevant is Peter Vergo’s The Music of Painting, which focuses on painters such as Paul Klee, Kandinsky and Mondrian.

Vincent Gilot :In animation, we use cycles of 12 frames, but not cycles of 12.74 hundredths of a frame. Whereas in music, with Bach, it’s very regular, but the beat is internal, it can take fractions of a second. In cinema, we are always bound by, at best, a 60th of a frame, if we start with films with a frequency of 60 frames. But generally in 24, that means we do 6, 8, 9, 16. It’s very artificial.
When I showed your films to the students at La Cambre, I showed them the essence of animation, the fascinating and incredible pure mental construction that completely leaves reality behind because the rhythm is crazy. In real life, I’ve never met anyone who walks at 12 frames per second because, as soon as you rotoscope, you realize that they don’t walk at 12 frames per second, whereas in animation, they walk at a defined pace. This artificiality is what makes animation so rich. And your films really bring that out. In La course à l’abîme, there is an abyss into which we plunge and we are caught up in a phenomenon that is beyond us, which is not simply a transcription of reality, but pure creation.

GS: I wonder if, in animation, we can have something equivalent to the “cycles of 12 frames and 74 hundredths of a frame,” as in Bach’s work, which Vincent mentions, or proportions that are less rigorous than those that result mechanically from the division of film into frames. In any case, this concerns the way in which the images will be perceived.

If I take these color samples, for example, we can see that they don’t all give the impression of being at the same level of depth. Some are brighter, even aggressive, while others fade into the background.
If we color the figures in an animation with this flashy green, we will probably—I would say certainly—perceive the duration differently than we would if we painted the figures with the brown at the bottom, which does not stand out.
The vitality of a color should add something to the duration of its perception. This is what I was referring to earlier when I mentioned “high-contrast images in black and white alongside very pale, low-contrast images on the same rhythmic canvas”…

Storyboard and sketch for La course à l’abîme.
(excerpt from Filmonographie 1974-2020)

Z : In Goethe’s poem, The Erl-King, which inspired your film of the same name, we know that the child dies. But in the film, there is still some doubt.

GSch :People who have been educated in German all know the first and last lines of the poem, which ends with the death of the child [Editor’s note: In seinen Armen das Kind war tot. In his arms the child was dead.]. So we can’t really change the ending of the film or the story. Fortunately, the music is very beautiful.
With regard to this film, I sometimes explain that when you make a film based on music, it’s difficult to make a narrative film because the music evokes lots of ideas, which may be different for each person. We are captivated by the music. But for The Erl-King, Schubert wrote this music based on the poem. So it was easy to remove the lyrics and replace them with images to make an animated film without dialogue.

Le roi des Aulnes (2015)

Z : You can really feel that vertigo in the film.

GSch :Of all the films I’ve made, this one has been the most successful. It won four major awards and made me a lot of money. That didn’t happen with the other films. Someone told my son that it was the first time they had ever seen Goethe’s story told so well. I was afraid that people who didn’t know the story wouldn’t understand the film. I myself loved the music without knowing anything about the story.
It was my son who, one day in China, had to explain to the audience what he was going to play, and he talked about the poem. That’s when I had the idea and said to myself that this was exactly what I was going to do: replace the words of the poem with images.
Some students from Taiwan came to my studio in Geneva. I showed them the line test for the film and asked them what they understood. There were lots of different stories. One believed, for example, that there were several generations. The film wasn’t in color, of course. I changed a lot of things after their comments to identify what could be perceived as red herrings. At one point, there was a portrait of a queen, which was a red herring: it had nothing to do with the story.

Le roi des Aulnes (2015)

WH : You mentioned students. Vincent talked about showing your films to students. And indeed, these films also serve as a kind of educational toolbox, in that they address all the challenges of animation by taking advantage of all the expressive possibilities of the discipline: rhythm, the relationship to sound, transformation. It’s no coincidence that this meeting is part of the Beatbit platform, since all of this is brought into play on the site through the sequences that Zepe has produced with students.
Have you conducted any educational experiments in workshops or schools?

GSch :Not really, because I’ve never taught. I’ve sometimes been invited as a guest speaker, for example at La Poudrière, where they don’t have teachers but invite specialists in the field of cinema.

EN : Many of your films are based on a work of art—painting, music, literature. Are these pre-existing works really the primary inspiration, or does it come more from a visual idea around animation? Obviously, it’s always difficult to imagine how the premises of an idea come about.

GSch : It depends on the film. The idea for my first film, Le vol d’Icare, came from neon signs. I thought it would be nice to animate these dots with harpsichord music by François Couperin. As if each dot were a note. There was no particular work that inspired me to make this film.
At the time, in 1974, people thought it was done on a computer. I replied that you couldn’t do gradients like in the film on a computer, and at the time, that was true.

Dessins préparatoires et procédé pour Le vol d’Icare (1974)
(extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

The idea for the second film, Perspectives, came from an observation. During a vacation in Greece, I filmed a friend walking from a balcony, and I realized afterwards that at the beginning you see her from the front and at the end she is from behind in roughly the same place on the screen, and that by modifying it a little, I could make it into a cycle. That became the initial idea for creating a cycle. I added one or two other cycles using rotoscoping to a prelude by Bach.

Perspectives (1970)

Schéma et image de référence pour Perspectives
(extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

Then, in Hors-jeu, I also used rotoscoping. Why did I use rotoscoping? In the film Yellow Submarine, the sequence Lucy in the sky with diamonds is rotoscoped, and I found it so beautiful that it made me want to use this technique. And it’s also quite appealing because the movement is perfect. After that, I stopped using rotoscoping because it has the limitations of continuous shooting, and I prefer to draw by hand rather than trace reality.

Séquence extraite de Hors-jeu (1977)

For the fourth film, Le ravissement de Frank N. Stein (The rapture of Frank N. Stein), the idea came from meeting a musician, Michael Horowitz, who was doing something similar to animation. For example, he would record someone speaking, then remove all the vowels and edit the sound. We wanted to work together. He created sounds that I listened to, then I made images that he looked at. And, little by little, the film was built piece by piece, born from a collaboration between a musician and me.

Le ravissement de Frank N. Stein (1982)

Storyboard and preliminary sketch for Le ravissement de Frank N. Stein
(excerpt de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

For the fifth film, 78 tours (78 RPM), it wasn’t a work of art to begin with either. I had an old 78 rpm record. I simply had the idea of showing things that spin or that we spin around. It would have been a bit of a stylistic exercise. But there is vaguely a story with two points of view, one where the viewer is in the music and one where we see where the music comes from.

78 tours (1985)

Reference image and diagram for 78 tours
(excerpt from Filmonographie 1974-2020)

Quand j’ai réalisé Le Sujet du tableau et que je suis parti de la peinture de Vermeer, L’atelier du peintre. que j’ai eu l’idée de traverser des peintures et, dans ce film, il y a beaucoup de références à des peintures existantes.

When I made Le Sujet du tableau  (The subject of the painting) and started with Vermeer’s painting, L’atelier du peintre (The painter’s studio), I had the idea of crossing through paintings, and in this film there are many references to existing paintings.

Le sujet du tableau (1989)

Story board et image de référence pour Le sujet du tableau
(extrait de Filmonographie 1974-2020)

WH : I will conclude by mentioning the book published in 2020, Filmonographie 1974-2020, published by Hélice Hélas and La 5e Couche, which traces 36 years of films. It is published in Chinese, and I imagine that Georges will be going there to launch the book.

Filmonographie 1974-2020 (Hélice Hélas – La 5e Couche, 2020)

GSch : Yes, that’s why I’m going there. I’m also going to do a workshop with students from the Beijing Film Academy of Animation. I’m going to explain to them how to create movement in a cycle, as in many of my films. The first time I did this workshop was in Japan. Then I was asked to do it several times in France, in Fontevraud for example. In Beijing, I’m also going to suggest, as in the film Retouches, creating a cycle and moving the reference points so that something moves in the setting and, ultimately, it’s the setting that moves around that thing. I’ve prepared a few examples. What’s quite handy is that in a few days, everyone has a 20- to 30-second film.

Presentation of the Chinese edition of the book, Filmonography 1974-2025, at the Tanko Mentougou district cinema hall of the First Youth Film Center in Beijing on November 6, 2025. First signed copy.

]]> https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-georges-schwizgebel/feed/ 0 TEACHING ANIMATION: OTTO ALDER https://beatbit.org/research/teaching-animation-otto-alder-2/ Fri, 10 Oct 2025 09:06:54 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=3745

TEACHING ANIMATION: OTTO ALDER

Otto Alder: There are three subjects and before we go into these different subjects I’d like to give some ideas about my notion of animation in general and then we can go to the questions of animated documentary, teaching animation and maybe animation festivals.
Everything I say is not based on academic research. My Approach, what I’m talking about, is coming from an experience of working in animation for festivals, teaching, making my own animated films. So it’s more like my personal experiences.

OttoAlder-600x450

Georges Sifianos: Can you present your career and your evolution?

OA: I will first expose some ideas about animation in general. I will try to put down some ideas about what animation is because then we’ll have an idea of what I am talking about.
For me, animation is a specific form of medium film. Let’s say animation is a subgenre of film but the primacy of the visual design elements is more important compared to live action. Then we have the phenomenon of picture migration or picture motion and, at the same time, the phenomenon of the psychologization of these images, of these visual configurations.

Animation by Michael Frei –  Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

I mentioned the predominance of visual form, which offers endless possibilities for personal expression. And the most important thing, especially when we will discuss animated documentaries, is the distance from reality. Animation has a very clear distance to reality. We see from the first frame on the screen that this is not reality. Particularly in the field of drawing animation, but also in other techniques such as puppet animation, the GEK is a specific configuration of animation. For me, animation is a form of imaginative reflection of reality.

Animation by Michael Frei –  Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

Animation is always grounded in reality, but full of imagination. Animation is a sensual reflection in the form of descriptive metaphors. Thus, animation is not a cinematic reproduction of reality, but a cinematic illusion mediated by imaginative processes as a totality of audiovisual events. Animation is a synthesis of autarchic art forms. So animation is embracing all art forms such as sound, music, fine art, sculpture, architecture, etc. Of course technically we have this clear definition of the frame by frame technique which is different to live action. Animation is a technological variation of cinematographic representations. Animation is a continuous cinematographic montage of single images. However, access to single images is very important and we need to discuss this, particularly in relation to technological developments (digitisation, etc.)

Animation by Michael Frei –  Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

Animation is a rythmityzing of relations between sound and image. There is no original sound in animation which makes a clear difference to live action and which is also very important for the discussion about the documentaries. We can highlight the diversity of artistic options and independent artistic configurations in animation art for the spatio-temporal processes that underlie an artistic idea and in terms of content. Fyodor Khitruk says animation is the shortest way from the figure to mind and from thought to gestalt.
We can now talk about teaching.

Animation by Michael Frei –  Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

I taught at the University of Lucerne. When I started, it wasn’t yet a university, but a high school where studies lasted four years. In 2007, this school adopted the Bologna system: six semesters for a bachelor’s degree and two semesters for a master’s degree. It also introduced the ex-system and modulation of teaching.

My course focused primarily on the history and aesthetics of animation. During the first two years of study, students were required to take courses in the history of animation and the history of film. In addition to these theoretical subjects, they could take many other courses, such as art history, which were not required and which they could choose themselves.

Master Animation – Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

During the first semester, they had eight interviews with me, each lasting 45 minutes.
The third year was devoted to writing a theoretical thesis on a subject of their own choosing.

When the Bologna-Erasmus programme was launched in 2007, the idea was to synchronise teaching with practical work. The practical course began with drawing animation, then moved on to puppet animation, cut-out animation and other experimental techniques, similar to the way Paul Bush teaches experimental animation, for example. My teaching was very flexible: each of my courses consisted of four highly flexible modules, so that if there was a change in the practical part, I could easily react and adapt my teaching. In addition to the practical part of the teaching, I also tried to integrate real-life situations into the animation. For example, if a film from our school won an award somewhere, we would incorporate it into the course, watch the film and discuss it.

Master Animation – Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

My objectives were primarily to help students gain self-awareness and, of course, to impart theoretical and historical knowledge and the link between visual and auditory skills. At the end of their studies, they should be able to find their place, both theoretically and practically, in the field of animation. Students must understand that they must be themselves and not follow other ideas or concepts; they must therefore find them themselves.

The teaching methods were very theory-based, but what interested me most was the teamwork. In the end, it seems to me that it was the students themselves who created all the educational content, because from one class to the next, they were given homework assignments, had to research a given subject and present it at the next session. It was also group work, so they formed teams and worked on these subjects not during class, but in their free time.

Master Animation – Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

My main concern in my teaching was that it should be illustrated by as many films as possible, both classic and contemporary. All these films have always been the basis for discussions during the class. It was actually very interesting to see how the students really took these personal studies to heart and how they brought their own ideas to their learning.

Of course, you all know that technological development over the past 25 years has been very rapid. In the beginning, I worked with 16 mm film, so it was very difficult to obtain copies of the films we were discussing. But with the development of VHS and DVD, up to digital platforms, everything is now widely accessible.

In addition to teaching, I created a library containing a literary canon and a film canon that students could access at any time. They could use them for their own studies and content. Of course, we started with pre-cinema, beginning with cave paintings and scrolls from Japanese art history.

GS: Emakimono.

Emakimono

OA: Yes, exactly. Then, of course, all the optical toys that appeared, technical developments, the genesis of animation from its earliest forms to its beginnings, perhaps with the first American animations.

For sound, I usually invited someone more qualified than myself, who taught the practical aspects of sound.

Then I retraced the history: from the Lanterna Magica to the avant-garde, such as Norman McLaren, the entire historical situation, mainly illustrated by cinematographic examples.

This structure is probably applied in a similar way at other universities.

At first, it was difficult to find someone to teach history. There weren’t many opportunities to exchange experiences. I kind of created my own system, which is modular, flexible and open to students’ ideas.

Norman McLaren, Neighbours (Voisins), 1952

Zepe: It was very interesting when you talked about how difficult it was to find films in the 1970s and 1980s. You had to go to the embassies of certain countries to obtain films, such as those from the National Film Board of Canada. At my school, we could watch about ten films a year, no more. Fifty years later, I feel like they show too many. Today, there is so much content on YouTube or Vimeo that if a teacher does not carefully select and present certain films, texts, or other materials based on their own experience, the sheer volume of content online makes it almost impossible for students to form an opinion. I think it’s better to have too little than too much.

Personally, I present films using a non-chronological and non-technical approach, because I believe it is useful to see moving images connected to each specific experience. I do not teach the history of animation from its beginnings to the present day, because that is practically impossible anyway.

Isabel Aboim Inglez: To have History we must have it in right which is what defines History. We put it in right to refer to a certain period of time. So History is made by historians. I don’t know if there are many historians of animation. History of animation should be in a chronological approach on a timeline of events. It is not a reflection on animation. I came from cinema studies and, for me, animation is cinema. How, then, should we think about the representation of the world through cinema? It begins with cinema where we have cinema. Other forms may have existed before, but they weren’t cinema. For me, animation is cinema and it’s a specific form of representation. ‘Real’ images, taken from live action – as they say, because no image is real, as you know – are linked to certain models of representation, more likely to be close to the referent. The difference with animation is that it is close to representation. It therefore offers the freedom to do whatever you want with the medium of cinema. Animation is free cinema. Total manipulation is the freedom to do whatever you want within the frame and to conceive of it in a temporal manner.

Otto said that it’s mainly a visual medium but for me it’s an audiovisual medium and a temporal medium. That’s the difference. It doesn’t stick in the frame, it’s beyond the frame. In cinema I don’t like to have everything in little boxes. 

I try to explain to students about creative impulse, and we have different impulses depending on the period, even in cinema. At the beginning of cinema, there was immense freedom to do whatever you wanted with forms and frames. Then, when cinema began to develop its own language, the freedom was kind of put in the right way to do it (this freedom was, in a way, appropriately established?).

In animation, as we can do whatever we like, we can have different times in the same line of story. It’s very creative and the freedom of representation is total. As Jacques Aumont, and also Eisenstein, said, animation is total cinema.

I try to mix these impulses of representation to obtain something abstract, more related to a reference or more plastic and we can also organise things in the manner of live cinema. For me, it’s the same thing.

Esthétique du film, Jacques Aumont, Alain Bergala, Michel Marie, Marc Vernet, 1999

OA: Do you mean in the field of production or in the field of perception?

IAI: In the field of creation.

OA: But when we talk about perception, there are some differences.

IAI: Today, thanks to computer-generated imagery (CGI), nearly two-thirds of images are created by computer.

The model of representation is more likely to be found in the reference or in the representation itself, as Gombrich said.

OA: I would make a difference anyway in the perception. When you see live action, you have the illusion of reality.

IAI: I could give you lots of examples that call this type of board into question. For me Superman is fiction, everything is fiction, documentary is fiction. 

OA: I agree about this.

The horse in motion, Eadweard Muybridge, 1878

Z: To prepare for this meeting, Otto sent a selection of films that begins with Eadweard Muybridge’s horse. For me, this raises the key question for this interview: what is a document, what is fiction, and what is animation? It is an excellent starting point for our conversation and for defining what animation is. More than a century ago, movement was suggested, and people could already understand that they were looking at separate photographs linked together. It was a technique that created moving images, but at the time, it was unclear whether it should be considered animation, fiction, or documentary.

Soon after, everything became more concrete. Until the 1920s, cinema as we know it today did not exist; everything was more ambiguous or fluid. Muybridge’s early experiments in Palo Alto already suggested animation that could not be anything other than cinema. As you say, everything is fiction – I agree. You also say that animation is total cinema, but it might not have become cinema as we know it since the 1920s. If not so strongly influenced by fiction, animation could have developed into something completely different.

This is why I always react negatively when people say that animation is just fiction. We are very dependent on fiction juries, live-action film professors, and professionals who work exclusively in live action and dismiss animation as a curiosity. We rarely talk about animation for its own sake. We rarely talk about animation outside of cinema – yet animation does exist outside of cinema.

The horse in motion, Eadweard Muybridge, 1878

IAI: But the definition of cinema does not consist of presenting things in a narrative manner. Like literature, there are many ways to make films. Placing cinema in a casual (action/ reaction) timeline is not good for cinema. It is only one way of making films. Software is designed to do things chronologically, but we can do it differently. When you say that Muybridge’s photographs are the first film, for me, that’s not the case. They are images in motion, but they are not cinema. If I go to a nightclub and see images everywhere, that’s not cinema. They are just images in motion. You can make films without having a three-act story. You can make films like literature or poetry, or like a new romance. I don’t need a beginning at the beginning and an end at the end.

Z: You’re right, but I usually perceive two main ways of defining animation: either as closely tied to fiction and cinema, or as an independent form of expression. It’s strange to define animation as total freedom within cinema.

When I say that Muybridge’s Palo Alto experiments would be interesting to discuss, it’s not because I see them as fiction films, documentaries, or animated films, but simply because they are a starting point for talking about movement. The Horse in motion is not fiction at all. It is, as you say, images in motion. At that time, cinema had not yet been defined.

OA: Muybridge’s Horse in motion is not Cinema, is not animation because at that time cinema was not yet fully developed. It was photography, and Eadweard Muybridge’s initial idea was to prove that this horse did not touch the ground with any of its hooves.

Later, he put the images in order at a rate of 24 frames per second, I think, maybe 12, I’m not sure. He had 24 cameras. When he was able to put those 24 images in sequence and project them, it looked more or less like a cinema film at that point.

La sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon, Louis & Auguste Lumière, 1895

But cinema really began with Louis and Auguste Lumière and Georges Méliès. From the outset, they took two different directions: one was documentary, so to speak, and the other was fiction. Both were live-action films. Animation is not live action.

When they saw that they could put photographed reality in sequence in newspapers, they may have realised that they could put photographs in sequence, and perhaps they could put drawings in sequence, and that moment may have been the beginning of animated cinema. Perhaps. I’m not sure.

L’homme à la tête de caoutchouc, Georges Méliès, 1901

IAI: There is Joseph Plateau.

OA: Of course. And Étienne-Jules Marey. This is pre cinema.

We can now speak about animated documentaries.

Cavalier arabe, Étienne-Jules Marey, 1887

Z: Animated documentaries have become popular today. In the list of films you sent before this meeting, there are films that rely heavily on voice. If we think of The street by Caroline Leaf, The owl who married a goose, or even Conversation pieces by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, the directors used voices. But it is very difficult to classify these as animated documentaries that follow documentary practices. I honestly don’t know how to define an animated documentary. I can tell when a film feels more like a documentary than fiction, but I don’t really know how the distinction between documentary and fiction applies to animation. What we do know is that the processes involved in animation are very different, and that animation can give a documentary a more subjective and unique expression.

In Otto’s selection, I think two films qualify as animated documentaries.

Conversation pieces – Sales pitch, Peter Lord and David Sproxton, 1983

International Leipzig Festival for Documentary (Photo: Friedrich Gahlbeck – Bundesarchiv Bild 183-G1112-0014-001), 1968

OA: I used to work for the festival in Leipzig, which is traditionally a documentary festival, and I was director of the animation section. I don’t know why they also presented animation. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was a very important festival for the German Democratic Republic. However, there was a clash between animated films and documentaries. And when I made the selection for animated films, I realised that many of them had a similar approach to documentaries. So I thought that if I worked in this place where animation and documentary filmmaking meet, I could try to initiate a discussion between documentary filmmakers and animation filmmakers, but it didn’t work out. I didn’t succeed. Documentary filmmakers had serious reservations, perhaps still considering animation to be a field reserved for children.

I compiled a programme of animated films and called it ‘Animated Documentary’. The idea was to show the audience films that straddle the imaginary boundary between reality and fiction. It was at that point that I began to work with the term ‘animated documentary’.

DOK Leipzig in 2002 (Wikipedia)

If we examine these films, which are considered animated documentaries, we can see, as you have already mentioned, that most of them are very wordy, as they are often based on interviews or dialogues. Animation then becomes a kind of tool when visual material is lacking and is used to reconstruct the visual aspect of the documentary, a kind of illustration of the interviews and stories that took place. This is perhaps the main problem with what we might call this “genre”.

But I don’t think these films are documentaries. They are possibly special effects for documentary films. 

IAI: These are ‘inside’ films. They are very fashionable and resemble a stream of consciousness, like Virginia Woolf, Clarice Lispector or James Joyce, but for cinema. With this stream, the images flow and the animation serves the stream of consciousness very well. It is a cinematic essay.

Whatever the weather (Bei Wind und Wetter), Remo Scherrer, 2016

Z: In Remo Scherrer’s film Whatever the weather (Bei Wind und Wetter), included in Otto’s selection, the viewer oscillates between things he recognizes and things he doesn’t. The atmosphere it creates—everything about it—feels close to a documentary.

In Das Leben ist eines der Leichtesten by Nyffenegger Marion, something really works. It’s not especially pleasant, but it works. As a hybrid process, it sustains a documentary quality.

In any case, it is very difficult to define what makes an animated film a documentary. How do you define a documentary, Isabel?

Das Leben ist eines der Leichtesten, Nyffenegger Marion, 2019

IAI: I will return to the example of literature: journalistic writing is not literature, but I can approach it in a more literary way. The purpose of writing – I say writing, but I could say animation – is neither journalistic nor historical. It is an artistic introduction to a point of view. Animated documentaries are therefore an original way of looking at and talking about events that could have – I don’t like the word “real” – a historical or geographical reference. It is always the point of view that takes precedence in an original way of talking about it. The street, by Caroline Leaf, talks about death, for instance.

The street, Caroline Leaf, 1976

Z: What attracts me most about documentaries is diversity. A documentary interests me when it presents different points of view and arouses curiosity. It’s not really “a document” in the sense of capturing the right time and place. It’s the opposite: a floating truth that we can never fully grasp. The approach is therefore more open. There is something we can follow, something with its own direction.

By contrast, animation is not a diaristic practice, where you observe, record, edit, and repeat. These fields are so different that I often wonder how they can connect.

IAI: It is a balance between connotation and denotation. In animation, we draw the flow and connection of thought. The approach to events is more on the side of connotation.

Story of a crime, Fedor Khitruk, 1962

OA: Can we not agree that documentaries are all non-fiction formats, like factual films? There is always a subjective approach on the part of the filmmaker. In the selection I made, there are two interesting films by Fedor Khitruk: one is Story of a crime, which is not a documentary, but Khitruk told me that he had read an article about these events in a newspaper.

IAI: You know Rembrandt’s J’accuse by Peter Greenaway. He’s also looking for a crime. It could be a documentary done during a retrospective.

Rembrandt’s J’accuse, Peter Greenaway, 2008

OA: Yes!
The other film by Fedor Khitruk is Film film film, about animated film making and he told me he got an award in Venice and he met Billy Wilder who told him ‘your film is the best documentation about film making’. 

IAI: The balance between the two fields is very difficult to determine. You know, I’m a photography teacher and I don’t believe that photography is a document, even photojournalistic photography. Tell us about a way of seeing things that is perhaps not reality, that is only one reality among others or a possible reality. Only oranges, granny apples or red apples in crates are a document. Photography is not a document because it’s partial.

Film, film, film,  Fedor Khitruk, 1968

GS: You have several years’ experience of festivals, which has enabled you to see many films with different approaches. Can you tell us about this experience?

OA: Categorisation is always problematic. Everything is in flow in the combined mix.

Forty years ago, the categories were clearer. That’s no longer possible today. In terms of animated documentaries, all these films have a very individual approach. None of them are identical in the way they are created. And there are a lot of very bad animated documentaries because, as I said earlier, they are very language-laden. They are based on language, which is different from animation, which can tell a story without voice-over or dialogue. Whereas these films, which are mainly language-based, are subject to certain restrictions in terms of distribution, because you have to understand their language. They are mainly subtitled in English, but they are so overloaded with words that you have no chance of following them. At the same time, the images are often very poor and uncreative, with no professional approach. This language problem is the same in live action films. In animation I could observe that most of the films are very language heavy.

Maybe the term ‘essay’ that Isabel brought up is much better than the term animated documentary. On the other hand, a document is always neutral for me. It must be a fact. Animation is not a document for me.

Story of a crime, Fedor Khitruk, 1962

GS: When we speak of document or documentary, we are referring to evidence. Until now, the naturalistic photographic image was considered to be evidence, and this was its main distinction. But today we have images generated by deep fake, animated photorealistic images in motion that we cannot distinguish from reality. Everything is now the same. Everything is “fake”, personally made, subjectively. We need a new definition of the representation of reality. Photographic naturalism no longer has any value as proof. We are in the same field as animation.

Story of a crime by Fedor Khitruk is a subjective way of talking about a crime. It is not proof. What can replace proof? 

OA: I like this approach. There are a lot of answers. 

GS: Otto you made a documentary on Fedor Khitruk, The spirit of genius. Can you talk about the relation between animation and documentary? you have this experience concrete.

The spirit of genius, Otto Alder, 1999

OA: I was lucky enough to make this film. My initial approach was to make a documentary about Fedor Khitruk, who is an animator and filmmaker. During the process and afterwards, I realised that it was perhaps an attempt to reach certain conclusions that might be documents. Today, 20 years later, I wouldn’t say that it’s exclusively a documentary film, because I’ve had the opportunity to integrate animation into it, namely the work of Fedor Khitruk, of course, which is far from being a simple document.

There are no more categories. Genres are dissolved or merged into one another. These days you can put everything together: fiction, documentary, animation and so on. And in animation, there is a wide variety of artistic expression, so I still believe that animation is not at all the same thing as cinema, as Isabel said at the very beginning.

Blow up, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1967

Z: Everyone, now and perhaps always, has been trying to grasp an invisible film hidden within the film itself—as in Antonioni’s Blow-up: the photo is there, a crime has occurred, but you can’t prove it. We are always searching for something that isn’t directly in the film but beyond it. The way people approach fiction, documentary, or animation today creates something close to an unreachable object.

William works with people in prison. Maybe he wants to share his experience.

William Henne: The prisoners talked about the meaning of their sentence from their own point of view. We edited these interviews and they animated puppets in models that show their daily lives. It’s a kind of documentary because they animated their own lives and talked about their condition.

Le sens de la peine, Zorobabel, 2025

GS: Otto, you teach, you’ve organised a festival, you’re interested in theory, you make films. If we reverse the roles, what question would you like to ask Otto Alder?

OA: For the last five years, I’ve had no connection with teaching. My relationship with animation has become more distant. The question is, why did I do all these things?

Z: Animated images are now artificial.

OA: Technology is devouring every genre, from animation to film-making. Thanks to artificial intelligence and good prompts, it’s very easy to make a short film. When my students presented their thesis, they didn’t write it down any more. For me personally, that’s quite dangerous. On the other hand, I see the possibilities of this artificial intelligence. But it is the greatest theft of humanity by technological aristocrats who privatise knowledge and want to sell it on.

Play, Dorothy Pang (made with AI), 2025

IAI: With half a dozen students, we produce hybrid animation projects. And also animated series. I teach the final projects and they can make fiction, documentaries, experimental films and animation. I’m very happy to help them make these discoveries.

Analogue still has its rights. We make paper cut-outs, for example, and photocopies are making a comeback. But they also have a very good approach to digital. They’re not afraid to use it, even with lower quality formats like animated gifs.

Rencontre avec Otto Alder, Fantoche Festival, 2022 (Arttv)

OA: For festivals, artificial intelligence is good because they do not need to have any selection committees anymore.

My professional career in festivals began in 1986 in Stuttgart. I was an organiser and curator and was laid off in 1992. I was then lucky enough to be invited to work for the Leipzig Festival, where I worked from 1993 to 2015. At the same time, I set up Animated Dreams, a festival in Estonia. I left after three years, but it still exists. In 1994 we started to establish the Fantoche festival in Switzerland, which was completely different; it was a collective direction, which is very difficult. That festival still exists, but I’m no longer linked to any of these festivals.

What is the function of festivals? The history of festivals somehow started in 1929.

First Congress of independent film, from 2 to 6 september 1929 in La Sarraz in Switzerland, organised by the Revue du Cinéma, with Léon Moussinac, Walter Ruttmann, Bela Balazs, Sergueï Eisenstein, Hiroshi Higo, Hans Richter, Grigori Alexandrov, Janine Bouissounouse, Édouard Tissé, Jean-Georges Auriol, Fritz Rosenfeld, Alberto Cavalcanti, Moichirô Tsuchiya, Robert Aron and Ivor Montagu (photo: J. Felostein).

The first independent film congress was held in La Sarraz, Switzerland, with Alberto Cavalcanti, Walter Ruttman and Sergei Eisenstein. They discussed issues related to filmmaking and workshops were organised. A very short film was made, but it no longer exists today. I attended the early days of the festival in La Sarraz. Of course, live-action film festivals such as Venice, Berlin and Cannes had already been established. On the animation side, the history of festivals really began with the creation of the Annecy Animation Festival in 1961, on the initiative of artists and the ASIFA (International Animated Film Association) organisation. Then came Ottawa, Zagreb, Espinho, which was the first annual festival and was created during the Salazar era in Portugal. Then Hiroshima, Varna. They were controlled by ASIFA, which evaluated these festivals. ASIFA had clear rules regarding the selection process, juries, etc. These festivals were controllable because there weren’t very many of them.Later came the Holland Animation Film Festival, Stuttgart, and Brussels. Today, there is not only a tsunami of films, but also a tsunami of festivals. There is no longer any control possible.


ASIFA Prize 2021 recipient Otto Alder and ASIFA Secretary General Vesna Dovnikovic
(Photo: Animafest Zagreb)

Z: ASIFA was formed in 1960. What kind of association is it? Did it come from England, France, Germany…?

GS: It started in Cannes with an international group of filmmakers and critics, like Norman McLaren, Jiri Trnka, Georges Sadoul, Alexandre Alexeïef… They were not happy about how animation was represented in the Cannes Festival or other live action film festival. They moved in Annecy.

Z: What was the purpose of ASIFA?

OA: They sought to find the ideal venue to present animated films and independent art films in an appropriate manner, without categorising them as children’s films or comedies. They viewed animation as a serious artistic medium for personal expression and wanted to emphasise this aspect. They therefore sought a way to present animation in a concentrated form.

International Animation Day, affiche de Georges Schwizgebel, 2023

GS: At this congress, they discussed the definition of animation and attempted to explore the issue in greater depth. It was also a big family, because at that time, there was a separation between the two blocs during the Cold War, but animation always maintained contact and openness in the space between the two large communities on Earth.

Z: The Italians were greatly influenced by Russian, Polish, and Czech animation directors during the sixties and seventies. In Portugal, a man named Vasco Granja broadcast on national TV a large number of films, especially from the Zagreb school.

OA: What are the functions of festivals? 

  • They are art exhibitions or temporary artistic events that generally last a week. 
  • They bring together the most important and recent productions of the past year in a highly concentrated form. 
  • They are public events that can even bring a city like Annecy to a standstill for a week. 
  • International festivals are international showcases for the art of animation. 
  • At the same time, they are entertainment events. 
  • They award prizes. 
  • They must stimulate the senses.
  • Festivals are spaces for information, communication, discourse, interaction and education, with workshops and master classes. 
  • They are a meeting place for animation artists, who can exchange ideas.
  • They are important venues for the public. Of course, you can watch animations online, on a tablet or mobile phone, but most films are not designed for these media; they are made for the big screen.

It is very difficult to create and maintain a festival. You have to find sources of funding, national, local and regional sources that make up part of the funding, and then there is ticket sales and sometimes sponsorship. If you receive funding from companies, you know that they usually have expectations: they like to be present, they like to be seen, and this can sometimes cause problems. The easiest money to obtain is that which comes from ticket sales and public sources.

Zepe, you live in a country where animation, media and culture in general enjoy a very good reputation, and government officials understand the need to support them. There is no other country in Europe that resembles yours in terms of animation.

Ancien théâtre-casino sur le Pâquier à Annecy (photo: Jean-Pierre Lamy), juin 1963

Festivals are also disappearing. We have recently lost some very important festivals: first, the Holland Animation Film Festival (HAFF), which did not disappear for financial reasons, but because of intrigues within the festival’s board of directors and external influences; Animamundi, which is a typical case of dependence on sponsorship from the large Brazilian oil company Petrobras, which covered about 80% of expenses, but which became involved in political scandals and withdrew its sponsorship overnight; Then there is the very important Hiroshima Animation Festival, which disappeared after the Hiroshima government decided to withdraw all support.

Festivals are a very difficult subject, as we have very little research on them so far.

Holland Animation Film Festival (poster: Chris Ware), 1996

The main issue is, of course, the selection process, which is very influential. Being a director and being part of the selection committee are very influential positions. I always say that a director should not stay in the job for more than 10 years, otherwise things start to get critical. The people who make the selections decide what will be shown on screen and what will not. We are seeing an increase in the number of films. In Stuttgart, they receive more than 1,200 or 1,500 submissions, in Annecy many more. What happens to all the films that are not selected?

Stuttgart Trickfilm International Animated Film Festival, 2011

Festivals have the function of mixing the known and the unknown. Their function is to venture into unknown territory, to experiment and present aesthetic and technical innovations, but also to present the history of animation. Unfortunately, most festivals are not concerned with history, because it requires curation. However, this requires significant financial resources.
The more festivals there are, the more they seem to me to resemble convenience stores.
ASIFA evaluation has completely disappeared. There is no longer any evaluation or control of festivals. There is no longer any criticism of festivals or animated films, with a few exceptions perhaps. When you read articles about festivals, they talk about the number of tickets sold, the number of countries, the number of guests, but say nothing about the films.

Z: In your opinion, which festival best provides opportunities for authors and animation professionals to meet and exchange ideas? Which festivals do you think are most effective at inviting authors to present and reflect on their films?

OA: I would say small is beautiful! Annecy is embracing everything, you get just lost, there is no orientation, it’s not interesting for me. I cannot point out any Festival which is caring about this most.

Z: Animatou is a small festival where you can discuss the films.

OA: Yes. Maybe Fantoche, maybe Anima. There should be more interaction between directors, artists and audience.

There always are two creators of a film: the director and the spectator.

Krok Festival doesn’t exist anymore as far as I know. This festival was quite interesting because it was so intense: alcohol, drinking and partying are part of the festival. There was no possibility to escape, you are really trapped on this boat. The discourse was more easy and effective.

The KROK boat (William Henne, 2011)

Z: Some live-action fiction festivals are more interesting in terms of the questions they ask authors than animation festivals, because I think animation criticism is largely absent. In Portugal, for example, newspapers rarely cover animation. They publish articles on comics, but hardly ever on animation.

GS: Otto, you have launched numerous festivals. I remember the LIAA, which was a very important, one-of-a-kind event. I recognise you as a visionary in the organisation and management of a world centred around animation. The current situation in animation has changed, as there are now many festivals. If you were to launch and imagine an ideal event – I don’t know if you would call it a ‘festival’, but whatever it is – what would it be?

OA: You mentioned the LIAA, the Lucerne International Animation Academy. The idea behind this event was to bring together practice, theory and the public, organised as a symposium rather than a festival with lots of spectators, animations and screenings. We need focus in all areas of life. This project was linked to the university, which funded it. I was unable to continue with it. My dream was to organise this meeting every three years, but I failed, perhaps because I have no university education and the money, which was intended for research, came from the university. Research was the objective of the LIAA, and the school did not continue to fund the project. It’s a shame, but it was very interesting to do it once, and there were wonderful presentations and discussions. The feedback was excellent, but that’s in the past.

Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, School of Art and Design

GS: For me, it was one of the best events in my life.

OA: Thank you very much!

Z: Would you do it again if you had the funding – or not?

OA: Yes, but I no longer have the strength or energy to manage the financial side of things.

For the first conference or symposium organised by the LIAA, the theme and main content focused on storytelling and dramaturgy in animation. It would be interesting to organise a conference on animated documentaries, for example. The idea for the theme of the next conference was the sound and visual aspects of animation, as the auditory part of animation is still neglected in both research and practice.
The question of selection is problematic: what kind of people do the selecting? I have sometimes been part of a selection committee and wondered what people’s conception of animation was; they could have completely different approaches, which can be a good thing. But on the other hand, it can also be critical in many cases. In no festival are aesthetic and technical criteria really emphasised.
Another issue is censorship: the European Media programme, which funds European festivals, requires that at least 50%, or even more, of the films presented at festivals be of European origin. And suddenly, the question arises as to whether we can accept this film, because we have too many non-European films.

1st edition of the Brussels Animation Film Festival, known at the time as Rencontres du Cinéma d’Animation and later renamed Anima (poster: Philippe Moins)

Z: At fiction, documentary, and animation festivals everywhere – including Portugal – jury selection often depends on criteria. Films must meet a certain number of points to qualify. It’s not about language, expression, or narrative; it’s about trends or recent events. For instance, if you make a film about Gaza, it will almost certainly be selected.

In Portugal, many filmmakers choose historical Portuguese subjects or texts because it improves distribution. But this empties expression in animation. Everyone complains – even the juries.

Bill Plimpton (photo: Kate Walter)

OA: Some artists suddenly become very popular. For example, Bill Plimpton was present at all the festivals at one point, then he suddenly disappeared. Then a new star was born. It’s a star system, like in live-action films, and animation doesn’t usually have a star system.
Given the number of films, if you have to watch 1,200 of them, I don’t know how festivals manage to view them, integrate them or select them for their competition programmes. Nowadays, it is also fashionable to have themes for competition programmes. Films are grouped together by the festival under the same banner, and directors have no say if they feel their film does not fit.
The length of films is a topic of discussion within the selection committee. A 30-minute film takes the place of shorter films.

Z: There is contamination between juries, producers, media, and teachers. The same people have been in these positions for years, making it very difficult to break these links. Everyone knows it, but no one talks about it.

Festival International du film d’animation d’Annecy 2024 (poster: Regina Pessoa)

OA: Another example: some years ago Annecy festival took out the more experimental films from the international competition into a special competition with a nice name, ‘Off limits’. But it’s animation and it should not be separated, it should be integrated in the big competition. And if you criticize this, the director will never talk to you anymore.

IAI: Festivals take into account the quality of the animation, the drawing and the plasticity. But an author like Phil Mulloy doesn’t have such good drawing skills. They don’t see beyond the technical aspects of the animation. I generally prefer my films to participate in live-action film competitions, as the audience is more receptive to all types of cinema. At animation festivals, they say ‘It’s not well drawn, it’s not very well animated, let’s make animation great again!’ I will wear the cap next time!

Intolerance I part 1, Phil Mulloy, 2000

]]> WRITING ANIMATION: OLGA & PRIIT PARN PART I https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-olga-priit-parn-part-i/ https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-olga-priit-parn-part-i/#respond Wed, 06 Aug 2025 10:40:15 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=3494

WRITING ANIMATION: OLGA & PRIIT PARN PART I

William Henne: Can you give a brief description of your career?

Priit Pärn: I was born in 1946 in Tallinn and grew up  in a small town with a Soviet military base  and I studied biology in Tartu University from which I graduated in 1970. During these studies, from 1968, I regularly drew caricatures for newspapers which constituted my artistic background. I was a caricaturist for a certain time. After University I moved to Tallinn and I worked six years as a plant ecologist. I made designs for 3 animated films from Tallinnfilm Studio.  I then changed career in 1976, I went to Tallinnfilm Studio and started my career as an animated film director and artist. I made my first film in 1977, Is the Earth round? [Kas maakera on ümmargune?, 1977].

Is the Earth round? (Kas maakera on ümmargune?, 1977)

But I continued to draw caricatures and started illustrating books, and writing some books, which I still do, one of my favourite hobbies. I more or less stopped caricature in the end of the 80s and I started to make graphic arts, etching, etc. I discovered large-format charcoal drawing. I had many exhibitions – more than 30 – around Europe. In 94 the Finnish Film School, which was teaching live-action film, invited me to teach during one semester. Then I was invited to Turku, Finland. They wanted me to create an animation department at Turku art Academy and I teached during 13 years in Turku. I was still living in Estonia and every month I went for one week.
In 2003 the school received a prize for the best animation School in the world in Ottawa Festival. We had just 12 finished students in our school. We even beat the Royal College of Art.
In 2006 I was invited to create an animation department in Tallinn in Estonia. In 2007 I stopped teaching in Turku and I taught International Bachelor’s (in Estonian) and Master’s courses in English at the Estonian Academy of Arts until 2019. Our students collected more than 140 prizes in international festivals.
Olga joined the team in 2007.

Olga Pärn: Priit became so important in Finland because of his film Breakfast on the grass [Eine murul, 1987] won the Grand Prix in Tampere short film festival in 1988, which was such a big breakthrough for Estonian animation.

Breakfast on the grass (Eine murul, 1987)

Priit Pärn: It was still soviet time but step by step it was going to be crushed to pieces and Breakfast on the grass was for me a film to say goodbye to soviet union. It was unexpectable for Finnish people. I gave interviews for three days.

Georges Sifianos: What was censorship like at the time? Were films allowed to be shown or were they subject to restrictions?

PP: To make a film you need money. The money cam from the state. There was a very tough control. First I wrote a script that had to go through different levels of decision-making. First at the studio level, then at Estonian level, which gave the green light to go to Moscow, where important people decided whether or not the film would be financed, or whether something had to be changed.
When the film is ready, you have to show it here and there. The worst outcome is that they don’t allow the film to be shown anywhere. They put it in a safe and say goodbye. The best outcome is that they accept. Then I don’t know how many millions of people would see it if it were broadcast on all Soviet television channels. Sometimes the film leaves the Soviet Union to be shown at international festivals. For my first film, Is The Earth Round?, in Moscow they have been shocked mainly about the graphic style, saying that it’s not animation but they gave a permission to show it in Estonia but not outside.

Is the Earth round? (Kas maakera on ümmargune?, 1977)

If something was forbidden, it was a very important thing for soviet animators to see this film, because it suppose to be something fresh and surprising. To get money and make my first three films, I showed very different scripts which have been very different from film what I then made. which was risky if they caught me. It would be my last film. But I was lucky. In 1982 I made The triangle [Kolmnurk, 1982]. It was a scandal and they told me I had to cut eight minutes from a 16-minute film. I said I wouldn’t do that.

The triangle (Kolmnurk, 1982)

They had very strange rules: if they caught me while we were still working on the film, they’d stop production and change the director. But if the film was ready, nobody else would come along with scissors to cut out any part of it. I said that I don’t care. Working is just a pleasure to work. For the studio it was important to have money for the next film. There was almost half a year of negotiation with Moscow and we finally made a compromise. So I cut out two seconds and they never send the film outside of the soviet union. I think that in this period The triangle would maybe be shocking for the animation world. They finally showed it on soviet TV and some soviet festivals.

The triangle (Kolmnurk, 1982)

OP: The triangle is a legend for Soviet animators. It was shown before a feature film in the cinemas in Kiev. When Igor Kovalyov saw the film, he went away straight after, bought a new ticket and came back to watch it again. Igor made the film Hen, his wife with a similar drawing style. This changed the world of illustrations and printed graphics.

 Hen, his wife, Igor Kovalyov, 1990

PP: After The triangle I knew that it couldn’t work anymore. In 1983 I wrote the script of Breakfast on the grass [Eine murul, 1987] exactly the way the was finally made. But in 1983 Moscow said that such a film would never be made in the Soviet Union. We tried again a year later, changing only the title. They recognised the project and rejected it again. So I started to work as a graphic artist.

Priit Pärn Illustration for the book Päässa tuulee ja ajatuksia sataa, Jukka Parkkinen, Markku Haapio, WSOY, 1992

In 1986, during Perestroika, under Gorbachov, some key people were changed in the main Soviet film department. We sent the project again, there was a long silence and we finally received the message that it was a very good script and that they have been waiting a long time for something like this. The film was finished in 1987 and when we showed this film they took it and sent it to festivals. Most of the people watching the film in the screening room had been working there for 20 or more years. And, if you remember at the end of the film, the inside and outside of the building are identical to those of the building where we screened our film and where these fat ladies were also in reality.
Finally Breakfast on the grass was sent to many festivals.

Breakfast on the grass (Eine murul, 1987)

Zepe: There were also commissions for film and press cartoons in Portugal, but I imagine they were more ignorant and disorganized.

PP: My first cartoon book was published in 1977 more than 50 years ago.

Kilplased with Kaarel Kurismaa (Kaarel did the colors, book published by Kunst, 1977)

Z: What were your influences?

PP: My influences in caricature come mainly from the Czech Republic and Poland. They had very different styles. It was possible to subscribe to or even buy their humour magazines at certain kiosks. It was like a window to the world. I created my own drawing style. I even have lectures for my students because I have this material to show them: how I started and how my drawing has developed after three, five or twenty years. I have a lot of drawings connected to images, playing with lines and images. It’s not political satire or newspaper caricature. I always tried to be against the system but my main interest was to play with visual images. Saul Steinberg was very important to me. It was good preparation for animation. You have to break the world into pieces and reassemble them in a new version.

Techniques at a Party 1, Saul Steinberg, 1953

Z: In your country was there more liberty for cartoons in a newspaper than for films?

PP: Films were, of course, subject to stricter control because they were broadcast on television and shown in cinemas all over the Soviet Union. Officially, animation was an art form for children, so it was easy to say that children wouldn’t understand.
For drawings published in newspapers, it depended on the type of newspaper that published them. They could decide that it was politically incorrect and that it was a political mistake and then punish the person who had decided to print it. When I started in the 70s, they would sometimes find that certain drawings were against the regime, so they would phone the publishers of the newspaper or magazine and order them to stop publishing Mr Pärn. It wasn’t official, so you could bring in your drawings and they would accept them, but they were never published.

Naljapidi aabits (The Funny Alphabet) comic book, drawn by Priit Pärn and printed in 1983

In 1987, they tried to extract borate in Estonia, which would have destroyed nature. There was a protest movement. My drawing on phosphate fertilisers was published, depicting a man on a cart pulled by a very skinny horse, throwing this shit in the field and saying ‘And shit…’. and the piece of shit falling on the ground is the Estonian map.

The Central committee of the Estonian communist party punished the chief editor of the newspaper. People made t-shirts and hats with this drawing.

OP: Even today, it is the best known caricature drawing in Estonia.

GS: One can describe your universe as an absurd surrealism. Is there any tradition in Estonia? And what is Olga’s background?

OP: I was born in 1976, just the year that Priit started doing animation. I come from a family of architects. My family broke up. My mom started to do animation films so I grew up in an animation family. I saw how life of an animator was hard. She started making films with sand. I saw her working day and night under a large rostrum camera in a darkroom. When I was a teenager, I used to say two things to myself: never animate, never teach. So, after the Art Liceum I finished Belorussian Academy of Arts with a specialisation in etching, was fascinated by gravures and for making money I started to work in Animation as an Artistic director, storyboard artist and sand animation animator. I was teached by my mum all secrets of her experience with the sand. At the age 26 I understood, that I want to starts my own carriere as an animation film director and I choose as a post graduation school La Poudriere in France (Valence). In the video library of the school I had a chance to watch Priit’s films and my favourite one was 1895. When Priit came to Valance to teach my group in 2005, my school alow me to ask Priit to be my mentor for my diploma film The Dreamer, which I made in so called black painting style. After La Poudriere I was working half a year in Paris as a storyboard artist (for the series Zoe Kezako) and then Priit invited me to Estonia to live with him. I went. From that moment we’ve been unseparated and we are working together. In 2014 we’ve completed the film in sand animation technique, which we upgraded heavily (You could see these innovative process in my Making of Pilots on the way home). Probably, important moment is, that I love to do illustrations. Some of the books we do together, but mostly we illustrate separatly. I have illustrated 11 childrens books and working for the Estonian Children Magazine Täheke quite often.

Making of Pilots on the way home by Olga Pärn

Priit and Olga Pärn (photo: Märt Rudolf Pärn)

PP: Things were a little different in the other Soviet republics than in Estonia. When I arrived in Estonian animation in 1976, there were already animators who had come from cartooning, so animation was very popular in Estonia.
The studio was founded in 1956 by two people who made one or two films a year, mainly for children. When I arrived, there was a certain stagnation, it had become old-fashioned. Then a great team of young animators arrived and started making films. The atmosphere was very different from that in Moscow or Belarus.

Priit Pärn (Estonian Film Institute)

OP: What is very important to say is that Estonia became part of the Soviet Union later. At the end of the first World War, Estonians gained their independence. They were independent until the second world war. The Estonian language belongs to the Finno-Ugric group of Languages. When I arrived in Estonia to join Priit, I immediately started learning Estonian, because all this richness, playfulness and out-of-the-box thinking is linked to their language and way of thinking. I came from Belarus and when I arrived in France, all the words related to cinema came from French. I immediately started to learn and speak this Latin language. But when you arrive in Estonia, you feel like an idiot because you don’t understand any of the words.

PP: Not completely. Estonia has these international words like sport, electricity, tractor… But the Hungarians and Finns have invented their own words to describe these concepts. Recently, these English words were incorporated into their language.

GS: Is there any tradition of absurd surrealism in literature?

PP: Maybe it’s more theoretical. It’s difficult to make a surrealist animated film. Surrealism is totally serious, not comical. The group of surrealists expelled Mr Dali because they thought what he was doing was funny or ironic.
On the other hand, the absurd dimension is present.

Priit Pärn’s caricature from 1992

OP: I think that the resistance of Estonians and the resistance in animated films is connected. Priit’s resistance lay in the fact that he thought outside the box, whereas everyone else was forced to think inside the box. Film artists from the soviet union, in particular, have all censorship inside of your head, so called selfcensorship. You don’t even realise it because that’s the way your mind works before you realise it’s censorship.
When the Soviets came to Estonia and killed and deported many people to Siberia, Estonians still remembered the free times. Some artists had learned art in Paris. The Soviets weren’t able to destroy all the culture. There was still freedom in the minds of Estonians.

PP: I can’t explain why, but the Estonians were a bit more allowed to do certain things. This play with caricatures has always been on the edge of what was tolerated.
In general, I already know exactly when I make a drawing whether it’s going to be published or not. It was an interesting game. For us, the corridor was not as narrow as in Moscow. We could go in a gray area. Olga saw this in such beautiful colors.

OP: Of course.

Naljapidi aabits (The Funny Alphabet) comic book, drawn by Priit Pärn and printed in 1983

Z: During a dictatorship – and I think it was the same in Portugal – you create a certain type of metaphor to resist and you almost invent your own language, which is much more powerful than when there is a revolution, when everything changes and everything is possible.

PP: They can find something critical and they don’t know how to publish.
Of course, you can see that they’re afraid of what to do next. It was a game. 

OP: Priit drew a lot of caricatures based on the interplay of words and lines in an abstract way. It’s very enjoyable for an open mind.

PP: It’s close to animation. 

GS: In some of the first films, for example Time out [Aeg maha, 1984] or …And play tricks […Ja teeb trikke, 1978], the organization is made with an association of forms that resemble each other, one inviting the other, sometimes like visual puns, calambour visuel. What is the method to link your scenes and create a coherent unit? You have a lot of caricatures but you have to join them to make the film.

Time out (Aeg maha, 1984)

 …And play tricks (…Ja teeb trikke, 1978)

PP: Caricature is a very short animated film, in one frame. One picture is telling a story. If I can’t tell this story with one frame, I can tell it in a strip of three frames. If I can tell it with more frames, I have more freedom. The year after Breakfast on the grass won the Grand Prix at the Tampere Festival in 1988, I was on the jury and a professor from a film academy told me that he wanted to invite me to teach their students for one semester. There were not animation students but live-action filmmakers. I had never studied cinema, how could I teach it? He told me that all I had to do was throw a stone in the water and I started to design this stone. I started in January 1990. I tried to understand what’s happening in my head when I create a caricature. I ended up working out a system. You need an absolutely free imagination and, at the same time, a very structured way of thinking, like mathematics. You create something, then you analyze it. It was finally a very organized system. 
In the early 80s, the soviet Union was in a very difficult economic situation and culture was always the first to be threatened. After Triangle, I couldn’t make films and then I found a magazine for kids to publish caricatures for 10 years. I’ve collected these drawings in a book.

Naljapidi aabits (The Funny Alphabet) comic book, drawn by Priit Pärn and printed in 1983

At the Tallinnfilm Studio, 1982 happened that no one was ready to start a new film and they asked me to do it, even though I had decided not to make any more films. But I decided to help them and I made Time out.

Time out (Aeg maha, 1984)

OP: This film is connected with the drawing book made just before. 

GS: One gag follows another. What creates the link?

PP: It was more complicated because the pictures were not much connected to each other. The idea came from this drawing with a cat running around, like when you’re in a hurry in the morning. You try different things, then the clock is broken, and this person is free, and the world where this person finally arrives was very dangerous and military with soldiers. 
When the film was almost finished, the studio recognised the military references and told us we had to cut certain scenes. The colourist and I negotiated. We decided to cut certain scenes. If we hadn’t done that, they would have trashed the whole film anyway. It’s a funny story because the film was supposed to be 10 minutes long and after cutting a lot scenes it was still 10 minutes long. Originally each action followed on from the previous one. When we cut certain actions, we had to combine the remaining actions.

OP: There is also an uncut copy on videocassette from Canada.

PP: It is not an uncut copy, it is copy before the final cut. There are still soldiers. Then we had to cut them. It was impossible to cut all these scenes because the soldiers were everywhere and I suddenly had the idea of making them into clowns. They agreed. In those days, we used transparent celluloid sheets with the drawing on one side and the paint on the other. The poses of the soldiers and the clowns were exactly the same. 

OP: So they repaint the soldiers to clowns.

Time out (Aeg maha, 1984)

GS: During that first period, you were stringing together one visual gag after another. But in general you use parallel editing, in Luna Rossa for example, where we follow different actions in different places, thanks to the observer behind the screens. In Breakfast on the grass also.

PP: In Breakfast on the Grass, there are four parallel stories and I realised at a certain point that it was perhaps becoming too complicated to understand. The four stories don’t start at the same point, but they all end up in the garden at the same time. I designed the structure so that the story ends when each character has made their contribution to Manet’s painting.

There are two possibilities: the first is that they don’t have the missing element, they try to find it, or they have it and lose it and find it again. To obtain this element, the character must do something related to humiliation. I had to build this schematic construction. I had maybe five different ideas and then I selected the best idea that fit the story. For me, making a script means making a construction. This is what I teach to my students. Every film is a line you can draw starting from zero, lasting 10 minutes or two hours. I have to calculate what I can do. For beginners like students, I give some rules, some tricks or techniques and they will create step by step.

Priit Pärn (Estonian Film Institute)

GS: When you gave a talk in the Lucerne International Animation Academy (LIAA) in winter 2009, you gave the example of the hammer and the nail: who is stronger? the hammer or the nail? And if, instead of a nail, it was a screw: who is more strong? And why? Can you develop this idea again?

PP: The  question was not who is stronger. It was an analysis of system . In my exampel the system cosist from three elements : hammer, nail and screw. You had to describe elements of tis system and also connections between them. And you giving to this objects some human feelings. A hammer is just a tool for a nail. A nail needs a hammer, but if a hammer is used on two pieces joined by a nail for 200 years, there is no longer any need for a hammer. A couple is united by a relationship of love and hate. If you add a screw, it becomes a triangle. What might a nail feel towards a screw: love? I think the screw is more sophisticated. The nail wants to stay with its hammer and doesn’t really want to see that damn screw. But a hammer can be used to screw in a very brutal manner. Then we will create the story. How do we put that online? What do we show first? The hammer, then the screw, or both together. There is moisture. The nail hates the hammer. Or the opposite: at first, they seem to form a lovely couple, then the screw arrives. If you replace the hammer or the screw with a human being, you already have a story for perhaps a feature film or a novel. So it’s a possibility to analyse or a structured jealousy, using A, B and C. I won’t go into too much detail about this technique, but if you’re working on building this abstract structure, try to build it as long as possible without assigning names. No A, no B, no hammer, no name. If you immediately give names like, for example, a dog is running on a road and a car hits a tree better to avoid the dog. If it’s possible, try to work on the result without reason: a car hits a tree, why? You’re going to develop ten different possibilities and then look at what suits you best. If you immediately decide that it was because of the dog that the car hit the three, it’s fixed in your brain and it’s very difficult to change, especially for beginners.

GS: How do you organize the ideas that come? You accumulate notes? The ideas are coming spontaneously? In all the films there are a quantity of ideas, some being developed, some not. How is it developed? How does one idea bring another?

Z: Plan by plan or situation by situation, is there an invisible layer you want to convey, beyond what is just visible? Do you preserve it without knowing exactly what it is, or do you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, from story to screen? Luis Buñuel once said, “If you ask me what it is, I cannot tell you exactly. I feel it more than I understand it. Anyway, if I could fully understand it, it wouldn’t have the same result.” So, maybe there is an invisible film that is not told, something that appears beyond its surface.

PP: I actually try to follow a basic idea. Salvador Dali likes to say that all his images are coming from night dreams. I don’t really believe him but I have one film that came from my night dream. I didn’t remember it exactly when I woke up. Somebody told me a story or maybe I was in the cinema watching a film or somebody showed me a script. It was that Karl Marx goes to the hairdresser and shaves all his beard and hair. Nobody recognizes him because we all have just seen one portrait of Karl Marx. It seemed funny and I told the idea to my friend and then step by step I started to feel that maybe it would be interesting.

Karl And Marilyn (Karl ja Marilyn, 2008)

During the period when you’re making the construction in your head, or you will write a simple version, for example, Life without Gabriella Ferri, the longest of our films, the second we made together. There were parallel stories because all the time, something would appear, then come out and be linked to the story. It’s a construction: a stork is flying, is shoot and starts to fall down. I needed to kill this runner. How to get rid of this runner? He runs and says ‘life is nice, life is nice’ and then the stork falls down and goes through his chest.

Life without Gabriella Ferri (Elu Ilma Gabriella Ferrita, 2008)

Life without Gabriella Ferri (Elu Ilma Gabriella Ferrita, 2008)

OP: It’s a destiny, Priit!

PP: Yes.
Actually when I write and start to draw a storyboard on small pieces of paper in the beginning. I put the papers on the floor and move them like cars. I’m already editing it, but I can change it a lot. Some people spend a lot of energy and time drawing up a storyboard in a very definitive way. This is sometimes necessary if you want to apply for money. But in the same way, the script settles in your head and is already finished. Unconsciously, you don’t want to change it. If you play with these small pieces of paper – you will come to the storyboard – it’s a long way. 
When I work alone or when I work with Olga, the films are visually quite different. Every film has a different story and every film deserves its own visual work. It may be the most difficult but the most exciting period in the making of a film. 

OP: The films we made  together with Priit are constructed stories. It’s one type of film. 1895, made by Priit is another type of film. It is constructed like a huge calembour (french word for pun).

1895, Priit Pärn and Janno Põldmaa (1995)

PP: They are epical films not like Hollywood style scripts. What happens in a film results from the previous event and provokes what follows. For 1895, I gave myself some rules. It was a long story made to celebrate 100 years since the invention of cinema and suppose to be shot in Talinn’s puppet film studio by our old puppet film director (by Elbert Tuganov). It was to be partly financed by Germany, which wanted to make a film showing a praxinoscope and other pre-cinematiqe objects. They had a problem with the script and they asked me to help. I did something and then it came out that there was no money from Germany. It then transformed to a Finnish company prepared to invest in the film, but wanted a film in drawing and for me to direct it, which I had no intention to do. All eastern european studios had already collapsed at that time. I was supposed to jump out from this train to let the project to Janno Põldma, the cameraman. But then I started writing and suddenly realised that it was a fantastic way of making a really good film. I wasn’t interested in making a film about the invention of cinema. At that time, terms such as ‘politically correct’ had already appeared. We are in the most comfortable position to make a film, but this politically incorrect film will insult everyone and every nation. The film should therefore be a total lie. For me it is an epic film. The main hero is Jean-Paul, which nobody knows in the beginning.

The design of the main character (on the right) made by Priit Pärn for animation film1895, the photo of Louis Lumiere, the prototype of Jean Paul in 1895 (on the left). From archive of Olga & Priit.

OP: Did you want to be sure that everything was credible?

PP: Yes. I worked out the character design of Jean-Paul. I used a portrait of Louis Lumière with this cigarette in his mouth. Jean-Paul smokes a cigarette throughout the film. All the dates are indicated so that this piece of film dates from 1852. If you try to follow the dates, you will notice that they are incorrect and not chronological. We’ve used a lot of references from the history of cinema, but we’ve just taken them, we don’t control them and we don’t control whether they’re right. We had to create silly little sequences. In 1995, I was almost 50 and I was quite good at it. It was the first film in which I used a voice-over and it was quite exciting, but it wasn’t easy either, because I realised that I was describing what you could see to create the text, so the text and images give something new. If you look at student films, they’re always 97% written text which is mainly a description of what you can see, like a radioplay.
The film was made after Hotel E, after which I stopped making films anymore. Then a woman from Channel 4 offered to fund a new project if I started a new one. I said ‘thanks, but I don’t make films any more’. Then this film with Jean-Paul came along and I sent the script to this lady. She replied that it might be humour, but not humour for British audiences.
We finally made the film with Finnish money.

1895 by Priit Pärn and Janno Põldmaa (1995)

OP: They liked Hotel E, didn’t they?

PP: Yes because Hotel E is simple, with a binary structure. If Breakfast on the Grass was for me a farewell to the Soviet Union, Hotel E was on the border between the Eastern and Western systems. It’s not a film about me. The idea came to me after an exhibition in the late 80s. I travelled to take part in festivals and juries in France, Belgium and elsewhere. It gave me a wonderful feeling and coming home was so depressing. Every time I received an invitation, I went. The changes in Estonia were very quick. In those days, there were no mobile phones. You had to come and sit someone down to ask them to explain what happend during your absence. You understand how you have to behave. This idea of two different rooms in the film, with someone going back and forth, was a good structure. There was this strange black and white world where you’ve being punished. That part eventually evolved into stagnation. They’re just sitting there for that reason. And there was this colourful, beautiful world where one person was missing and repeat the same thing, but technically at a higher level, with a beautiful table.
A lot of people asked me who I was to criticise?

Hotel E (1992)

Channel 4 were probably expecting something similar, which could be very tangible indeed. Hotel E may be in some ways critical, but criticism isn’t the main aim. The main thing was to build on this visual base. A lot of work went into creating these two different worlds, thanks to a painter, Miljard Kilk, who did an incredible job.
Making 1895 after this gave a very good feeling of total freedom.

Miljard Kilk with his painting Europe (Esti Joonisfilm – photo: Olga Pärn)

OP: Where did the idea of using actors in Hotel E come from?

PP: The idea came suddenly.

OP: It was the first time that you worked with actors. (p.s. in fact not the first time. Priit used Mati Kütt as George for the opening sequence with the same name in Breakfast on the grass. Mati was photographed for the key frames, which was used as a references for the painted animation sequence.)

PP: As we had to create two completely different systems, one in dirty black and white world with flies, the other so called beautiful world, we came up with the idea that the colours of the second system should be so soft that you’d feel bad looking at it. It’s beautiful but it’s too much! Millard spent a few months balancing his colours and came up with the idea of limiting the colour palette, only 11 different colours and it seems that all the colours match each other. The characters in the colourful world are beautifully painted, but their movements are a little clumsy. If you’re drawing characters whose anatomy isn’t quite perfect, the movements need to be very stylised. But if the characters are anatomically correct, they should move correctly. Like in Breakfast on the grass.

OP: Yes, that was not the first time.

PP: To show that the characters really enjoy their life, all the movements were slow. They enjoy how they are moving. And it wasn’t easy to obtain these movements. Now for Luna rossa, we have actors with motion capture suits which allow a fine control of the body. But at that time, to preserve a form of stylisation with rotoscoping, we filmed the actors and played this video image on a very old black and white television set, then shot the image on 35 mm black and white film. The image was so bad that it was impossible to see the small details. It’s impossible to draw a line from it. The result is this stylisation, with flat colours. The animators selected key images and interpolated between them. So it wasn’t exactly rotoscoping.

Hotel E drawings

Z: What I like most about in Luna Rossa is the part where the woman moves. It’s strange, almost like a collage of elements and movements, in total contradiction with the adaptation of real-life footage. The animation is indeed not treated like rotoscoping but still remains hyper-realistic. It’s a mixture of real footage and ambiguous movements. It’s the opposite of rotoscoping. There are different approaches in this contrast: gravity, sensuality, sometimes a vicious behavior of characters, and at the same time, a very naive representation. It’s just perfect!

PP: Thank you.

Hotel E (1992)

WH: In Luna rossa, there is the same paradox : a movement obtained by motion capture produces stylised movements.

OP: It’s exactly the right bridge between the films. Watching Hotel E, I was really interested to know how Priit could work with actors. It’s rare when an animation director is working with actors. Tanel Saar, who plays the main character, is an actor in physical theater. He staged the Breakfast on the grass in a physical theater.

PP: He did not use the film’s script, but tried to create an animated film on stage in the theatre. It was very fresh and very funny.

Frames from Priit Pärn’s film Breakfast on the grass (1987)

Eine murul, poster for the theater performance composed by Olga Pärn – director of the performance: Tanel Saar (teaser of the play)

In 1987, Priit Pärn’s animated film Eine Grul (Breakfast the grass) was released to the public. This grotesque tale of four human fates aptly portrayed the perestroika mentality of the time. Eine murul (A grasshopper) is still one of Priit Pärna’s best-known works and reminds us why the Soviet Union was bound to collapse sooner or later. Director Tanel Saar reflects: “I’ve always been fascinated by Pärna’s cartoons. First of all, I’m fascinated by how the stories of four people are so skilfully woven together. Secondly, I can also sense something of today in this socially critical story from 30 years ago. “Eine auf Grä is a satire on bureaucracy. It seems to me that, even today, the individual has to face up to many social, societal and, in particular, bureaucratic horrors in the pursuit of his dreams. Through humiliation towards a goal. I am tempted by the challenge of finding a way of translating this fascinating animated film into theatrical action – how to find a counterpart in a live performance, with live music by Madis Muuli. And still understand how far can and must a person go for their dreams?” The premiere took place on 4 May 2017 in the Tornisaal of the National Library of Estonia.

OP: It was in 2017. They invited us to the theater and he talked with Priit about the construction of the play during the process of staging it. He wanted Priit to collaborate. Priit had the idea for the script of Luna rossa. We had these fantastic actors and Priit experience with Hotel E and his ability to work in choreography. And there was motion capture.

Tanel Saar (photo: Laura Raudnagel/ERR)

PP: To be precise, the idea of using motion capture came when we decided to make the film. The story was not finished yet, but it was clear that there would be security cameras, which are always placed high up. You can imagine if somebody approaches such a camera, he’s deformed, his head is big and his feet are small. And you have to move them correctly…
That’s when the idea of motion capture came up. Nobody in Estonia or in Baltics or Scandinavia knows about it except for commercials.

Making of Luna rossa

OP: Nobody used it yet for an artistic animation film.  

PP: I really don’t know why suddenly I had the idea of taking different liquids to security control. Two young terrorists each take a sip of a different liquid and kiss in a plane.

OP: First it was just a kiss. It was a joke.

PP: It’s a bit similar to the Karl and Marilyn story: you start from a small skeleton then you put meat around this skeleton. 

Andrea Martignoni : So why did you place the story in Naples? 

OP: It’s an imaginary Naples, you know.

Luna rossa (2024)

AM: Yes, I know. We also see Toto… and Gabriella Ferri in the stylization of the character and also the photo that came from the drawer.

OP: Yes, you recognized all of them!

PP: It’s the only time Gabriella Ferri and Renzo Arbore are in the same photo.

OP: I was looking for reference photos on the internet for making the character design of Gabriella in 3D, to understand how to construct her face, because Gabriela is not with us anymore, she’s gone. When we were looking for that, we found only one photo where Renzo Arbore and Gabriella Ferri were together. This photo is in the film, in the drawer.

PP: In Conversano Festival Imaginaria, Luca Rafaelli told us that Renzo and Gabriela had some romance, shortly.

OP: Luca was sure we knew. We made the whole film without knowing. We knew they were singing together because Renzo was doing the show on Italian television and when he gave his last concert in Rome, at the end of OrchestraItaliana, the first thing he said was that they would perform the song Luna rossa, sung by great Gabriella Ferri.

Luna rossa (2024)

PP: Finally we’ve already worked on the film and we knew that it had to be the song Luna rossa.  I remember I found a version of it. The Moon is already in the sky and from somewhere, maybe from an open window, you can hear Gabriella singing Luna rossa. Then we found this concert version of Luna Rossa with  Renzo, Eddy and Francesca singing together in neapolitan dialect.

OP: That was recorded for television. There was no author rights for that because it’s on YouTube.

AM: You also used the Claudio Villa version, didn’t you?

OP: Yes, we found it later. At some point we understood there was no place for Gabriella’s version of the song. 

PP: It was so complicated for the rights.

OP: For the version performed by Gabriella. We understood that for the story, we will use three versions. The one with the Orchestra Italiana with Renzo Arbore, Francesca Schiavo and Eddy Napoli, who is the son of the poet Vincenzo De Crescenzo who wrote the lyrics in neapolitan dialect. We were looking for different versions and we found the version, performed just by Eddy along (also in Neapolitan dialect) and then for the Grand Finale we used the Claudio Villa‘s one version, performed in Italian. 

AM: One of the most famous versions of the song. There are at least 50 different versions of this song, almost as many as O sole mio. 

OP: Yes, it’s one of the most popular, and we found that Claudio Villa’s version is so sad, it was so heartbreaking that it had to be the final song. It expresses all the tragedy of the situation.

AM: This song was obviously the right choice if the film is set in Naples.

OP: That came all together because we’ve never been in Naples and Priit said that probably after this film we shouldn’t. We constructed the film like a fantastic piece. It’s not connected. We used their characters (the artistic, stage credos of them) because they are beautiful. And little by little we realised that the story was so tragic and so ugly at the same time. It works best if you set it in a fantasised sunny Italy, which is the most beautiful place in the world you can find. To make you feel bad.

Luna rossa (2024)

PP: It’s not that we decided because, once again, it was a question of what this world looks like. Because it has to be for this film: all the colours and so on, you recognise them in Luna rossa. How did these characters appear? I think it was when we already worked to draw these characters, especially Gabriella. Her face changes so much in the different photos that it’s hard to tell it’s the same person. When we found these three singers singing together, I said straight away that they would be the heroes of our film.

OP: We had a stop frame of them singing together like the video which is on the screen in the plane. We stopped the picture and Priit said: ‘Look Olga, they look like our terrorists. They’re so bloody beautiful! It’s exactly what we need for the film, for that story!’

Luna rossa (2024)

PP: The process of making a two-minute film with a kiss at the end and an exploding plane was the first idea. Now it’s more than 30 minutes. You can make links with other films and these parallel stories aren’t really parallel stories, they just go with the flow of the story: they meet in the street, Gabriella and the guy go underground, he tries to explain by showing her the photograph of Francesca, then we see Francesca on the balcony with her cactus. Gabriella and Francesca change bags, probably with the liquids, then Eddy and Francesca on the beach try to test the liquids: ‘Does it work? Yes, it works!’ He kills his dog, she gets rid of her cactus and finally they’re at the airport.
It’s a very concrete storyline.

Luna rossa (2024)

OP: At the same time, Priit, there is obvious action, but we also follow the feelings. When Renzo watches Gabriella’s recordings in her flat, we sense that there are feelings between them. It’s not sad.

PP: Gabriella is showing the boarding passes from the Bluffansa to Renzo through the camera with the number of the flight. She probably knows he’s watching her and she plays for Renzo, walking with manners when she knows she’s in camera range.

Luna rossa (2024)

AM: You will be very welcome to Naples because people in Naples are very welcoming people. The only thing I suggest is to take care about the security control in Capodichino airport.

OP: The airport in the film was created using Google Street View, so it’s accurate. At one point, when we started building the sets, we based them on photos of Bergamo, so it’s a collage. We used a lot of old vintage photos of Naples, free of author rights, from more than 100 years ago. We took some details and characters from these pictures and they look like shadows standing in the background and looking at what is going on. It’s very important.

Luna rossa (2024)

PP: The shadows are in the plane so maybe not for the first time.

Priit and Olga Pärn in Raphaël Gianelli-Meriano’s film Portrait of Priit Pärn (2006)

]]> https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-olga-priit-parn-part-i/feed/ 0 ABOUT THE MISSTEPS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE https://beatbit.org/research/about-the-missteps-of-artificial-intelligence/ https://beatbit.org/research/about-the-missteps-of-artificial-intelligence/#respond Thu, 31 Jul 2025 08:59:06 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=3465

ABOUT THE MISSTEPS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Conception issues in certain AI approaches

Georges Sifianos

We are currently seeing a craze for designing algorithms based on “prompts”, to the detriment of other approaches, particularly for image creation.

This method, which relies on verbal requests, is just one among many. When imposed on artistic creation, it causes confusion among creators, as they are given a tool that was not designed for them. This approach tends to alter practices, results, and, in the long term, the very essence of the creation it was supposed to serve. It is a tool that hastens the replacement of all creative results with a “ready-made” solution.

Artificial intelligence relies on methods that scientists learned during their studies and subsequently developed. As a result, a multitude of applications are emerging, but their initial vision is not always appropriate for all fields. The world of art does not operate using the same thought patterns as science. The differences between a sensitive approach and an intelligible approach are not insignificant. Can everything be described and organized with concepts or prompts? Concepts rationalize, but as Bergson says, “Conception is a last resort when perception is not possible, and reasoning is designed to fill in the gaps in perception or to extend its scope.” [1]. A concept is precise but reductive, while an artist’s intuitive feeling may prove more relevant, capable of capturing nuances and a global vision that might escape a conceptual approach.

A similar criticism can be levelled at the statistical approach, widely used by AI, which provides probabilities but often falls prey to bias. Election forecasts in different countries provide examples of the irrelevance of statistics, whose results incorporate errors. This margin, often negligible, can sometimes be absolutely significant, as in the case of elections that favor radical change, or decisions concerning war, for example. [2]

Engineers alone do not have the necessary culture to address this type of bias. They need the collaboration of specialists from all fields. It is essential to question the certainties of the omniscience of algorithm designers, who tend to apply the same models everywhere after having succeeded in certain areas.

[2] Henri Bergson, La Pensée et le mouvant, Presses Universitaires de France, 1938, p.145.

[back to text]

[2] This is the idea developed by Nassim Nicolas Taleb in his book The Black Swan, Random House Publishing Group; 2e édition, 2010.
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

[back to text]

We can talk more specifically about different scenarios:

  • The use of “prompts” to create images and videos.
  • The use of “white noise” as a common denominator to transition from one image to another.
  • The notion of “style”.
  • We can also look at specific examples of algorithms going down the rabbit hole, such as those that attempted to translate videos into drawings or transform videos into animated paintings.

The use of “prompts”

The use of “prompts” to produce images and films, currently in vogue, accentuates the dependence of the sensible on the intelligible or the symbolic, which can be effective but also impoverishing. A word or phrase allows us to understand, but also reduces the richness of expression. Words, like prompts, are simplifications that, when combined, can represent a multitude of nuances. This representation is not analogical but symbolic, and it differs from one language to another.

Writing was originally a form of painting, as evidenced by prehistoric cave paintings. By reducing it to pictograms, there was a significant loss of information. An “A,” for example, tells us nothing about a bovine, which was the origin of the Aleph. However, writing also allowed literature to spread and evolve. Loss in one area is actually a shift, a radical transformation.

If we ask the algorithm to generate “a tree,” we will get an image, but not necessarily the right one. For an algorithm, a tree is a statistical average of the trees known during its training. In this sense, the algorithm works in a similar way to language, where we strive to find the right combination of words to describe our feelings: it is different to say “a tree” and “a hundred-year-old plane tree,” or to define an object with greater precision.

In spoken language, a word triggers a process of imagination. The representation it offers is a structure that remains incomplete in its details; it is evoked, and its completion is unique to each individual. Despite this margin, Roland Barthes described language as “fascist” because it does not prohibit, but imposes the meaning that we will understand when using a particular word or syntax. [3] In comparison, the form proposed by the algorithm goes much further. It is complete and definitive. Proportionally speaking, creating images from prompts leaves much less room for our imagination than language does. Even though we are generally offered three variants that we can develop, the algorithm imposes its own touch each time and is always one step ahead of us. It is very difficult to guide the prompts to obtain something as we imagined it. We just have to follow along.

When reading a text, we enjoy giving free rein to our imagination, but when we discover the results of the prompts, we are always faced with surprises. Sometimes we are even fascinated by the performance of this mysterious “intelligence.” However, we do not experience the jubilation of a “eureka” moment, of an idea that belongs to us. With these images, we make discoveries, but our imagination is confiscated. The famous half of the work that is created by the viewer shrinks like a shrunken skin.

[3] «Language is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech.», Roland Barthes, Leçon, Paris, Seuil, 1978, p. 14.

[back to text]

In cinema, in live-action filming, we observe a similar phenomenon: the raw material is copied from nature. We are fascinated by the train arriving at La Ciotat station or by the wisps of smoke in the Lumière brothers’ films, but this fascination is not an external domination, because we are part of this reproduced nature. Our experience recognizes this world as being objectively copied.

In an artifact such as a drawing, an adult recognizes the trace of a creator behind the result. Our fascination in this case comes from the performance, the tour de force of one of our fellow human beings, and therefore potentially of ourselves. Of course, there are variations and hybridizations of images where we are unable to sense the human or technical origin of the proposed result. But the essential point is that our emotion, our appreciation of a work, is conditioned by this familiarity or strangeness we feel when faced with the proposed work.

Artistic beauty, natural beauty, “automatic” beauty?

In aesthetic appreciation, there has long been a fundamental distinction between “natural beauty” and “artistic beauty.” [4]

Since the advent of artificial intelligence, a third category has sought to slip in and assert itself between the two: something that could be described as “automatic beauty,” which lies halfway between the intentional and the unintentional, the subjective and the objective. These are works created by algorithms, particularly artificial intelligence algorithms.

These works are “directed” by “prompts,” i.e., summary phrases describing what is being sought. However, control over the results is fairly rudimentary. The algorithm and its database largely determine the final result. It is not “natural,” as the process is the result of human activity, but it is not an artifact either, insofar as the result is automatic, largely beyond our control, and unpredictable.

[4] Hegel, Esthétique, Paris, Flammarion, 1979, vol.1, p. 10.

[back to text]

The fascination it exerts comes from surprise. It is not a performance or a feat of skill that provokes emotion in an artifact. It is not the recognition of an “objective” representation of our environment. It is an “in-between,” a third scenario. The representation can take the form of a photograph, naturalistic, objective, or in the form of an artifact, evidence of human creation. Nevertheless, we know, since we saw it emerge from a verbal command, that it is neither a work of art nor a reproduction of nature.

Ethics

With AI, the raw material is copied from a database of universal image production. Filtered through cultural filters, AI content is dominated by the databases on which the algorithms have been trained. If the medium has always spoken, according to McLuhan’s theory [5] , the medium of algorithms and AI tends to impose itself even more. The algorithm imposes itself as a co-author.

An important question then arises: how do we choose the criteria and content of the databases for training algorithms? This question should not be taken lightly. One could argue that there is no choice, and that database material is “objective” in this way. But is this really the case? Everything that is somewhere is there for a reason. Chance is conditioned in one way or another; it is the result of contextual conditions, conditions that precede it.

Just as there is academic ethics for researchers, there should be similar ethics and requirements for objectivity and quality in the education of algorithms. Why would engineers trained at the world’s leading universities allow algorithms to be trained in an improvised manner, like amateurs?

When we delegate choices to algorithms, which will determine our universe as if it were objective nature, shouldn’t we pay more attention to the content of the databases in which they are trained? Shouldn’t we create databases with the same ethical standards as those found in academia and research?

In other words, instead of letting algorithms “graze” freely in databases, shouldn’t we offer them “ethical vectors” from the best universities, such as Stanford, which has produced many engineers?

[5] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, McGraw-Hill, Columbus, Ohio, U.S., 1964.

[back to text]

The fragmentation of white noise

Many artificial intelligence algorithms, particularly those involving images, use “white noise” as a common denominator. In other words, they gradually reduce an image to a neutral representation, composed of black and white pixels distributed evenly, randomly, and in equal quantities across a surface.

Then, proceeding in reverse, the algorithm, guided by an objective (via a prompt, for example), seeks to compose an image with similar formal characteristics.

This process can be interpreted as the “style” of a painting, which has itself been reduced to white noise. The algorithm attempts to ‘dream’ this image in the same way that we distinguish shapes in clouds. Thus, we can obtain a photo translated into the “style” of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Modigliani, etc.

However, this method, which involves fragmentation, selects certain things and discards others. For example, the wood chips used to make chipboard are still wood. However, chipboard has lost all trace of the history of the tree that provided the chips. A plank, on the other hand, continues to live. The “vectors” that created the tree continue to exist in it. The plank reacts to humidity and moves. It tells the story of the tree, from the moment it grew its branches (the knots on its surface) to the storms that broke some of them, to the dry or humid climate that formed more or less tight rings in its trunk, etc.

As humans, with a birth, a life, and an inevitable but dreaded end, the metaphorical testimony of the tree’s life is capable of moving us because it resembles us. It tells us our own story.

In nature, morphogenesis follows laws that generate prototypes, which are then broken down into numerous variations of forms. Quadrupedalism, the division into head, thorax, and abdomen for insects, symmetry, the structure of roots, trunk, branches, and leaves, etc., are manifestations of this process. Earth’s gravity is largely responsible for these structures.

Our emotions are also based on similar conditioning, related to our lived experience. Our real life is supported by a metaphorical universe.

Thus, size awakens emotions in us that differ depending on a comparison with our own scale. Beyond a certain threshold, all dimensions are indistinguishable in terms of aesthetic appreciation; they belong to the same order of magnitude. For example, a distance of 40 billion light-years and another of 350 billion light-years make no noticeable difference to our aesthetic appreciation. Both belong to the category of the immense.

On the other hand, the height of a cathedral compared to that of a house, where you can almost touch the ceiling, creates very different sensations. Using the same logic, we can see that:

° A horizontal line is associated with rest, unlike a vertical line or the unstable dynamics of a diagonal, which is perceived as being in motion.

° Distance puts our emotions into perspective. Seeing a dead stranger in front of you does not have the same emotional impact as if the dead person were a few houses away, or if the event took place in a distant country. (Who knows the exact number, to within one person, of those who have drowned in the Mediterranean?)

° The passage of time changes our emotions. A tragic event loses its intensity over time. Similarly, when we see a shape or a painting that we like every day, we eventually stop noticing it.

° The colored atmosphere of a room or its temperature changes our emotional appreciation.

° Our physical conditions, such as being hungry, sleep deprived, feeling safe or under the stress of an emergency, being relaxed or under pressure, radically influence our assessments, reasoning, and emotions.

° The cycle of day and night, our heartbeat, etc., discreetly impose themselves and condition our assessments.

° Not to mention the cultural influences that largely determine our emotional responses.

° Finally, we can mention our habits and the familiarity we acquire from birth. We become attached to the place where we were born, even if it is the driest desert or the coldest country in the far north.

We learn by imitating, and any form that represents our experiences, in one way or another, attracts our attention and emotions. Art takes advantage of this capacity for metaphorical evocation of materials. By fragmenting the wood, this memory disappears; chipboard renders the wood amnesiac. The testimony of its life disappears forever. Walter Benjamin spoke of the loss of “aura” through the process of industrial reproduction. If the algorithm is not trained in the morphogenesis of the history of images, its proposals will always be agglomerates rather than original creations. We will always have creations, but they will have lost their connection with the profound reason that gave rise to them.

Algorithms that use the fragmentation of “white noise” erase history, raison d’être, and the roots of forms in their historical context. They inevitably lead to a culture of appearances, a mannerist culture, a culture of pretense and “style.”

Style:

Artificial intelligence engineers are already working on the idea of reproducing a particular style (the Van Gogh “style,” the watercolor “style,” etc.) [6]

This reflects a cultural flaw in their education, which is scientific but insufficiently artistic. They approach artistic representations superficially, focusing on their appearance, their “style.”

However, style is a consequence, the result of a creative process that emerges without being planned. Style is, in principle, the culmination of a creative effort. It is not an end in itself. Style reflects the context, sources, and conditions that gave rise to it. For example, the belief that material life has no value compared to spiritual and eternal life gave rise to dematerialized, flat, Byzantine painting, unlike Renaissance painting, which placed the viewer, the human being, at the center and rediscovered perspective and the materiality of volume.

[6] A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style, Leon A. Gatys, Alexander S. Ecker, Matthias Bethge. arXiv:1508.06576v2 [cs.CV] 2 Sep 2015. arxiv.org/pdf/1508.06576

[back to text]

If style becomes an objective, the work is doomed to fall into the trap of mannerism. Mannerism does not look at the world beyond its surface. It is a superficial view of a creator who, for lack of anything better, places himself at the center of the world. In this case, style resonates with individualism.

Is there an alternative path?

Certainly, if the design of algorithms sought to integrate vectors, the testimonies of history and the genesis of each form. The fact that the water molecules carrying the color pigments in a watercolor, for example, spread according to the facilities or constraints imposed by the grains of the paper. This information about the evolution of a journey is not superficial. It is the story of this journey, revealed by the materials, that speaks to us and touches us emotionally. Of course, there are other levels that testify to the knowledge, sensitivity, skill or clumsiness, effort or lack of effort of the artist. All these testimonies must be taken into account. The concept of “style” is merely an impoverishing reduction.

Algorithms are generally designed by computer engineers, who have had little education in certain areas, particularly culture, aesthetics, and aspects of sensitivity in general. Their training is based on reasoning rather than on the development of sensitivity. The strengths and weaknesses of this education are naturally reflected in their algorithms.

In addition to the “style” design we just mentioned, there are two other examples: the first concerns Adobe Character Animator CC and one of its features, which was promoted in 2017 but has since been marginalized within the software.

The second example is a 2015 attempt (now abandoned?) to translate videos into cartoons, according to the “style” of different cartoonists.

Artificial intelligence is capable of imitating and transposing shapes and movements. This means that a person’s figure can be made to move and speak in the form and manner of another person. (Donald Trump can be transformed into Putin and vice versa, to update the examples using Obama and the Pope…).

Adobe’s Character Animator algorithm is capable of translating your face, captured by a webcam, into an animated painting that matches a model you have submitted. This plastic translation can evolve by reproducing your movements. [7]

However, looking at the result, one does not get the impression of an animated painting, but rather a face with naturalistic proportions on which paint has been applied.

Bastien Dubois, Portraits de Voyages, Sacrebleu, TV series, 2013 (this example predates the release of Adobe’s algorithm, but shows a similar result).

The result, although impressive, is far from what was expected and certainly from the original intention. [8]

Indeed, what is the problem?

When painting, the painter takes into account the flat surface of his medium. Through the use of materials (paints, pencils, hard or soft brushes, etc.), he translates what he perceives in three dimensions into a two-dimensional form. To do this, he takes into account the local color, but also its transformation by light. When trying to apply this painting to a volume, such as a person’s head, the conventions change: the homogeneous surface of flat paper is replaced by the surface of the volume, which is revealed by light.

[7] youtube.com/watch?v=0ueRYinz8Tk

[back to text]

[8] Jakub Fišer, Ondřej Jamriška, David Simons, Eli Shechtman, Jingwan Lu, Paul Asente, Michal Lukáč, and Daniel Sýkora, Example-Based Synthesis of Stylized Facial Animations In ACM Transactions on Graphics 36(4):155, 2017 (SIGGRAPH 2017, Los Angeles, USA, July 2017), ACM, U.S. Patent No. 10,504,267.

[back to text]

We thus witness a conflict between two approaches to lighting, which overlap without harmonizing: lighting integrated into the flat paint and lighting that reveals the volume of the head. This conflict results in a feeling of non-integration: we have the impression that the paint is applied to the face, rather than constituting a face in paint and in three dimensions.

Contours or structure?

Research into translating videos into a drawing “style” revealed similar cultural gaps. Engineers were unable to grasp how drawing works before designing their algorithm. Their device trained the algorithm, as usual, on databases composed of pencil strokes and fragments of lines, supposed to represent the “style” of different artists. [9] A sense of an artist’s “personal touch” certainly persists in the slightest trace they leave behind, but without taking into account what has been lost.

Beyond the scale, the “crumbs” of the artist’s strokes, a drawing bears witness to his gestures and his hierarchical gaze. Alfred Yarbus’s research [10] ont démontré que l’on ne regarde pas une scène toujours de la même façon, mais selon une approche qui cherche à répondre à des interrogations.

Similarly, an artist, consciously or unconsciously, emphasizes certain elements of their drawing, depending on the ideas that preoccupy them. A database consisting of drawings reduced to “bits and pieces” neglects this internal dynamic of drawing.

[9] Line-Drawing Video Stylization, N. Ben-Zvi1;2, J. Bento1;3, M. Mahler1, J. Hodgins1, A. Shamir1;4 Volume 0 (1981), Number 0 pp. 1–13 COMPUTER GRAPHICS forum. c 2015 The Author(s) Computer Graphics Forum c 2015 The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. faculty.runi.ac.il/arik/site/videosketch.asp

[back to text]

[10] A. L. Yarbus, Eye Movements and Vision. New York: Plenum Press, 1967.

[back to text]

Once trained, the algorithms then identified the contours of figures from videos and proceeded to associate lines and contours, seeking to transform a video into a cartoon. However, the result gave the impression of watching magnetized “hairs” vibrating around an invisible, naturalistic figure of the dancer who had served as a model for the experiment. [11]

Indeed, when drawing, we first focus on the structure before seeking to render the details of the surface. In a quick sketch, especially with freehand lines, this is a characteristic approach. We refine the external parts as we identify the proportions and volume, and we gradually move forward by adding details. Each line reflects a gesture that interprets a vision, a feeling, provoked by the model and the mental process that triggers the gesture that creates the mark. This process is an essential component of drawing. By mechanically following the contours, we contradict the artist’s perception and mental functioning.

The arbitrary presence of a homogeneous outline, ignoring the fact that it varies depending on the light, compromises the result. This deviation becomes even more significant as the number of images used per second of animation increases. A high number of frames per second (25, for example) adds precision to the details and reveals the formal conflict between the design of the algorithm and the artist’s overall vision. This problem is well known in animation, particularly with the results of rotoscoping when tracing videos.

[11] vimeo.com/148246658

[back to text]

I let the artificial intelligence of the “Chat” draw its own conclusions:

Conclusion

«Artificial intelligence algorithms, often designed by computer engineers, reflect the skills and shortcomings of their training. Better integration of cultural and aesthetic aspects could enrich the results and avoid the pitfalls of mannerism and the loss of the history of forms.

Algorithms based on prompts and databases often reduce the expressive richness and internal dynamics of artistic works. By focusing on contours and surface features, they neglect the underlying structure and overall vision of the artist, which are essential to artistic creation.

Current approaches, by imposing conceptual and statistical models, risk transforming art into a “ready-made,” thereby impoverishing human creativity. To overcome these challenges, it is crucial to develop algorithms that integrate the historical and contextual vectors of artistic forms. Interdisciplinary collaboration between engineers, artists, and cultural specialists is essential to enrich databases and algorithm training processes.

By acknowledging the limitations of current approaches and seeking to integrate artistic sensibility, AI could open up new creative possibilities that respect the essence of art and human perception. This approach would preserve the emotional richness and depth of works of art while exploiting the technological potential of AI. »

 

My comment on the conclusion:

This summary highlights an optimistic view of the future possibilities of AI in the arts. “AI could open up new creative possibilities…” Certainly, it could. But my point of view in this text is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. It is education, a prerequisite for this AI (Le Chat, by Mistral), that leads it to draw conclusions in one direction. Vigilance is therefore required: the database terrain in which AI is trained is not neutral; it is also conditioned by ideologies.

20 février 2025

]]> https://beatbit.org/research/about-the-missteps-of-artificial-intelligence/feed/ 0 TEACHING ANIMATION: CHIARA MAGRI https://beatbit.org/research/teaching-animation-chiara-magri/ Mon, 28 Jul 2025 13:54:14 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=3374

TEACHING ANIMATION: CHIARA MAGRI

Georges Sifianos: Could you introduce yourself and the school?

Chiara Magri: My name is Chiara Magri, and I work at the National Film School in Italy, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in italian. Our animation course, based in Turin (Northwest Italy), was a break with tradition, as most film courses had been held in Rome since the 1930s. While animation had a small presence at the school in Rome, it was more of a permanent workshop where a few passionate students pursued their creative aspirations.

Giulio Giannini, who initiated the animation course in the 1980s, was the partner of Emanuele Luzzati. Together, they produced beautiful short films and title sequences. However, Italy had no real animation industry at the time. The school aimed to preserve animation as an art form rather than prepare students for professional production since there were limited opportunities beyond advertising. Italian television primarily purchased animated content from the U.S. and occasionally from European productions but did not produce much domestically.
When we proposed launching an animation course in Turin, our project was built on a shifting industry landscape. By the late 1990s, the emergence of a domestic animation industry became more feasible, thanks to European Union policies, such as the MEDIA program, which required broadcasters like RAI to produce European animation. This created a demand for skilled professionals, but there was no workforce to support it. So, in 2001, we designed a course to train young professionals for this starting industry.
We had no prior experience in structured animation training—outside of the very seminal experience of the workshop in Rome, there were virtually no animation schools in Italy. However, it became a strength. We approached the challenge with humility and learned from countries where animation education was more established. I had the opportunity to participate in the Training for Trainers program initiated by CARTOON in Brussels, where I engaged with experts in animation education. It was an invaluable experience, and it’s a shame that such programs no longer exist.

We began with a small group of 12 students per year, selected through a rigorous admissions process. Our students, especially in the early years, were highly collaborative, and together, we shaped the school’s identity. This collaborative foundation is one of the reasons we are now recognized as a leading animation school in Italy.
We also had the opportunity and the luck of motivated professionals who devote some of their working time to the school. Everyone was saying: “If only I had a school like this when I was starting out!” My words may sound sentimental, but in animation, motivation is essential—you can’t create animation without it.

Over the past 20 years, our school has evolved significantly. Initially, we had a flexible budget that allowed for experimentation and, importantly, mistakes. Unfortunately, financial constraints today limit that freedom. Another major change came four years ago when the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of University granted our diploma a new status, complicating our structure. We are not officially part of the university system, yet we must assign academic credits, which contradicts our practical, informal teaching approach. This is a common challenge among European animation schools, though some have faced it earlier than we have. The main difficulty lies in helping students understand that while our diploma is legally recognized, our school is not a traditional university—especially in Italy, where universities are predominantly theoretical rather than practical.
Despite these challenges, applications continue to grow, allowing us to be more selective. Our three-year program remains highly practical, with all instructors being artists and being active industry professionals. The duration from the workshop in Rome last two-year,   we started a three-years course in Turin. Today, we accept 20 students per year. Our curriculum balances two objectives: preparing students for industry roles by training them in key techniques (primarily 2D digital animation and some 3D) while also fostering artistic expression to nurture new talents in animation. This dual focus is not easy to maintain, especially as students become more influenced by mainstream trends and struggle to conduct in-depth research beyond what’s immediately visible online. The internet provides a vast surface of information, but going deeper is increasingly challenging. Finding one’s unique artistic voice is harder than ever.

La Luna rubata, Vittorio Massai, Dario Lo Verme, 2017

GS: Could you elaborate on your teaching methodology?

CM: Our main aim is to enable students to work in a studio. That’s why much of our curriculum is dedicated to key industry processes: storyboarding, animation, and background design. We focus on digital tools, mainly Toon Boom Harmony, teaching students not only the techniques but also the discipline required for professional work—such as meeting deadlines. Sometimes, we have to push students toward industry standards, which may conflict with their creative instincts, but ultimately, we want to help them find a job.
There is a widespread fear among young animators that they won’t find work in Italy and will have to move abroad. This isn’t entirely true. Italy has a real industry producing children’s TV series, and there is plenty of work available.
During the first two years, students also take short, intensive workshops—one to two weeks—with independent animation artists, often from abroad (budget permitting). These workshops expose students to diverse creative perspectives. We were fortunate to work with Paul Bush, whose contributions were invaluable. His passing in 2023 left a profound gap in our program. He conducted workshops on directing animation and idea development and mentored students on their diploma films, which is the core project of their third year.

Paul Bush

Our curriculum progresses over three years. In the first year, students receive foundational training, mainly in 2D animation, as they often want to start by drawing on paper. They also receive an introduction to film language and directing. We don’t have a dedicated screenwriting course because we select students based on their visual creativity rather than writing skills. Instead, we teach them to develop projects through an interactive process—moving between writing and drawing rather than following a strict script-to-storyboard path. Ideally, we would one day introduce a screenwriting course where writers collaborate with animators, but we aren’t there yet.
The diploma film is a major challenge. We encourage originality and personal expression, yet students must work collaboratively, often co-directing their films. While this sometimes dilutes individual artistic identity, it fosters teamwork, which is one of the most valuable skills they take away from our school.

Humus, Simone Cirillo, Simone Di Rocco, Dario Livietti, Alice Tagliapietra, 2017

We ask each student to propose an idea for a short film. While this is not mandatory, all 20 students usually take part, both in group and individual sessions. They begin by writing a short script—about one page long—and developing some initial visual concepts and drawings.
The first step is a pitching session, where each student presents their project. Together, we make an initial selection, typically narrowing it down to 10–12 ideas for further development. Each of these students continues refining their script and visuals individually, while those without a selected project contribute through visual research for the projects they find most compelling. However, they are asked not to interfere with the storytelling or writing process. This stage lasts about two months—quite a short time.

After this period, we hold a final pitching session to select the six projects that will move into production. While we try to involve students in the decision-making process as much as possible, the final choice ultimately rests with me and the three teachers.
Once the six projects are chosen, students form production teams. At this point, projects often undergo significant transformation, particularly in their visual style, as team members contribute suggestions and ideas. Each student takes on a specific role, and directing responsibilities are shared. This collective approach can sometimes dilute the personal vision or originality of a film, but it is invaluable for learning collaboration, teamwork, and mutual support. Interestingly, few students have the confidence or determination to assert themselves fully as directors.
In some cases, when a student demonstrates exceptional reliability, motivation, and a strong personal vision, we allow them to develop a film individually. This approach has led to notable successes, such as Donato Sansone and Martina Scarpelli. However, it has also resulted in unfinished projects, as working alone presents unique challenges. Individual films remain rare within our program.

Love cube, Donato Sansone, 2002

Cosmoetico, Martina Scarpelli, 2015

William Henne: It’s interesting that the school invites filmmakers. Students also engage with professionals from the industry.

CM: This dual approach is a fundamental aspect of our school, but it requires significant time and financial resources—both of which are increasingly rare. We are constantly struggling to maintain this balance.
We would be ready to introduce a Master’s program following the BA [Bachelor of Arts], but this would require additional funding. We would need to be internationally oriented if we were to attract enough students for a Masters degree. Such a program could focus more on authorship and independent filmmaking, giving students extra time to develop their portfolios and industry connections. Those interested in creating their own films could benefit from a two-year course dedicated to this goal.
Currently, we remain the only public institution in Italy fully dedicated to animation. This allows us to keep tuition fees relatively affordable—currently €3,000 per year, which is quite reasonable compared to private schools. Many institutions now offer animation courses, often combined with illustration, but they tend to focus on technical aspects such as 3D animation and character animation, rather than animation as a storytelling medium.
We haven’t yet touched on the impact of AI and the digital revolution. One thing is certain: innovation will always be necessary. Our role is to experiment and explore new creative possibilities.

GS: The school is called Centro Sperimentale. Is it connected to that idea?

CM: Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia literally means Experimental Center for Cinematography, not Center for Experimental Cinematography. Mussolini created these experimental centers because they were highly innovative, like the Experimental Center for Agriculture. Today, the center’s main goal remains the development of filmmakers and authors.
Animation is particularly interesting because it raises fundamental questions: What is cinema? What are its languages? It also embodies the contradiction between industry and art. Animation provides a unique opportunity to explore what it truly means to create art or entertainment.

GS: There is now a strong tradition of animation in Italy, with important directors like Toccafondo, Catani, Blu, Simone Massi, Donato Sansone, and Martina Scapelli. On the other hand, there’s the industry, which relies on standardized tools like Toon Boom and a structured production process that starts with a storyboard.

CM: We try to teach our students how to use these tools—Toon Boom or TVPaint—in the most creative and personal way. One of the most common comments about our graduation films is, “Oh, how different they all look in style!”—even when they’re made with the same software.
Unfortunately, we don’t have extensive facilities for stop-motion, which limits our ability to explore it fully. We encourage students to experiment with puppets, but they often lack confidence when trying different techniques.

What I notice in our films, compared to those from other European schools, is that in Italy, there’s a deeply ingrained notion of classical beauty. Even students who struggle with drawing aspire to draw like Michelangelo. This mindset makes it difficult for them to push boundaries. The weight of classical beauty is so deeply rooted—almost subliminally—that it acts as a constraint on creativity. We don’t see much expressionism in our work. The Italian emphasis on beauty, harmony, symmetry, and proportion can be a kind of creative chain.
At the same time, we also teach students how to manage production pipelines—an essential skill, even for independent filmmakers. Those who create their films individually eventually develop their own workflow, because they learn a structured approach to animation.

Midori, Elena Garofalo, Marta Giuliani, Laura Piunti, 2017

GS: What is the selection process for new students?
Toccafondo never uses a storyboard. The requirement to use one can push films in a more standardized direction. Similarly, software like Toon Boom encourages clean lines, filled-in colors, and a certain type of character design. Do you have any teaching methods to counteract these tendencies?

CM: Our student films are ambitious, but we still emphasize traditional storytelling. There are two types of animation schools: film schools and art schools. Paul was very insistent on developing strong storytelling in films, and in some ways, industry methods support this. While these methods may limit creativity, they also make it easier to focus on storytelling fundamentals—a clear beginning, middle, and end. Surprisingly, not many students even aim for that.
A film isn’t a game—it’s a structured narrative, and engaging an audience is crucial. That’s what we teach. I’m not sure if this approach will be relevant in the future, given that entertainment is increasingly built around 30-second clips. But we still think in terms of the big screen, the silver screen, film festivals, and the power of conveying a message through cinema—regardless of its form.

La cabina, Ginevra Lanaro e Federica Di Leonardo, 2017.

In a way, we prioritize content over form. The standard production framework provides students with a sense of security while making their films. They work in teams, where the workforce naturally supports the director’s vision. I agree with you—it would be a dream to create a master’s program where students, after learning the standard production method, gain the confidence to break the rules.
Even our most “art house” films tend to be quite traditional. In 2023, we won the Cristal d’Annecy for La Notte. I was really surprised. The three directors did an incredible job, with strong animation and appealing characters, but the film wasn’t experimental at all. Everyone enjoyed it—children, artists, even experimental filmmakers. The music of Vivaldi was the driving force behind the film.

When the student initially proposed a film about Vivaldi, Venice, Carnival, and Pulcinella, I thought, “Oh no, please!” But in the end, he had a very clear vision and was excellent at pitching the project.
La Scuola del Libro, a very important school in Urbino, specializes in art publishing, engraving and illustration. It has produced renowned filmmakers like Toccafondo, Catani (who now teaches there),  Simone Massi and many other very important filmmakers. But as with any school, it tends to imprint a certain style on its students. It’s paradoxical—schools should encourage creative freedom, yet students often end up imitating their mentors.

La notte, Martina Generali, Simone Pratola, Francesca Sofia Rosso, 2023

]]> WRITING ANIMATION: PIERRE HÉBERT https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-pierre-hebert/ Thu, 13 Feb 2025 16:06:16 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=3340

WRITING ANIMATION: PIERRE HÉBERT

Georges Sifianos: We can start by talking about the raw material that you systematically use, i.e. the little signs that result from scratching and that could be called proto-writing. It refers to the tool, which scratches, it refers to the support, the film, and its resistance, it refers to the gesture, which can be precise or which can slip, and to the pressure exerted. Why did you fall in love with this way of doing things?

Pierre Hébert: You’ve described it very well. There are several aspects to it: the graphic nature of the lines engraved on film is very appealing to me. This raw, brutal, imprecise graphic style is full of energy and power. I’m interested in the imprecise nature of this work: we necessarily work frame by frame and, when it runs, there’s no absolute precision in the placement of the drawings from one frame to the next. I’ve always enjoyed seeing the succession of distinct images. The physicality, the pleasure of experimenting with the resistance of the emulsion and trying out different types of scraper. There’s an undeniable pleasure in the work and in the relationship with the tools and the material.

Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, 2021

GS: From one film to the next, I see variations in approach within the same process. In Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, the scratching is not exactly the same. Are these fleeting mental images at work in the film?

PH: What interested me in this film – and it’s a line of enquiry that I may still be following – was scratching in relation to words that I didn’t understand. The idea of proto-writing takes on its full meaning. It was a question of finding signs for words, for speech, recorded in public places in Japan, that I didn’t understand. You could compare it to Henri Michaux’s efforts to create fictitious alphabets by doing the opposite, i.e. starting from an oral expression and trying to add signs that correspond to it. The elements I could rely on were not the meaning of the words but the non-verbal dimension of language, i.e. intonation and fluidity. I have some animations in store for a film I started with a Vietnamese speaker.

Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, 2021

Zepe: What’s impressive about this film, compared to others, is the way in which these signs and features change from one situation to another. Each scene has a different, constantly evolving treatment. I saw these images in live action, interspersed with the graphic mapping, but in effect I was only following the narrative induced by the lines. This cryptography evolves in the film in a justified and powerful way, far surpassing anything I’ve ever seen in terms of engraving on film.

PH: I’m really pleased with your comment. I like the term cryptography, which I’d never thought of before. Thank you for suggesting it. I’m going to add it to my vocabulary. I don’t know how I came up with it, but it’s clear that in the making of the film there was a dynamic all of its own. I drew the different engraving segments on film in order, one after the other. There was no plan to achieve what you describe.

Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, 2021

Zepe: It’s either a very intuitive approach, or the fruit of real logic. In the interview with Boris Labbé, the question of chaos is raised, and it seems to me that Pierre Hébert exploits it more than any other filmmaker. This random cryptography generates combinations that escape any form of pre-established composition, leaving great freedom to the appearance of features. The result is even a kind of persistence of vision, a parallel montage based on two different points of view evolving simultaneously, like two actions on the same screen.

PH: The first time I did live animation engraved on film was for a musical by Jean Derome, during which I interrupted the engraving and read texts. The show, inspired by the Orient, was called Confiture de Gagaku, based on Gagaku, a form of Japanese musical theatre. One of the texts, of Chinese origin, was called La mort du chaos (The Death of chaos). We presented these performances every day for a week and, at the end, I used the improvised segments to make a 15-minute montage, with which I envisaged making a film, without ever finishing it. The title of the film was La mort du chaos. This theme appeared in my performances right from the start.

Pochette du disque  Confiture de Gagaku Jean Derome

GS: The death of chaos becomes the approach, the subject. How do you intend, or how have you done it in the past, to kill chaos, to organise chaos?

PH: With a point. Like these.

GS: I wasn’t speaking literally, I was thinking more in terms of modes of organisation. Looking at the films, I tried to list a certain number of motifs that you use – my list is incomplete, of course: the random dimension, the repetitive aspect, the aggressiveness of the scratch, sometimes the accumulation, the vibration, the evanescence, the parallelism of the strokes, the scratches, sometimes multiple, sometimes superficial, sometimes deep, the addition of colour, the circles, the straight lines, the presence/absence, the flashing, the displacement of the strokes or their fixity… The list is not closed.

PH: The combination of repetition and chance is decisive. The last performances I did, which I had to interrupt because of illness, consisted of working live on film with two projectors projecting at the same time onto the same screen. The two images were adjusted on the screen. I engraved alternately on the two projectors and the two loops were of slightly different lengths so that, through repetition, the adjustment between the two loops each time changed. The result was incalculable and uncontrollable. I can decide on the distribution between the two projectors of the type of strokes, and the type of patterns, but it’s impossible to control the encounters between the two streams – chance is inevitable.

Berlin – Le passage du temps, installation, 2014

The first time I used this process was with live footage shot in Berlin, in the video installation Berlin, le passage du temps (Berlin, the passage of time), I used four projectors simultaneously with four loops of different lengths. My son calculated that for these loops to return to the original diagram, the projectors would have to be left running for 1,000 years. To compose each of the strips and arrive at a form of organisation, I spread common thematic elements over the different strips, which thus have a greater probability of meeting and fitting together. In Berlin, le passage du temps, I distributed panoramic shots of the Berlin underground in one direction or another on each of the tapes, and regularly the same movements, in the same direction, appeared at the same time on all four screens. The work involved in distributing thematic elements to produce compositions that are not generated purely by chance is dizzying. Despite this effort, it continually eludes us.

Berlin – Le passage du temps, installation, 2014

Berlin – Le passage du temps, installation à la Cinémathèque québécoise, 2014

The repetitive sequence is fascinating: a 45-second loop and a 50-second loop recur continuously, but the composition produced varies all the time.
When Andrea Martignoni and I did the Scratch performance at the Louvre, I couldn’t find a way to end the projection, even though the two loops were sufficiently saturated by scratching, I was completely fascinated by observing the renewed combinations between the two loops. I made several attempts and Andrea and I would both sit in armchairs on the stage looking at the screen, letting our projectors roll on their own. I don’t think the audience really understood what we were trying to do.

Scratch, performance présentée à l’auditorium du Louvre avec Andrea Martignoni, le 14 octobre 2018

GS: Readers aren’t necessarily familiar with your work and what you describe is the culmination of an evolution. Can you describe your method of improvisation on the film loop that you scratch until the projector rips out the tape?

PH: There are several things that happen: firstly, the absence of control at different levels. I have to burn quickly because I know that the projector is going to rip the film out of my hands at some point and that puts pressure on me and the imprecision, the uncertainty from one image to the next is much greater than when burning on film in the studio. Then, to complete the loop in a reasonable time, I can’t wait and choose which part of the loop I’m going to continue to burn. As soon as the projector rips the film out of my hands, I have to immediately take the film where it is and burn it, so I burn a bit all over the loop and that produces a series of distinct segments, spread out along the length, which I will eventually splice together.

GS: How many metres of 16mm film do you work with in a loop?

PH: In metres, I don’t know, but it’s 50 seconds [NDR: 6 metres].

GS: It’s a long 50-second loop that runs permanently through a projector and you work on the free part until the projector rips the tape out and, at the same time, Andrea does the sound next to it in the same way.

Pierre Hébert et Andrea Martignoni à Area Sismica, Medola, 2009

PH: It’s conceptually very tight.

Andrea Martignoni: It makes the question of chance or the synchronisation of the audio part more complicated, because it might work very well with an image but then never again. The sound is created more quickly than Pierre obviously does, it doesn’t have to be figurative.

PH: The sound loop adds an element of chance; the three loops roll independently and combine in unpredictable ways.

GS: Do you ever try to introduce a narrative dimension?

PH: In the case of the performances with two projectors, there isn’t really a narrative element. But the performances I did with the musician Bob Ostertag included a thematic element imposed by the very material Bob used for his music. I would prepare small, more narrative segments of animation in advance. I would then stop the projector at certain points and paste these segments into the loop.

Colleuse 16 mm

Colleuse 16 mm

GS: In Mais un oiseau ne chantait pas, you limit yourself to a specific length of time. What criteria did you use to set the duration?

PH: It’s determined by the music of Malcolm Golstein, whose violin work I find close to the texture of etching on film. After a performance and video installation with him, I decided to make a film based on a piece I really liked, Mais un oiseau ne chantait pas, But one bird sang not.

GS: I’m actually impressed by the sonic and visual match between the sound timbres and the engraved forms.

PH: In this case, I did something I don’t normally agree with, I did some extreme mickeymousing, starting from a very precise and detailed analysis of the music to which I adjusted the animation. I usually avoid this process because I feel that time does not flow in the same way in music and images and that this way of constraining the image to a precise musical organisation does not seem right to me. In this case, the very nature of Malcolm’s music allowed me to do it, but it’s a special case.

But one bird sang not, 2018

GS: In Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, the singer’s hoarse voice has a similar match with the scratching.

PH: In that case too, I analysed the sound, but not everything in the film is analysed in the same way. Some passages are left to chance. And even though I don’t fundamentally agree with this process of matching, I find a certain pleasure in doing it.

 Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, 2021

Éthann Néon: What makes you say that musical and visual time, within an audiovisual work, are not in harmony and do not flow in the same way?

PH: Of course it’s possible to synchronise them, but I find, for example, that the value of repetition in music is not at all the same as the value of repetition in film. It’s much more restrictive and difficult to use repetition in film, whereas it’s natural in music.

Éthann Néon: And yet the loop is a common process in animation.

PH: Absolutely.

EN: Repetition is inherent in the language of animation and from that point of view animation is similar to certain musical repetitions, which is not the case in live-action cinema. In perceptive terms, you make a very clear distinction between the two. As far as I’m concerned, it depends very much from one work to another.

PH: It goes back a long way, when I started out in the early 60s, I was interested in the idea of visual music, which I eventually broke away from. I tried to animate a waltz using images alone and no matter how much I tried to distribute the accents visually, it never gave the feeling of a waltz as played by a musician. I then came to the idea that the value of the passage of time in animation, and the possibility of distributing accents and creating a certain effect, was radically different from music. I don’t know whether this experiment led to a convincing conclusion, but afterwards it was a determining factor for me, an idea that has always been present in my work. I have, however, taken great pleasure in synchronising images and sound on occasion, as in Mais un oiseau ne chantait pas, so what I say is worth what it’s worth, it’s not necessarily the truth.

Op Hop – Hop op, 1966

For the film Le métro (The Underground), I took a photograph of a man and his child in the Underground and asked myself the question of the gaze. How do you animate a still gaze and get the feeling of that gaze? So I repeated this image of the man and his child in a number of frames and applied to this series of drawings a formula that I called the staggered cycle. I printed the image from 1 to 10, then from 2 to 11, then from 3 to 12, then from 4 to 13 and so on, on the truca [a machine used to create effects in the laboratory], thinking that this would create a mixture of order and disorder that can exist in a look. It wasn’t really convincing as far as the look was concerned, but the staggered repetition that created a double rhythmic structure really interested me. The break between the sequence from 1 to 10 and then from 2 to 11 was very marked. This created an initial rhythmic structure based on ten. In addition, the recurrence of each of the images that made up the series was shorter, by one image, and shorter (9) than the temporality created by the break in the loop. A rhythm of nine opposed to a rhythm of ten. It was this shifted rhythmic structure that served as the basis for the first version of the performance software that Bob Ostertag created for me. Ultimately, this is also where the idea came from to link loops of different lengths together in my video installations and in my performances with two projectors.

Chants et danses du monde inanimé – Le métro, 1985

When my colleague Bob Ostertag programmed my image processing software, he derived it from his own digital sampling software in which there was a highly developed and complex loop system. The use of digital technology increased the possibilities of creating different types of loops, easily changing the starting and ending points of loops and creating very subtle variations. As a result, I’ve been experimenting a lot with loops, which eventually led to the idea of two-projector performances.

Special forces, performance de Bob Ostertag et Pierre Hébert à Roulette, New York, 27 mars 2008

GS: At the same time, with digital, the sensuality of the film material disappears.

PH: Yes, it was a tragedy in my life when Bob created this software. It meant that the images recorded on film had to be captured with a camera, which was impossible or very laborious. I made a few attempts to digitise the images on film but there was no way of digitising them quickly enough to fit into this process where speed was of the essence. I thought I’d just given up engraving on film. I necessarily had to move on to animating objects and painting on glass to feed the process and respond to the pressure of these performances. At the start, there are no images and the accumulation of images, the speed of the accumulation of images is an important element. But you also have to manage the composition of these images using the software and continually change the parameters for processing the images, the length of the loops, the colours and the superimpositions. I was torn between the two: making images as quickly as possible and, on the other hand, intervening on the computer to organise them. It’s similar to the pressure created in live film-engraving performances with a projector. For the painting on glass, I looked for tools, brushes or objects that were too big for the surface I was working on, in an attempt to recapture the graphic force of etching on film. My son, who is a programmer, revised and transformed Bob’s software so that it could be used with a phone and a tablet to control the computer’s functions, which was much more direct than using the computer keyboard. After several years of performing with the digital tool, I tried to reintroduce engraved images and I realised that I had lost the physical link with this practice and it took years before I found it again. What happened was that Andrea and I started doing performances, initially called Digital scratch, in which I would simultaneously do the digital work and the printmaking on film. At first I realised I’d lost my skill, but doing the show inspired by Norman McLaren’s  Blinkity blank in 2015 at the Cinémathèque Québécoise, I felt like I’d rediscovered the link.

Digital Scratch à Poznan avec Andrea Martignoni le 14 juillet 2012

Ballade sur Blinkity Blank, 2014

AM: I recently prepared a masterclass based on the work I’ve done with Blu and the work I’ve done with Pierre. If you look at his website, which covers 60 years of his career, the collaboration between us only represents 10%.

PH: Andrea’s knowledge of my work is exceptional. I remember a masterclass in Sicily where Andrea was translating what I was saying into Italian for the students and I realised that he was adding a lot of information that anticipated what I was going to say at the time of translation!

EN: You said that the move to digital, in terms of performance, had changed your way of working live, but in the films made with video, whether it’s La statue de Robert E. Lee à Charlottesville or Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, there’s a different kind of writing compared to scratching on film, with a kind of rotoscoping and cropping of shapes.

PH: I had already cut out shapes by scratching an interpositive taken from a live-action shoot, like at the start of my feature film La plante humaine (The human plant). It was a bit laborious because the engraving on the interpositive produced chips of emulsion and, even if you cleaned the interpositive before developing a new negative, there were still residues of emulsion on the film and the result wasn’t clear, to which we can add the deterioration of the image caused by going from the original negative to the interpositive and then to a new negative. When I started shooting digitally for the Lieux et monuments series, I quickly acquired a Cintiq tablet, which gives me a great deal of precision without any loss of quality. Trimming in white every two images is close to the dynamics of engraving on film.

 La plante humaine, 1996

EN: It’s not really a rotoscopy in the sense that rotoscopy generally doesn’t reveal the original medium and produces a new image. Clipping gives you the opportunity to catch our eye on a particular element.

PH: It’s part of a more complex context. Most of the shoots in the Lieux et monuments series took place with a fixed camera, on a tripod, with the aim of altering the real image itself, there’s a temporal reassembly of the events that occur in the image, like a sort of jigsaw puzzle, by cutting up the real image into different sections that I could recompose and change the place of the events. Trimming is part of a process of intervening in the live-action shoot with the aim of reconfiguring and re-choreographing it.

 La plante humaine, 1996

GS: In Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, the director’s presence is assertive, as he selects and picks with the subjectivity of his gaze. Not all the figures are identified. It could be a challenge to photographic representation that is rectified, or it could be a marriage of the resonances and vibrations of different modes of figuration, or it could simply be a feeling for which no explanation need be sought, or this vibrant outline could be the result of the debunking of individuals as in La statue de Robert E. Lee à Charlottesville (The Statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville), which deals with the subject of debunking. The viewer can come up with any number of interpretations. What part do you play in raising awareness of these issues?

PH: It’s a bit like all that really, you can guess the ideas that are in my head. Your hypotheses are very accurate.

AM: In the middle of your career, in the 70s and 80s, you worked on documentaries by other directors, and the Lieux et monuments series is a return to that.

PH: Yes indeed, I worked with a number of directors on their films, in particular the films of Fernand Bélanger, which led to Love addict, based on one of his films.

Love Addict (Offenbach), avec Fernand Bélanger, 1985

AM: In these collaborations, is it a question of underlining or erasing something?

PH: In the case of Fernand’s films, the idea was to superimpose a second discourse on his editing. I chose thematic elements that were in line with the film but I reorganised them. The one-off contributions were spread evenly throughout the film, creating a continuity as if two films were being shown at the same time, one a commentary on the other.
In 2021, a symposium was organised in Paris on the work of Robert Lapoujade, a painter and experimental filmmaker from the early 1960s who worked in the research department of ORTF. One of his films made a big impression on me at the time: Prison. To prepare for this conference, Pascal Vimenet asked me if I wanted to do something related to Lapoujade. I made a film called Palimpseste sur Prison de Robert Lapoujade (Palimpseste sur Prison by Robert Lapoujade), which consists of Lapoujade’s film in its entirety and a film-commentary that adds to it without obliterating Lapoujade’s film.

Palimpseste sur Prison de Robert Lapoujade, 2021

GS: You’re also an animation theorist. To what extent do the two activities interact or not?

PH: I’ve often wondered what I was trying to achieve by writing. The two activities are in tension. The first objective is to understand what I’ve done, a commentary on previous work, while at the same time trying to be open and define what I should do next. A tension between the past and the future, never one or the other, in the knowledge that I won’t be able to fully explain what I’ve done or devise a plan that I’m going to follow. From this point of view, I distance myself from the creative work, because when I take on a new project, I never do exactly what I was able to work out when I was writing. It always takes a different direction. It’s a vital, essential activity for me.

L’ange et l’automate, Les 400 coups, 1999

Corps, langage, technologie, Les 400 coups, 2006

GS: Between a performance, a short film and a feature film, the operating methods are not necessarily the same. How did you prepare Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche? How much of it was improvised? Because it’s a production with a journey to plan, with a team, to achieve a result you didn’t know about in advance.  

PH: No, there was no script.
There was no team with me. It was a no-budget production. I got a grant for this calligraphy course in Japan, which covered the costs.
Unlike Mais un oiseau ne chantait pas, which has a fixed duration, the material was made up of all the experiences I had during the two months I spent in Japan, including travelling and filming in various places, including Nagasaki, workshops with the dancer Teita Iwabuchi, the performance at Koji Yamamura’s animation school and the calligraphy classes.

GS: You were in Japan initially for another reason and then you had the idea of collecting this material. Did you scratch the images on your return?

PH:  Yes. I used a zoom recorder or an iPhone without worrying about the quality of the images and sounds. The important thing was to pick up traces of this experience that I hoped to do something with.
I shot images thinking that they could become a film, like, for example, the still shot of the main square in Nagasaki, which I thought I’d include in the Lieux et monuments series.
Then, while waiting in the café at Mishima station, I was struck by the different layers of sound, the neighbours chatting, the waitresses in the distance, the background music, and the roar of the Shinkansen trains passing by every few minutes, and I decided to record all this with the idea of making animation from these elements. When I got back, that was the first sequence I animated, which consisted of finding signs for words whose meaning I didn’t understand.
After the trip, I continued to record sounds in the hope that they would be useful, like the prayers and drumming in temples on New Year’s Eve.
I quickly put together a set, not determined by a scenario or precise planning, but by a balance in terms of duration.

Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, à Nagasaki, 2021

GS: We can imagine that you now have a lot of documents collected and unused.

PH: Absolutely, particularly in Vietnam. And from all over the world. When Bob Ostertag and I were doing performances all over the world, I quickly began to accumulate material, mainly actual filming, and sound too, so I have a fairly large catalogue of footage from all over the world.

GS: How do your films, which are not ordinary or big-budget, circulate?

PH: All the films produced by the National Film Board of Canada are its property and are distributed by the NFB.
After I left the NFB at the end of 1999, I quickly got in touch with a video artists’ centre in Montreal called Vidéographe, which does distribution and used to specialise in video art, but which has started to distribute films like mine. It’s not massive distribution but occasional distribution. I regularly put together programmes of my films, particularly those in the Lieux et monuments series.
When I started doing performances, one of my aims was to have a more direct relationship with the public. The way films are shown in cinemas is impersonal and the audience obviously didn’t come to see the short film but rather the feature film it accompanied. I was quite disappointed by this form of distribution. Direct contact with the audience creates a context over which I have a certain amount of control, unlike when short films are shown as the first part of feature films in commercial cinemas.

Scratch, performance présentée à l’auditorium du Louvre, le 14 octobre 2018

GS: McLaren said that he became an animator because he liked to dance, but he was quite shy. As far as you’re concerned, you like the pressure of being on stage, with the tension induced by the fact that the camera rips the film off you. Do you feel more like an actor than a filmmaker?

PH: Perhaps yes, in particular the mixed digital and film etching performances I did with Andrea reinforced this because they required me to move from one workstation to another during the performance. This was an element of spectacle for the audience, who saw me running every five minutes from the computer to the projector and back again.
There was also the risk that the film might break or get tangled up; this apparently perilous aspect of live film engraving was almost a circus-like performance, which is why I always insisted on being in front of or in the middle of the room, and certainly not behind it, so that the spectators could see me as well as the projected image. Len Lye had described his work on Free Radicals as a dance.

GS: One of my students wrote a dissertation and examined Free radicals frame by frame (Denis Rousseau, 2004). He spotted the existence of small, almost invisible dots, from which he drew lines. He demonstrated that there was a repertoire of signs that Len Lye repeated by rotating them. Len Lye thus created a mythology about the fact that he danced…

Free radicals de Len Lye

PH: Some people who saw him animate have likened it to a dance, in connection with his idea of synesthesia, of the inner sense of movement that he talked about during an interview I had with him in Montreal in the early 60s.
In his animations, the shapes rotate in a controlled way, so it’s probably not just left to chance. Still, I like the idea that it was a dance and that the signs on the image were the result not just of the movement of his hand but of the movement of his whole body. Hence the idea of the dance.

GS: He acts as a dancer but not just as an improviser, he codifies beforehand.

Vincent Gilot: In your work, the scratching on the film is very free, with a series of small signs scattered across the image, whereas we’re used to large verticals, like curtains crossing. When there are lines in your work, they are more horizontal than vertical. McLaren had a prism built that allowed him to project the previous image and make drawings on film with the previous drawings. Is it a choice in your work that the images are distinct and unconnected with the image before and the image after?

PH: In my first film, Histoire grise ou Histoire verte, depending on which era you’re referring to, I drew large vertical lines like McLaren, but I quickly moved away from them because I wanted it to be really frame-by-frame animation and for each frame to be very distinct from the previous or subsequent ones. However, it stems from an idea that McLaren had in the series of didactic films he made about animated movement towards the end of his life. In them he talks about muscle memory, in other words the possibility of remembering the movement made to draw the previous image by the memory of the arm and hand that remember the previous gesture. This is not far removed from Len Lye’s idea of synaesthesia. This idea has stayed with me a great deal and has led me to exercise both my eye and my hand in an attempt to master the sequence of images.

Histoire grise ou Histoire verte, 1962 & 2005

In Souvenir de guerre, I used layers to place dots on the film. I drew strips of film on paper, photocopied them, cut them out, placed the film under the paper, aligned it with the drawn film and this enabled me to inscribe dots on the paper and transfer them to the film itself. This produced the highly narrative, not at all abstract, animation of Souvenir de guerre. I used this technique in several other films from this period. But I abandoned it because it killed the spontaneity and graphic force of the engraved lines. This observation led me to performance art, where, by placing myself in a dangerous situation under pressure, I developed a form of precision that did not depend on external means – such as transferring dots onto the film – but was essentially based on the memory of my eyes, hands and arms, the previous gesture and the spontaneous ability to judge the place in the black frame where I had drawn the previous image. It was a radical decision to abandon all forms of artificial location-finding methods.

Souvenirs de guerre, 1982

VG: Does this radical approach extend to the point of never replaying the film to correct what has been recorded?

PH: Indeed, I don’t correct. That’s what led me to train in calligraphy. What film engraving and calligraphy have in common is that you never correct, what is drawn is drawn. I can throw away the sheet of paper or the piece of film but I don’t correct it.

Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert de Loïc Darses, 2024

GS: Did Japanese calligraphy inspire you formally?

PH: I wasn’t directly influenced by the type of line in calligraphy, with its full and loose strokes. I came very close to the work of Henri Michaux, who himself referred to calligraphy on a conceptual level, as in his book Mouvements, where he proceeded by signs. His work was already important to me, but it became even more so after this experience.
After the live film engraving performance in Tokyo at Koji Yamamura’s school, my wife told me that she had seen an influence of his calligraphic work that day.

Mouvements de Henri Michaux, Gallimard, 1952

GS: You draw differently with coloured pencils in your book of portraits, which could take your work elsewhere.

PH: One of the avenues I’ve been exploring recently is freeze-framing animation on film. It shows things that you can’t see when the images are running. I make a drawing on the frozen image, a drawing modelled on this image, it’s like making two successive folds of the image: a first fold by stopping the engraving on film and a second by transferring it to a drawing made using other means.

GS: You use this process in Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche, with freeze-frames on engraved pictograms and other engravings moving over them.

PH: I actually started with that film.

GS: You told me that in some way the scratching on film came from your former interest in archaeology and excavations…

PH: Yes, it’s the same gesture of scratching to uncover something hidden. I like to think that was an important starting point. And the influence of McLaren and Len Lye, which was ultimately more decisive, was grafted onto this initial fantasy of the archaeological dig. Hence the dual reference to calligraphy and cave paintings, which has remained with me to this day. A double reference that I also found in Henri Michaux, who over the years has been another increasingly significant influence. Even though he wasn’t an animator, he nevertheless did a lot of serial drawings, as in his book Mouvement. I asked myself a lot about what linked these successive drawings, which were ultimately an invitation to explore discontinuity and to rely on a form of succession that isn’t necessarily expressed in terms of explicit, perceptible movements. ‘Movements in place of other movements that cannot be shown but which inhabit the mind’, as Michaux wrote.

pierrehebert.com

]]> WRITING ANIMATION: BORIS LABBÉ https://beatbit.org/research/writing-animation-boris-labbe/ Wed, 15 Jan 2025 17:13:30 +0000 https://beatbit.org/research/?p=3219
THEORY
MASTERCLASS

WRITING ANIMATION: BORIS LABBÉ

Georges Sifianos: Can you tell us about your work, how it was conceived, your background…?

Boris Labbé: I come from Occitanie, from the Pyrenees. My Pyrenean origins may well have influenced me.
I’ve always drawn, it’s a constant in my life, even if I’m drawing less and less, because my work is focusing more and more on digital tools, but with a potential that comes from drawing.
I went to a scientific lycée and was very interested in science when I was young, as well as drawing and art. Then I very quickly decided to study art, so just after the baccalaureate I went to the Beaux-Arts in Tarbe for 3 years, where I was immersed in the context of a school that was better equipped to teach contemporary art, which stemmed from conceptual art and post-Duchamp art.
In my first year as a young student I tried out a whole range of disciplines: photography, ceramics, etc. Then I became interested in Land Art and in my second and third years I concentrated on drawing, large format drawings, 1 m by 2 m, not at all geared towards animation or calibrated for film. In fact, I didn’t see myself as a future film director at all. I was thinking more along the lines of a visual artist or draughtsman.

At a certain point I got a bit bored of my own production, and even of the teaching at the Beaux-Arts, and I needed to put that back into play. At the same time, I discovered video art at the Beaux-Arts and I also discovered animation, but from a distance because there was no specific animation course. My desire to draw and to add a temporal dimension to my drawings led me to apply to schools specialising in animation, in particular EMCA. I didn’t finish my course at the Beaux-arts, I only did 3 years instead of 5. I could have done 5, I only did 3 years, but I still got a diploma, a DNAP [Diplôme National d’Arts Plastiques] and I went to EMCA. I also applied to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Poitier, which had a digital art section. Digital art, drawing and animation were all in the back of my mind. It was the EMCA school of animated film that appealed to me most at the time. These courses are what determine you, and I probably could have done something else if I hadn’t come across them.

GS: Have you seen any films in the meantime that have interested you?

BL: I knew Michel Ocelot’s work. I wasn’t familiar with independent animation as it’s called, I didn’t know many short films. But I had seen The man who planted trees and obviously a few animated film gems and I liked them. I’d also seen what the La Poudrière school and the Gobelins school were doing. I didn’t know the EMCA school very well, they didn’t have very good communication. It wasn’t easy to find out what was really going on when I joined in 2008. When I went to take the competitive exam, I saw the profiles I had around me, I saw what was going on, and that interested me. I wasn’t a connoisseur at all, I was going into uncharted territory. I didn’t yet know Norman McLaren or pre-cinema. I had a lot of gaps in my knowledge of cinema and animation in particular.

The man who planted trees by Frédéric Back, 1987

GS: Did EMCA give you this culture?

BL: Yes. At EMCA, yes. At the Beaux-Arts, there were art history courses but often the teachers themselves didn’t know much about animation either. They tended to show us video art. I was influenced quite early on by Bill Viola, who still remains in the shadow of my work when I make video installations. A French artist like Pierrick Sorin does some interesting installations, in his relationship with the studio work and special effects of Georges Méliès, who has always fascinated him. I love Méliès too.

Bill Viola

Pierrick Sorin

Georges Méliès

Everything I’ve developed in animation comes from EMCA, but I didn’t have the profile of the typical student. Some of them had gone to prep-schools to get into animation, and they were often prepared to do animation, whereas I wasn’t at all. And I did my first storyboard for the EMCA competition, I also did my first nude for that competition. They took me on anyway. At EMCA there was a director of studies, Christian Arnau, who was interested in contemporary art and wasn’t into hardcore animation either. And that worked in my favour.

GS: You’re really playing on two fronts: you’re making films and installations at the same time. In my opinion, this raises a fairly fundamental question: by its very nature, an installation is local, so it doesn’t have the capacity to reach a large audience, whereas a film, by virtue of its format, can circulate all over the world. Is this encounter with the public important to you? Is there another kind of encounter with installations?

BL: As a student, I thought I would be more of an animator than a filmmaker. But that was later contradicted by the fact that my early career as a professional artist developed more in the cinema than in the exhibition halls. The production relationship is different, meaning that you don’t talk in the same way when you’re going to make a film and you don’t talk to the same people, and you don’t have the same money when you’re getting ready to make an installation. It’s night and day. When it comes to developing installation projects, the budgets are fairly low and a bit cobbled together. It may have an impact in one museum or another. When it comes to film projects, in France we have a very consolidated industry and we manage to have sufficient budgets to do interesting things. The production relationship is very different. As far as audiences are concerned, I was quick to show my short films internationally. By the age of 24-25, you could say that I already had an international career. It’s true that the film format explodes careers. If I were a sculptor, I wouldn’t have had an international career from the start. A screening in Annecy with 1,000 or 1,500 people seeing the film all at once gives you access to what you might call a ‘mainstream’ audience. But, at the same time, the short film audience is made up of specialists, it’s a bit of an animation niche, as some people call it, and we often find that, from festival to festival, we see the same people again, we discuss the projects in the same way… and we also find it hard to reach the press or the real general public that we only reach in the feature film format. Even so, it’s hard for ordinary people to get through the doors of local cinemas and festivals.
My approach as a video artist, outside cinema, complements this first approach, that of making films and showing my work in the field of cinema. Showing a project in an exhibition is a way of getting animation out of its usual place, which is usually the animated film festival, and confronting it with an audience that is completely unfamiliar with animation and could in fact be considered as the ‘general public’. It’s an average audience, sometimes more or less keen on art or contemporary art. This allows us to meet a different audience, to talk about our projects in a different way, to build bridges between visual art and cinema and also to present an art of animation that is not cinematographic. Because obviously animation exists and can exist outside the cinema.

In December 2024, there will be an exhibition in Paris and another in Marseille based on a virtual reality project, and in this case it’s even worse in terms of the public because there are only two headsets in the exhibition in Paris, so we know that the project won’t be seen by more than 1,000 people*. But it’s still a rewarding experience. This virtual reality work is all about solitude, and you don’t get to experience solitude in a cinema.
 
* At the end of the exhibition in Paris at the Drawing Lab, there were 2,113 visitors.

 Ito Meikyū installation (detail) at Drawing Lab in Paris, 2024.

We speak differently depending on the medium we choose and the audience we’re aiming for. This project, which was exhibited at the Drawing Lab in Paris, was the subject of a nice article in Libération and Beaux-Arts Magazine, something we don’t get in animation, even though it was selected 5 or 6 times at Annecy. It’s a way of pushing our work further and showing it to other people.

GS: You mentioned the theme of solitude. In your films, we can see a cosmogony, models of cosmogony, as in Orogenesis. In all your films, there is an interest in the idea of birth. There is often a mise en abyme. There is an abundant constellation of figures activated by a repetitive, looping action. What are you looking for in these looped actions? Are they determined by chance or by dramaturgical considerations? Do these interactions build a narrative? Is it simply a question of musical and rhythmic organisation?

Orogénesis, 2016

BL: In this work, birth is really important as a symbol and as an act in the creative process. When we say creation, we are creating, so in a sense we are giving birth. I like the idea that the creative process is itself an image and a mise en abyme of the living world or the world of ideas. Because ideas emerge through connection, through interweaving. It gives rise to ideas in a seminal way. In all my projects, this motif of things that emerge, the emergence, growth and decline that often go through a crisis phenomenon, which will lead to a new growth phenomenon. There was a question about the philosophy behind the project. With the idea of the eternal return, of palingenesis, of the fact that things are eternally renewable, through the movement of animation and the creative movement, we are always trying to get back into the game, to find a form of positive movement which is that of creation, rather than being absorbed by negativism. Even though a lot of people describe the films as quite black and pessimistic, that’s all there is to them. They are quite contrasting films.

Orogénesis, 2016

GS: Sometimes there’s a touch of humour, like in Orogenesis, with the link to knitting.

BL: I’m not sure that this film came from a desire for humour. Let’s just say that, on this project, humour is at the beginning and the end of the project. The beginning of the film looks like a slide show, which is the negation of cinema, it’s frame by frame that doesn’t move. The first time we showed it at Annecy, the audience gasped for breath during the first minute because they thought the film wasn’t working.

Orogénesis (the first 3 shots), 2016

It’s just that my father is a mountain guide and, when I was little, he used to make slideshows of his photos at home. It’s a personal connection.
The allusion to weaving, knitting and fabric is not so much humorous as conceptual: the interweaving, the interconnection and the compositional effect of full and empty zones… The more I progress in my practice, the more I come across this idea of weaving.
Particularly in the virtual reality project, Ito Meikyū, Ito is the thread and Meikyū is the labyrinth. In French, I’ve translated it as Fil d’errance (Wandering thread), so the image of weaving, thread and fabric, either as an image of existence or as all the work I’m also doing on fractals. A fabric is also a fractal, so from the moment you repeat a motif, it tends to behave like a fabric. Ito Meikyū‘s idea peddles the idea of text as textile. This creates lines, threads or ideas that are increasingly inserted into my artistic project. As well as the idea of the fold, of folding.

Ito Meikyū, 2024

GS: How do you choose the action modules?

BL: There’s an element of chance in my work. And each project develops a theme that guides me. In Rhizome, the theme is the creation of life, which combines Darwin’s vision with that of Deleuze. The little cells that develop are quite simple: at the beginning, little spheres that are the stem cells begin to differentiate along three different lines: vegetal, organic and mineral.

Rhizome, 2015

The mineral branch will create architectures, the organic branch, animals and the vegetable branch, plants. Everything mixes together and creates new chimeras. At the end of the film, it all mixes again and creates colour. It generates abstraction and regeneration. All these cells correspond in a sense to the development of a programme. It’s procedural but handmade. Everything mixes together organically, even if I had planned this idea of mixing the different materials, like a chemical reaction, they are at the same time dedicated to the chance of drawing day after day and dedicated to our ideas as animators. We mixed the shapes, making them mutate and transform, with a base of shapes created from research into shapes that could be animated. But their arrangement is quite random. In Rhizome, there’s a play between cellular form and globality, and that’s the strength of the film and its relationship to migration: everything migrates and mutates, moving from the micro to the macro and the gigantic. In the end, it’s the film that begins to mutate.

Rhizome, 2015

La chute (The fall) has a stronger relationship with painting through different references: Botticelli who illustrated Dante, by Goya, by Henry Darger and others. All these references become a corpus and are arranged. The shapes are not necessarily arranged in a linear or didactic way; it has more to do with a surrealist approach, that of collage, which brings chance into play. But a chance that creates symbolic and narrative dynamics. La chute is a narrative film: at the beginning, the plants are linked to human forms that mutate and become monstrous. The plants themselves become carnivorous and begin to devour characters. This produces a dramatic effect. The birds are a representation of angels who are both birds and insects. This is an ambiguous intersection of scientific and artistic imagery. An ambiguity that generates different discourses within the same film. The line isn’t very clear in terms of meaning, but maybe it generates a lot of meanings.

La chute, 2018

William Henne: La chute is probably the film that comes closest to a classic animated short. There’s almost a play on words in the film, obviously because of Dante’s circles of hell and because of these loops and animation cycles. And it ends in a spiral. Which ties in with the symbolic dimension you were stressing.

La chute, 2018

GS: You don’t necessarily want us to draw a definitive conclusion about the meaning, but there are still motifs that produce meaning.
If you don’t mind, I’d like you to develop the formal aspects: you use a number of figures, such as repetition, symmetry, mise en abyme and random camera movement, which can also be found in musical composition.

BL: As soon as you learn to animate, the first time you do something you make a loop. Animation and looping are almost the same thing. You can obviously learn to do things other than loops, but I think that the beginning of animation, and even of cinema as a moving image, is through the loop. The analysis of movement by Étienne-Jules Marey or Muybridge focused on walking, running and so on. In my artistic project, I always have 100 or 150 years of animation in the rear-view mirror. If I had started work in 1905, 30 or 40, I would have done the same thing because it was already there.

Marche de l’homme by Étienne-Jules Marey, 1886

A man walking by Eadward Muybridge, 1887

Philosophically, it is the symbol of events that repeat themselves and of the eternal return. It’s the dramaturgy of humanity, but not only that: there are many similarities with the biological world and with the movement of the planets.
In my artistic project, I sometimes feel stuck because there’s not just the loop, there are stable systems and chaos theory, which is very difficult to bring into play in an animated film and with drawings. To create chaos, you have to use digital tools.

GS: I’ve noticed that your loops are not systematic: for example, a character performs an action, then waits, then starts another action. There’s a plethora of characters and actions that allow the viewer to get lost. It’s an organisation of chaos.

BL: Yes, I work with canon loops, like in music. Rhizome is a very good example: at the beginning, the first little spheres loop for half a second. Then they duplicate each other and begin to loop for a second. Then 2 seconds until 4 seconds. At some point, in this profusion of shapes, animations lasting between one and 4 seconds interact synchronously and sometimes asynchronously, like a cannon. When I was animating, I used to calculate when certain characters were going to interact every second or every fourth time. This creates machinery. I create machines, my films are close to automaton theatre. I create little machines that work together, and working in canon simplifies things formally, otherwise it would be too complicated to understand what we’re doing. If there are loops of different durations, that poses a lot of problems; errors sometimes creep into the programme, into the manufacturing process. And it poses a lot of problems in terms of sound when you want to synchronise things, when you want to create harmony and rhythm and everything is arrhythmic. That’s where the idea of the canon and the function of tempo came from quite quickly.

Rhizome, 2015

GS: This brings us naturally to the musical dimension. What is your relationship with music? Do you play music? The approaches you take are often close to musical composition.

BL: I played the piano when I was young but I’ve forgotten all about it. Honestly, that’s not where my work comes from. But I do listen to a lot of music.
When I started making my first films, I did the sound, as in Kyrielle and Ils tournent en rond. When I was a student, I started asking a friend who does sound for films like Cinétique for sound design. For Caverne, I worked on pre-existing music by Didier Malherbe, a French composer who is fairly well known in experimental jazz. I don’t really have any training in sound and I quickly felt limited, so as soon as I left school I stopped making my own sounds, preferring to collaborate and seize the opportunity offered by cinema and the audiovisual sector to meet and share the creative process, the creative territory, with other people, particularly composers.

Didier Malherbe (photo : Niquette Malherbe)

One important thing: at one point I listened a lot to Steve Reich and minimal repetitive music. I tried to analyse it and understand how it worked. Steve Reich does the opposite of what I do, he creates loops that desynchronise and resynchronise.

Caverne, 2011

GS: The phase shifting…

BL: Yes. I’ve never reached that stage of creation. In animation, it’s difficult. It’s feasible and the idea of phase shifting is interesting in that it creates a tremor: at the moment when the notes fall right, it creates this constellation and this explosion.
I was lucky enough to do my first artist residency at Casa de Velasquez in 2011-2012, with composers in particular. There I met Daniele Ghisi, a composer with whom I work a lot.

Daniele Ghisi (photo : Ersnst Von Siemens Musikstiftung)

Aurélio Edler-Copes, among other things, created the sound for Rhizome. Most of them came through Ircam, so they come from experimental and acoustic music. I found that I had a lot in common with them, particularly from a research perspective, in terms of the experimental dimension and a vision situated between tradition and innovation, which sometimes manifests itself in the use of digital tools.

Aurélio Edler-Copes (photo : Aurélia Bertol)

I have a lot in common with Daniele Ghisi, who is also interested in early music, the music of the Middle Ages, which he brings back into play with his digital tools. He is also a mathematician and programmer and creates software and tools to transform sounds in his own way.
I like the idea that the artist is also a technician. I’m not an engineer, but I like prototyping and producing creations that are out of the ordinary. And this is achieved by working with materials and digital technology.

WH : In the Sirki film series, the link between the music and the image is the most obvious, not only in terms of rhythm but also at the level of the layers, those of the compositing that resonate with those of the voices. They work together. The music is by Marewrew.

Kaparamip (Sirki), 2019

Ciciri (Sirki), 2019

BL: It’s Ainu music. This project was commissioned by the city of Sapporo. I went to Hokkaido in northern Japan for a residency. Right from the start of the residency, I asked them to allow me to do a residency based on sound research and the creation of Ainu sound. Repetition is not just a modern phenomenon, it’s part of the shamanic tradition. In the Sirki series, I linked embroidery motifs from Ainu kimonos, which I revived, with the repetitive sound of the canons of traditional Ainu songs. The Ainu language has no written tradition. This is a form of homage but also a work of conservation. One of the songs is about a child learning to walk, another is about cutting up a whale (the Ainu have been whaling since ancient times. They were reputed to be great hunters).

Marewrew (photo : Hiroshi Ikeda)

WH: The reference to fractals is also the most obvious in this series through the systematic zooming out. It doesn’t necessarily work like real fractals, where normally there is a similarity of pattern at different scales. So it’s more an evocation of fractals. In one of the episodes of the series, Tetarape, the zooming out is such that it creates a moiré effect and brings out a new pattern, generating pattern on pattern.

Teratape (Sirki), 2019

BL: Mise en abyme produces a new type of composition and that’s something you find when you’re making a film, you can’t really plan it in advance. It’s a way of taking the process and conclusions of a film like Rhizome and applying them to simpler, much shorter films, with more precise motifs at the same time. It’s almost a subject for study.
We haven’t talked about the camera in terms of the idea of zooming out, which is a recurrent feature in my cinematographic language because it obviously allows elements to fit into the frame. This idea of multiplying and adding is important. The frame doesn’t really exist, there’s always something outside the frame. By using digital tools and the virtual camera, we quickly realise that cinematographic space is potentially infinite because the virtual world has no background. The virtual camera speaks of the infinite depth of virtuality. I use the camera in a rather free-floating way. It can walk through walls, it has no physicality, it has no body, it is disembodied. It is omniscient.

Rhizome, 2015

GS: Disembodied or individualised? This device, which functions like a free electron without perceiving its limits, which represents the camera, is perhaps the individual in the end. You make a choice in the chaos.

BL: The camera is above all a dramaturgical tool as far as I’m concerned. If, for example, in Rhizome, the same panorama lasted 2 minutes, 20 minutes or 1 hour, it wouldn’t be the same film. So it’s really the camera that makes the film. The situation develops with a given timing, with a given dezoom, and all that creates the film. In La chute, with the back and forth of the camera, with those great panoramic movements, it’s the camera that makes the film and it’s the camera that makes the filmmaker. The same animations projected in a museum would have produced something completely different. I’m not sure that the camera represents an individual; the camera is more precisely de-individualised. It is a vision that is often external to the world. It creates the space of the cinema frame like the idea of the window. It separates the audience from the virtual world or the world of the film, inside the film. In my opinion, it’s more a tool than a personification.

La chute, 2018

However, this is contradicted by the virtual reality project, Ito Meikyū, because in virtual reality, the viewer is the camera, he’s the center of the world.

Ito Meikyū (spectator)

WH: I was lucky enough to experience the Ito Meikyū installation in Paris. In the virtual reality part, the viewer is in a 2D-3D relationship. We circulate in a three-dimensional space where we come across punctual 2D animations. And the formal solution for integrating these dimensions lies in the fact that the constructions we encounter are open structures. This also makes sense, as we gain access to the interiors of the dwellings and the intimacy of the characters. So much so, in fact, that to view some of the interiors and animations partly hidden by the structure, we have to bend over, engaging our own bodies, making us a kind of voyeur in relation to these intimate scenes that go round and round.

Ito Meikyū at Drawing Lab in Paris

Ito Meikyū, 2024

The tour is not identical for every viewer – it’s interactive – but for me, I ended the tour in the room dedicated to the history of cinema, where we move from pre-cinema to digital tools, with, among other things, a projector overlooking a movie theater. We see an animation of seamstresses viewing film, as seen in the preparatory sketches and drawings on display at the exhibition entrance. The virtual reality experience is incredible.

Ito Meikyū at Drawing Lab in Paris

Ito Meikyū, 2024

BL: This installation sums up my practice as a filmmaker, visual artist, video artist and draughtsman in a single project.
The whole process I’ve just summarized, from references to pre-cinema to today’s digital tools, is reflected in this project and, in particular, in this room, which is a bit like a secret passage. You can even see a film in here, which is one of the final scenes that can be seen elsewhere in the tour if you make it that far.

Ito Meikyū / Fil d’errance published by Drawing Lab for the exhibition

Ito Meikyū, line test by Capucine Latrasse & Agathe Sollier

The place of the user or viewer in a virtual reality work is obviously completely different from that of a film. You put your body into play. You play. As a creator, I play with the viewer’s body by placing him or her in certain situations and spaces. In one place, they’ll have to bend over or take a step to the side in another. The spectator feels inside. This brings into play the idea of presence, which is not a dimension I’ve dealt with in cinema. We know that the audience is present in the theater. You can play on collective effects like humor, when the audience laughs. But for my part, so far I haven’t played on the audience’s presence in my films. Video installations, on the other hand, play with circulation, displacement and space, as in Monade, where you move from one side of a tulle to the other.

Monade, exhibition at Cinémathèque québécoise, 2022

Virtual reality is interactive, so everyone doesn’t have the same experience. There are several experiences in the same work, which becomes multifaceted. A bit like what you find in a film like Rhizome, where some viewers follow one character, or some, other characters. I’ve always wanted to offer different possibilities in the same film. The profusion of images means that our brains and our attention aren’t able to capture everything from a single point of view. We’re in a garden in which we pick certain elements without being able to pick everything. This idea of missing certain things, in an overflow, is always present in my projects. In virtual reality, there’s always an off-field or a door you haven’t taken, so you know you’ll always have missed something. This creates a little frustration and, at the same time, a fascination that leads the viewer to either return or share their experience with someone who has had the same experience [Editor’s note: there are two VR headsets in the exhibition]. One has seen the movie theater, another the weeping scene, another the scene with the fetus and the large female body, yet another the weaving scene with a violent sewing machine. All this creates a series of emotional and narrative possibilities.

Ito Meikyū, preparatory drawing

The 2D-3D solution was not at all easy to find. I come from 2D. The solution was to open up the spaces. The architecture and trees become lines. The plant and architectural aspects draw the space, and the volumes are not illuminated but simply textured. Texture is drawing. They thus have a very close relationship to 2D characters, themselves caught in multiplanes, as in Disney’s multiplane title-bench. Certain elements interpenetrate, such as crumpled or twisted papers that become volume. 2D becomes volume.

Ito Meikyū, 2024

Éthann Néon: In the video for the installation, Ito Meikyū, I noticed that there were some animations from previous films that came back, notably Kyrielle, even older ones. You often reuse animations from previous works, and this was only the case for Ito Meikyū.

Kyrielle, 2011

BL: I’ve been doing this for a few years now. The first time I went back to a previous animation was as part of a project with Angelin Preljocaj, on Swan Lake, simply because he was interested in some of my films, and I did a version of Orogenesis. This had both a practical aspect, because it allowed me to create something more easily in a hyper-complicated project, because the ballet lasts 1h50 – I worked on it for 8 months, it wasn’t easy – and it also took the pressure off me to have a kind of sacred filmography. Why are pieces that have been around since 2010, 2011 or 2012 no longer being released? There are films that we don’t watch any more, and that I don’t show any more either. Still, they’re part of my career, and in a project like Ito Meikyū, it lends itself to that.

Le lac des cygnes by Angelin Preljocaj (photos : JC Carbonne), 2021

I also made a few reuses in the Glass house project. It allows me to stage my own personal museum. Ito Meikyū is a kind of virtual tour of an imaginary museum in which I put everything that interests me. The children’s play scene is a reference to Kyrielle. There’s a rather violent scene that could refer to La chute. Other scenes are reminiscent of Rhizome. I use similar techniques, in this case animation. As I said at the beginning, it’s all about re-engaging, re-doing – the eternal return – I’m doing the same things over and over again, and I’ll be doing them all my life. That’s the drama of my life [humor]. But trying to remake while moving forward – it’s more like a spiral.
In Glass house, I reused certain structures, or architectures – similar to Ito Meikyū by the way – and I also reused an old project called Danse macabre. I build bridges between different projects. On the other hand, I always change these borrowings, I don’t use them as they are, I make versions.
If I go back to one of Deleuze’s titles, Difference and repetition, it’s really that: how to recreate something differently again with the same thing.

Danse macabre (detail), 2013

Glass house, 2023

ÉN: How do these philosophical concepts – cavern, monad, rhizome… – enter into your work? Do they pre-exist? Do the inspirations come from philosophical readings, or do they arrive during the process, or even after the fact?

BL: When I was studying fine art and then animation, I had fewer references, I was more naive. It took me a while to read Deleuze. But I’ve been reading and researching for ten years now. At the time of Kyrielle, I hadn’t read Deleuze. Friends advised me to read Rhizome or Borges et cetera. I started reading all that late in life. These readings were a new springboard. We’re talking about something very personal, and as the project progresses, I try to discover new works and authors and create a new breath, a new desire. And philosophy helps me do that. These are all subjects of study for me.
Rhizome was a direct reference to the eponymous chapter of A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari.

Rhizome by Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari, 1976

La chute didn’t necessarily have a very strong philosophical background; it’s more like Dante, which is already very profound.
For Monade, I went back to Deleuze’s The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Deleuze is often not far away. I particularly like Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, a reading of Francis Bacon’s work.
And if you look at Ito Meikyū from Francis Bacon’s perspective, there may be something…

Logique de la sensation by Gilles Deleuze, 1981

Zepe: In Journey to Mexico: Revolutionary Messages & The Tarahumara, Antonin Artaud points out that if we were to speed up the movements of the clouds, it would look exactly like the dance of the Indians during their ritual. Do you think that everything repeats itself in an immense universe of forms, from which there is no escape?
I thought of a drawing by Escher, which I imagine you’re familiar with, with a chess game: at one point, he sets up a rupture, i.e., everything topples over.

Jeu d’échec by M. C. Escher, 1940

In Free radicals, director Len Lye creates loops. In a lesser-known film, Particles in space, dots generate a succession of looped shapes, then Lye establishes a state of rupture with no link to what has gone before.
Can you conceive of a device in your work that would break with all that, using all that digital technology allows in terms of repetition, motif and filter?
I get the impression that you’re fascinated by closed systems which, even as they evolve, transform and expand, always end up in a closed space.

 Free radicals, de  Len Lye, 1958

BL: It’s the battle between order and chaos. Creating chaos, randomness, in animation, by hand, with drawings or this kind of tool, is extremely complicated, if not impossible. It’s a mathematician’s approach, creating an equation that doesn’t create repetition, that’s always shaking. The computer can do all the simulations – spheres, clouds… – and explore what would be out of control. I just can’t do it. I’ve thought about it several times, of course. I can make loops, I can break loops, but then either it leads to a new loop, or the animation collapses and I go on with another loop. It’s always a closed circuit. When it comes to drawing, I don’t have a conceptual or even a technical solution for exploding this. I’d have to watch Len Lye’s film. With the computer, you can do it. I’m trying to get closer to it: particle systems, random animations and so on. In Any road or Glass house, I play with artificial intelligence.

Any road, 2016

GS: In Metastasis, Xenakis tried to reproduce the movements and propagation of sound during demonstrations.

BL: A film like Orogenesis proceeds from chaos all the same. The mountains weren’t animated frame by frame, knowing exactly what would happen. The film plays on the control of chaos to make it fit into a film. I could have experimented a lot and got to the point where I couldn’t even shoot that. As it happens, I succeeded. I made a first attempt that didn’t work, so I gave up for a year and a half and did it again.
In my project, there’s this ambivalence: closed systems, confinement and machinery are important themes. I’m well aware that this is a rather simplistic view of the world, because the world isn’t made up of machines. Rather, the world is made up of a succession of stability and instability. I’d like to be able to signify that or get close to it. Orogenesis was one such attempt. I’m not saying it succeeded.

Orogenesis, 2016

Z: When we work with artificial intelligence to write a screenplay, we input all the data and the system makes proposals by playing with what exists. But it’s often prevented from moving on to another level of interpretation. In other words, it always manipulates what already exists. He may even come up with ideas that would be fairly conventional and that could be written by other screenwriters on the same subject, but the problem is that it doesn’t offer any disruption. Len Lye’s film proposes a state of rupture.
You were talking about Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. When a painter paints, he accumulates layers and, if he paints with a certain intensity, there can be states of rupture.

BL: Bacon painted in the dark or, at any rate, tried not to look totally at what he was doing. He used traces, the unexpected, he tried to avoid figuration, and Deleuze puts forward the idea of sensation, of getting out of the figure. But that’s extremely difficult! My approach is to create a tension between figuration and abstraction, both of which are present in my artistic project. There’s a crack that happens between the two. When a form, even in a narrative film, suddenly leads to an almost totally abstract scene, it creates this formal and even emotional rupture. We can no longer hold on to the symbolism that the figure may have embodied. Abstraction becomes a symbol in itself: black, white, color, assertive, fluid. This has a huge influence on the way it’s received. That’s where I make a break. There’s a break between classical cinema and experimental or even visual cinema. Within the same film, I don’t think I’ve made a complete break.

Le lac, 2021

GS: How did you go about working with the orchestra on Glass House? What preceded it: the image or the music? For Le lac, were there any concrete specifications from Angelin Preljocaj?

BL: Glass house is a kind of commission, a commission and carte blanche at the same time. The music came first. Lucas Fagin, the composer, contacted me a few years ago, saying he had a concert project with Ensemble Cairn that he wanted to accompany with a video. It lasted 40 minutes. I saw his psychedelic sci-fi universe and liked it. We got on really well and he told me I could do whatever I wanted. I pulled out the Glass house project from one of my drawers, in my computer. I showed him the Glass house project, which was originally a film project, but which I wasn’t sure how to turn into a scenography.
For the record, there was a screenplay by Sergei Eisenstein called Glass house, which inspired me to do the project.

S. M. Eisenstein Glass house

Glass house – Du projet de film au film comme projet by S. M. Eisenstein, Les Presses du Réel, 2009

I adapted this work to the project, which was a concert. But I was very constrained by the music, because creation is first and foremost musical, and I received, as the creation progressed, MIDI-format mock-ups of the music, to which I adapted acrobatically. It was like ping pong with the composer. The temporality, and the fact that there were nine parts, came from the music. And so did the stroboscopic, highly-chopped aspect of the sound. I usually shoot long, fluid shots without too many breaks. It took me a very long time to make cuts in my films, almost frame by frame, it’s really radical. In Glass house, there are cuts everywhere. The concert took place twice, and a year later I adapted the project so that it could also be a film. It’s a bit the other way round: we took the recordings and changed a few compositions and videos to make it look more like a film than a stage design.

Glass house (concert), 2023

With Preljocaj, on Swan Lake, it was a video set design, it was more of a decor, I had a mission as video decorator for a 1h50 ballet. The brief was to respect the choreographer’s vision. We transposed Swan Lake to a modern period. Instead of the usual palace in the first act, it’s a city scene that resembles New York. In the second act, the scene on the lake becomes a scene under the lake, underwater, with a factory on the lake, because the choreographer wanted to add a capitalist and ecological dimension to this fable. The challenge was to ensure that the animation didn’t overpower the dance, because as it happens, the large-format video projected onto the stage is very powerful. When you put a video behind dancers, if it’s too powerful and gripping, the spectator stops watching the dance. And from time to time, the choreographer has rapped me on the head to stop me taking up too much space, so that I stay in my place, that of the set designer. So the video sequences are very slow.

Le lac des cygnes, 2020

I adapted these videos into a video installation in the form of a diptych, which is now called Le lac (The lake), in a completely different set-up than for a theater, with a new sound creation.
It’s true that it was a rather constrained creation, with a constrained subject and a constrained timing. But it’s always a way of moving forward and testing things out, of entering someone else’s universe to try and find yourself in the other person’s work.

Le lac, 2021

GS: Glass house is different in plastic terms from other films, such as Kyrielle or La chute, which feature drawn graphic elements, with a human touch that can be felt emotionally. In Glass house, it’s hard to guess how it was made. Yet the effort required to make a film has dramaturgical value. In classical cinema, we know the famous principle character/objective/obstacle: a character has an objective, he makes an effort and we identify with him to overcome the obstacle. The same can be said for a drawing: a drawing moves us because we see in it a struggle with matter, with form. A drawing may be a failure, but if it’s a success, it moves us. On the other hand, when we can’t make out the effort, because it’s a mechanical process, even if it’s a technological feat, we may not feel emotionally involved.

BL: I like doing things by hand and also not doing them by hand, I like both. If, for example, you establish a relationship of difficulty between Kyrielle and Glass house, it’s much more difficult to make Glass house. Kyrielle is a project that took me a month and a half to complete, with 300 drawings. Glass house took me almost a year. On top of that, there’s an element of research into unfamiliar tools. The character/goal/difficulty scheme works in a film, but not as a filmmaker. Audiences see films and are either touched and interested, or not touched at all. Personally, if a filmmaker has spent 10 years making a bad film, I don’t care. Too bad for him. Whereas if he’s spent 10 minutes making an incredible film – it can happen, I can’t do it – I don’t mind, as long as the project touches people with what it says and what it develops. I like the labor of animation or drawing, and I also like to see when filmmakers commit themselves to a technique by sticking to old-fashioned manufacturing. I like drawing on paper because I’m not good at drawing on a tablet. I like the materiality of drawing, feeling it and using inks and water, playing with dilution and superimpositions. I don’t do it to add value in terms of working time or difficulty. I do it rather to bring a craftsman’s touch that you can’t get with a computer, with those imperfections and that material that you can’t reproduce, at least until now, with a computer.

Glass house, 2024

GS: Let’s imagine that someone draws a perfectly straight 2-meter line by hand, using a pencil, and let’s imagine the same line produced industrially. The first line moves me emotionally because of the performance of the artist, of the executor, it’s a tour de force, while the other leaves me indifferent because it’s mechanical. In Glass house, despite the fact that you spent a lot of time, I didn’t really have any information on the effort it required.

BL: It’s not all automated. But I understand. We’re obviously not affected in the same way if a calligraphy is done graphically by hand or with a printer. The human act and the craft induce a personal and direct relationship with the artist. In the context of a film, this aspect is less present than in a contemporary art space, where we can have an explanation, a mediation on the fact that, for example, this artist has created a 2 km line with a pen. The artist’s act and method are interwoven into the artistic project. When you draw a 2D project, or make a stop-motion film, it’s also interwoven, but less so. We talk more about the emotional quality of the film. Otherwise, we’d be making the opposite argument, that is, pitting traditional techniques against new ones. Even for 3D, which is no longer a recent technique. The film Flow, which did well in theaters, is a technological feat, but that’s not what people are talking about. The same technological prowess at the service of a – quote-unquote – “bad” film, people would say “too bad, here’s a failed film”.

WH: There’s an ambiguity in Georges’ question. In certain animation circles, there’s a desire to feel the author’s sweat, which is a form of romanticism that’s uncorrelated with the quality of a film. In Glass house, we see the typical processes of what we’ve seen in recent years with “artificial intelligence” tools, which are fed with a whole series of photos, with a corpus of images that we can more or less control. So, yes, the automated aspect is more prominent in Glass house.

BL: Yes, Glass house is more disembodied, it’s a dystopian project about the use of technology and the glass architecture that is the panopticon. I use the image of glass as a metaphor for digital technology. The project contains its own critique. It criticizes its own medium. I understand the criticism of the medium because I was the first to make it.

Glass house, 2024

GS: It wasn’t a question of criticism on my part, but simply a desire to discuss the question of stages. Writing begins as painting. Painting creates writing through simplification and trivialization. With writing, you can obtain literature, which is something other than painting. But it produces emotions. You no longer feel the primitive effort of painting, of the manufactured, but the mechanical and automated dimension. It’s a step that can lead to something else.

BL: I continue to develop “traditional” projects, but these have a limit, that of my hand and my graphic skills. In the virtual reality project, Ito Meikyū, I’ve pushed back that limit. It’s all done with the help of the computer, a technique that is no longer new. I only used artificial intelligence for Glass house, and haven’t touched it for a year and a half now. You can create very ordinary images with these tools, but if a designer adds thought and even his or her own personal techniques, it becomes an additional tool. You could create a drawing, ask artificial intelligence to make a version of it and then redraw it. You can play with artificial intelligence the way you used to play with photomontage. It’s just that the tool is different, it can automate and create infinite variations. Glass house was my first radical and somewhat provocative attempt, in which I mixed my work as an animator. There are parts that are completely animated by me, others that are completely animated by the A.I., and others that are half and half. It’s hard to tell which. I find this ambiguity interesting.

Glass house, 2024

ÉN: It’s paradoxical to find chaos with digital technology in the sense that fundamentally the tool is not random, even when you use the random commands of a program, it is not inherently random. We can much more closely compare automatic drawing to randomness, which would be – in quotation marks – “chaos”.

BL: If I put water on a piece of paper and then ink, it will never do the same thing, it’s the experimentation of chaos live. In a film, we don’t necessarily perceive it unless a voiceover evokes chaos. In a way, there are thousands of ink stains in the film, thousands of chaoses placed one after the other. Except that’s not what we appreciate in the film project because the lines and shapes are very controlled. Even if we can do this experimentation of chaos every day, when I make a film, there is a desire for control, as for the walk of a character where we force the material to produce a defined form and, in this constraint, we lose this fundamental aspect of the material.

ÉN: In Stan Brakhage’s films, we are entirely in the task and, suddenly, the image seems chaotic.

Dog star man by Stan Brakhage, 1961-64

BL: Yes. I am more of a filmmaker of control, like a watchmaker who creates small machines that I am always very happy to make. But I also have this frustration of telling myself that deep down I am just a mechanic. This machinery is at the service of a subject, it releases a form of poetry. Beyond the mechanics and the optical dimension, we are as spectators touched, jostled. The ambiguity of the images also produces these emotions. In Ito Meikyū, some spectators find a scene funny, others find the same scene embarrassing and others, sad. I like that. I propose multiverse, multifaceted projects. Obviously each viewer makes the film, it is the viewer who makes the work, as Marcel Duchamp said.

Ito Meikyū, preparatory drawing

ÉN: In terms of writing, at what point do you decide the length of the film? For example, for Rhizome, at what point do you decide that the camera stops zooming out?

BL: When I was developing Rhizome, I thought it would last 10 minutes. In the end, it lasts 12. I thought that La chute would last 12 minutes, it lasts 14 minutes. This difference comes from feeling, from feeling. Finding the ideal timing for a film is not something I can write or storyboard. I have to do it to know. Music helps sometimes. I once asked the composer Daniele Ghisi to do an improvisation for the beginning of La chute and that allowed me to set the timing.
We also give ourselves constraints. Rhizome, which is a bit minimal, lasts 12 minutes, would 20 minutes have been better? I don’t think so. As I work a lot on cycles, time is not given, it is to be chosen. I am not constrained by the animatic or by the number of drawings per second that I have to do. I still have a space of freedom, namely that of the camera, of the filming time. And that is rare in animation. For each project, I do not know how many drawings I am going to do and I sometimes do not know how many shots I am going to do either. I work more in terms of strength than in a logic where we fill the boxes of an animatic. I cannot cut into timings. I often use the image of the sailboat, that is to say that depending on the size of my sail and the wind, I arrive at the place where I want and sometimes I stop earlier, sometimes I go further than expected, depending on the means: more money, less money, more team, less team, and depending on my personal energy too.

Rhizome, 2015

ÉN: Do you delegate a lot of animation? Or some of it? How do you manage that, since you are in this constant process of having to gauge, for example, the duration of a loop before it disappears.

WH: We can see the collaborators mentioned in the credits, like Capucine Latrasse for example.

BL: When I was a student, I obviously did everything by myself. I did everything: I was both an animator, an author for the writing and graphic research, a technician for the compositing, with the exception of the sound. Starting with Rhizome, I started working in a team and delegating. I had an animator and sometimes someone for the hand inking disconnected from the animation. In Rhizome, it is inked and animated at the same time. In La chute, it is animated with lines and then inked separately by students to whom I give a standard inking since these are repetitive tasks that do not require a huge amount of expertise, it is just a one-week apprenticeship for a designer.
I also like working with animators who have their own style and their own strength. I am not a very good acting animator, my specialty is rather the fluidity of animations, certain special effects like animating plants, buildings or even characters but as constructions rather than in situations. Capucine Latrasse animated certain situations in a more subtle way than I would have done.

Ito Meikyū, line test by Capucine Latrasse & Agathe Sollier

My research on timing is different since often animators work on key poses while I design “straight” animations. Not having the same style allows to vary the animation styles in the same project. I try not to always impose my style but rather to use the strength of their proposal to create a greater variety in the project. In Ito Meikyū, there is a lot of 3D and programming.

Ito Meikyū, line test by Ryo Orikasa

GS: This may be secondary, but what type of tool do you use? Unity, After Effect, artificial intelligence…

BL: For a drawing project, we animate on paper on a light table, unless it is an animator who prefers drawing on a tablet, but the final inking is done on paper. We digitize the sequences, process them on Photoshop and composite them on After Effect. For Ito Meikyū, the modeling and placement were done in Blender. Everything – 2D animations, 3D animations, modeling, programming and sound – is assembled in Unity.

Ito Meikyū, 2024

In Glass House, artificial intelligence was used in some sections, I experimented and wrote prompts in Stable Diffusion and it generated an avalanche of images of which I used about 30% in an editing logic. Using a simple prompt generated disappointing images. I instead created animations that I sent to the program and asked it to modify them. I also fed the program with videos that I had not made, like Metropolis by Fritz Lang and found footage that I modified with artificial intelligence. Parts were completely made on Blender. I sometimes used images generated by artificial intelligence, which I isolate and recompose. These images become textures that I reanimate in Blender.

WH: I come back to the themes. We talked about solitude. The characters or particles work on themselves, in their own loop, and are caught in a larger play of patterns, the characters form a crowd. This creates a tension between characters who are folded into their cycle of movement and the fact of making a mass by constituting a whole, by becoming the graphic pattern of a tapestry, to which is added a game of compositing that makes it superimpose and remix. So if solitude constitutes a theme, the psychology of crowds, which was conceptualized at the end of the 19th century, also comes into play.

Kyrielle, 2011

BL: I haven’t done much research on crowd psychology. But mass effects are important in my work. It comes from my taste for Hieronymus Bosch. We are always between the isolated cell and the whole. Each isolated cell exists by itself and with its own strength but it exists at the same time in a whole, like, for example, in Rhizome, a landscape or, in The Fall, a parade. In Ito Meikyū, we could talk about an encyclopedia or the idea of ​​a collection and the relationship of the elements between them in the collection. It allows the elements to react together in the manner of a chemist. It’s collage. They could have been separated but they are together, and they create a group and, from the group, they create another group, then a supergroup.

Le jardin des délices (triptych) by Jérôme Bosch, 1503-1504

Z: Is it possible to identify patterns in Stan Brakhage’s films or is it the viewer who projects an order into this chaos?

BL: He works on the film itself and the film itself is a binding, hyper-structuring structure.

ÉN: The sensation of chaos is located in the viewer because the approach is very structured on his part as we can read in Metaphors on Vision, where we understand what brought him there with a very logical and not at all chaotic train of thought.

stan_brakhage_metaphors_on_vision_1

 Metaphors on vision by Stan Brakhage, 1960

VG: Chaos is a question of scale. If you look at the particles, they seem very chaotic, if you step back you see a homogeneous cloud.
I personally compare Boris’ work to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations from a mechanical perspective – besides, you defined yourself as a watchmaker. I just wondered if you didn’t miss not being able to say something rather than proposing a mechanism of which you are the generator? In his masses, Bach allows himself a lot of improvisation, there was then a more emotional side, which rarely shows through in your films, except perhaps in Ils tournent en rond, which is humorous. I have the impression that you rarely take a position on the world and that you present us with a universe where we are perhaps intellectually fascinated, but the creator that you are disappears.

BL: Yes. This is not true for all projects. Even in La chute, there are things that are said, that are personal, that are the fear of disappearance, there is an ecological dimension.
My latest project, Ito Meikyū, is more emotional and personal, with the idea of ​​birth in particular, with the fear of losing a child. It is true that I am not a storyteller except for my daughters. It is not very present in my cinematographic project but I am nevertheless interested in cinema, in narrations and in literature. I tried not so long ago to create a more narrative scenario but I have difficulty doing it and structuring my stories.
But each project brings particular emotions if we see them on a cinema screen rather than on a computer screen. They may not talk about me but they talk about a condition of humanity. It is distant but it is not totally disconnected. It is not totally formalist. We can criticize formalism and, sometimes in contemporary art, we don’t like certain things because we don’t understand, we have to decipher, go read the label to understand the artist’s approach. I am in an intermediate approach where we don’t need to read the short text to understand the works and we can let ourselves go. Francis Bacon doesn’t explain his ambiguous figures in metamorphosis, but it speaks to us and allows us to project ourselves into his stories. For La chute, some spectators said that it talks about illness, others, about the disappearance of the plant world. We can project a lot of things, I like this idea of ​​multi-narrativity.

Ito Meikyū, 2024

 Ito Meikyū teaser 

borislabbe.com

]]>