Lovely article! By the way, I am looking for a stop motion movie featuring animals as protagonists. I can remember a couple of things: the first scene opening in an amusement park, with frogs running on motorcycles in a barrel, and the last scene where the protagonist fought against an evil wizard who was a monkey (the only real animal in the whole movie). I think it was an eastern bloc production, but I have never read about it on the internet.
Omg this lead story image hit my heart like an arrow, what a visual memory from my childhood! As kids we had these taped-to-VHS programs (from U.S. PBS maybe?), an anthology series called “Long ago and far away.” They were different animations, from different countries. Many spooky, we loved them and watched them endlessly. I’m certain some of his work must have been in those programs, maybe in snippet forms with English dubbed over. The description about the fight and the raven on the ground sounds familiar. I will watch the YouTube versions and try to recognize one!
I had never heard of Trnka either. Normally, Eastern European puppetry (especially from this era) gives me too much existential dread to watch..But while reading through this article and clicking on each of the included bits, I was absolutely mesmerized. He was so ahead of his time--perhaps-- entirely unique even now? What Trnka was doing with the lighting and camera, I'm speechless. Thank you for your work!
Thank you for this wonderful comment -- giving readers that experience was our dream for this article! So happy we could introduce you to Trnka's work!
Thank you once again for the hard work and research you put into this! I've been thinking of Jiri Trnka the past couple of days and I'm already back to look through his pieces.
Wonderful guide, this is going to be tremendously helpful for cooking up a movie night down the line ^^' For real, the passion is evident, and I love how you are able to draw together so many people that Trnka influenced. It really is impressive.
I wonder if he also influenced Barry JC Purves in the UK? The historical and mythological themes, and the use of puppets with static expressions, strikes me as very similar.
Thanks so much! This is an awesome comment to get. Pulling this article together from the many disparate sources was a real challenge (an all-weekend thing), but we really wanted to get it right. It means a lot to hear that it turned out in the end.
As for Purves, it seems likely that he was influenced by Trnka to some degree. We haven't seen him mention it, but you're right that there are similarities. Plus, even the Aardman folks watched Trnka's work when they were starting out, whether they consciously took from it or not!
Laika’s “Missing Link” seems very influenced by Trnka’s “Song of The Prairie” in style & tone, I thought on seeing it.
I love Trnka’s combining of traditional woodcraft & modern stop-motion techniques that result in simple stylised forms for his characters, like the turned & carved wood figures of George Pal’s films.
His approach to puppet design was really beautiful -- almost unmatched. Seeing photos of his work for puppet theater before he became a filmmaker, it seems like Trnka's sensibility was there from a very young age. It's incredible. And you may well be right about Missing Link. We haven't come across any mention of Trnka in relationship to that film, but it's completely possible that he was on the mood board, especially given Laika's range of reference points.
It’s also interesting to discover his influence on the development of Zagreb Studios, of which I’m a huge fan - I have not one but two copies of Ronald Holloway’s “Z is for Zagreb”…:)
It’s very evident in Trnka’s early 2D animation shorts like “Spring-Man & the SS”.
Holloway did great work on this subject -- we've gone over and over Z Is for Zagreb! It's been a while since our last public issue about Zagreb animation and we're probably overdue for another one. You're completely right about Spring-Man, too: we've read that Dušan Vukotić (of Ersatz fame) was a serious devotee of that film, and it shows.
Not Vukotic but Vatroslav Mimica, “The Inspector Returns Home” is very memorable, partly because I first saw it at the Zagreb Animation Festival in ‘82, more so for the haunting vocal track in places sung by Gaby Novak - took me a while to track that down only very recently thanks to comments on YouTube that accompany the video, but it’s actually an adaptation from her original song “Monotonia” reduced in the short film to the repetition of the word “Monotony”.
*A bit off topic I know & a very nerdy detail but besides spawning the whole “Inspector Mask” series of films from Zagreb much later, it’s a terrific film.
The Inspector is a classic! It's so cool that you got to watch it in Zagreb itself -- and while a lot of these guys were still working. Thanks for sharing this story!
Apr 29·edited Apr 29Liked by Animation Obsessive Staff
Trnka is indeed a treasure! Thank you for this write-up. You're right when you write that his work can take some effort on the part of the viewer, but the same is true of opera or Shakespearean plays, and there's a reason that people still go to those. Speaking of Shakespeare, I thought a wonderful aspect of his A Midsummer Night's Dream adaptation (at least, the original Czech version, I've heard that the English version is quite different) is the scarcity of dialogue - the very opposite of the wordiness typically associated with any Shakespeare adaptation (if only because English-speakers hold him in such high regard that to do otherwise seems unthinkable). And yet, it seems that approach was exactly what was necessary to make the film work as well as it did.
I hope the new Sokolov film does well. I was a big fan of his "Hoffmaniada" feature, but not so many of the general public agreed (and no surprise there, as it was really more a late-1980s-style Soviet arthouse animation only with modern production quality). Still, Soyuzmultfilm has been doing its best promoting it since it's the only one they have, and it HAS at least brought the studio some international-festival-awards prestige. Anyway, that might explain why the public has not rushed to support his new film. Plus, I don't think he's ever tried crowdfunding before. He's not a pro at this process like, for example, someone like Garri Bardin is.
And thank you for the animatsiya.net mention. :) This past month I finally found an Armenian-speaking helper and so the new updates have focused mostly on Armenian animation. It turns out that Robert Saakyants (Sahakyants) is not the only Armenian animation director of note. Who knew? My favourite newly-subtitled film so far is probably "The Magic Lavash", directed by Stepan Andranikyan, who was Sergei Parajanov's art director: https://www.animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=1458 I've been told that it is a beloved classic in Armenia, but little-known outside its borders (even within the Soviet Union; it seems that a Russian-language version was never made). The studio has done a wonderful restoration of it recently.
Happy to shout out Animatsiya! It's such a fantastic site. Great to hear that you've found a new collaborator to translate films from Armenia, too. The Magic Lavash is a gem, as are The Pot of Gold and Underworld Lamp (uploaded a little while back). Thanks for continuing to make this work available to the world! Can't wait to see what's next.
All that said, glad you enjoyed the article -- we've been wanting to write more about Trnka and this seemed like a decent place to start. You make a good point about A Midsummer Night's Dream. Trnka's handling of the text was very controversial at the time, and it seems even the directors of Banya in the USSR were critical of it at first, only to come around to it later. Looking back at it now that the dust has settled, it really does work well. (And definitely agreed about Sokolov -- Hoffmaniada was mesmerizing and it would be a shame to see his next one fail to get made. Here's hoping!)
"Slowly, over the decades, this availability problem has disappeared Trnka. It’s a vast loss, hard to compare to anything else in animation. The masters tend to have their work well preserved and properly released."
Amen. Have you discovered the reason for this? I watched a beautiful print of Midsummer at the BFI followed by an interview with Pospíšilová back in 2012 and I remember them talking about wanting to produce a DVD back then... my understanding is that there were disputes amongst surviving family members.
It is, at least, much easier to see Hermína Týrlová's and Jiří Barta's work, but I can't find it a little sad (and sometime galling) that so many exploitation films receive blu-ray releases with beautifully curated extras while works of great delicacy and sophistication are only available via streaming sites and torrents.
The rights battle does seem to be the trouble, like you and Toadette mentioned. It's shocking that no one has reached a decent agreement about all this -- it's not helping anyone to let Trnka's work fade from memory more and more with time! We've got the Artus DVD and Blu-ray releases from France, but they only have a few films: just The Czech Year, The Hand (both DVD only) and Old Czech Legends, plus some documentaries. Not sure why those releases were okayed if there's a problem with the others.
All of it is definitely frustrating -- and, as you noted, the fact that so many other movies (some never meant to be more than throwaway VHS tapes) have gotten good releases before Trnka is bizarre, and unfortunate. Here's hoping that something changes soon.
I think Artus Films, a boutique French distributor, should be praised for releasing restorations of "The Czech Year" and "Old Czech Legends" on DVD and Blu-ray (though at time of writing, "The Czech Year" was out of stock on their website). No doubt the production of Blu-rays and DVD releases with high quality extras is an expensive business, and the unfortunate fact that Trnka is not widely known probably makes such releases commercially precarious.
The package for Old Czech Legends is particularly impressive, with a 96 page book and also a copy of the wonderful behind-the-scenes documentary by Bruno Šefranka, “The Puppets Of Jiri Trnka” – however, the films are in French and Czech only, with no English subtitles. The DVD of the restored "Old Czech Legends" with subtitles in English is generally available if ordered from online shops in the Czech Republic, and as of this date is also available for 7 Euros from the e-shop at the Czech National Film Archive website if you’re happy to negotiate the ordering and payment system.
Back in 2020, my friend Marin Pažanin asked the Czech National Film Archive about the animated films they were uploading to their (now-defunct) "Česká filmová klasika" YouTube channel, mentioning Trnka's "Hand" as an example, and from the sound of it, there are indeed issues with Trnka's heirs and their inheritance of his author's rights when it comes to his films in particular (otherwise, the NFA by default owns the rights for all films produced under Communism that are more than 50 years old, and even several which aren't that old depending on the studio they were made at - hence all those lovely, widely-available restorations of Týrlová's films in particular). Per the NFA representative, "the distribution [of Trnka's films] is restricted because of the negotiating with the heirs."
Lovely article! By the way, I am looking for a stop motion movie featuring animals as protagonists. I can remember a couple of things: the first scene opening in an amusement park, with frogs running on motorcycles in a barrel, and the last scene where the protagonist fought against an evil wizard who was a monkey (the only real animal in the whole movie). I think it was an eastern bloc production, but I have never read about it on the internet.
Thank you! And this film is one we haven't come across yet -- will let you know if we do.
Omg this lead story image hit my heart like an arrow, what a visual memory from my childhood! As kids we had these taped-to-VHS programs (from U.S. PBS maybe?), an anthology series called “Long ago and far away.” They were different animations, from different countries. Many spooky, we loved them and watched them endlessly. I’m certain some of his work must have been in those programs, maybe in snippet forms with English dubbed over. The description about the fight and the raven on the ground sounds familiar. I will watch the YouTube versions and try to recognize one!
That's so cool! Hope you enjoy the films -- it'll be interesting to see if they ring a bell!
I had never heard of Trnka either. Normally, Eastern European puppetry (especially from this era) gives me too much existential dread to watch..But while reading through this article and clicking on each of the included bits, I was absolutely mesmerized. He was so ahead of his time--perhaps-- entirely unique even now? What Trnka was doing with the lighting and camera, I'm speechless. Thank you for your work!
Thank you for this wonderful comment -- giving readers that experience was our dream for this article! So happy we could introduce you to Trnka's work!
Thank you once again for the hard work and research you put into this! I've been thinking of Jiri Trnka the past couple of days and I'm already back to look through his pieces.
This is awesome to hear -- thank you, and glad you're getting so much out of his films!
Wonderful guide, this is going to be tremendously helpful for cooking up a movie night down the line ^^' For real, the passion is evident, and I love how you are able to draw together so many people that Trnka influenced. It really is impressive.
I wonder if he also influenced Barry JC Purves in the UK? The historical and mythological themes, and the use of puppets with static expressions, strikes me as very similar.
Thanks so much! This is an awesome comment to get. Pulling this article together from the many disparate sources was a real challenge (an all-weekend thing), but we really wanted to get it right. It means a lot to hear that it turned out in the end.
As for Purves, it seems likely that he was influenced by Trnka to some degree. We haven't seen him mention it, but you're right that there are similarities. Plus, even the Aardman folks watched Trnka's work when they were starting out, whether they consciously took from it or not!
Laika’s “Missing Link” seems very influenced by Trnka’s “Song of The Prairie” in style & tone, I thought on seeing it.
I love Trnka’s combining of traditional woodcraft & modern stop-motion techniques that result in simple stylised forms for his characters, like the turned & carved wood figures of George Pal’s films.
His approach to puppet design was really beautiful -- almost unmatched. Seeing photos of his work for puppet theater before he became a filmmaker, it seems like Trnka's sensibility was there from a very young age. It's incredible. And you may well be right about Missing Link. We haven't come across any mention of Trnka in relationship to that film, but it's completely possible that he was on the mood board, especially given Laika's range of reference points.
It’s also interesting to discover his influence on the development of Zagreb Studios, of which I’m a huge fan - I have not one but two copies of Ronald Holloway’s “Z is for Zagreb”…:)
It’s very evident in Trnka’s early 2D animation shorts like “Spring-Man & the SS”.
Holloway did great work on this subject -- we've gone over and over Z Is for Zagreb! It's been a while since our last public issue about Zagreb animation and we're probably overdue for another one. You're completely right about Spring-Man, too: we've read that Dušan Vukotić (of Ersatz fame) was a serious devotee of that film, and it shows.
Not Vukotic but Vatroslav Mimica, “The Inspector Returns Home” is very memorable, partly because I first saw it at the Zagreb Animation Festival in ‘82, more so for the haunting vocal track in places sung by Gaby Novak - took me a while to track that down only very recently thanks to comments on YouTube that accompany the video, but it’s actually an adaptation from her original song “Monotonia” reduced in the short film to the repetition of the word “Monotony”.
*A bit off topic I know & a very nerdy detail but besides spawning the whole “Inspector Mask” series of films from Zagreb much later, it’s a terrific film.
https://youtu.be/q8c0DaZGnHQ?si=rLeCZQGpSvKDY8GF
*I also have Novak’s original song on my phone thanks to iTunes..:)
The Inspector is a classic! It's so cool that you got to watch it in Zagreb itself -- and while a lot of these guys were still working. Thanks for sharing this story!
Trnka is indeed a treasure! Thank you for this write-up. You're right when you write that his work can take some effort on the part of the viewer, but the same is true of opera or Shakespearean plays, and there's a reason that people still go to those. Speaking of Shakespeare, I thought a wonderful aspect of his A Midsummer Night's Dream adaptation (at least, the original Czech version, I've heard that the English version is quite different) is the scarcity of dialogue - the very opposite of the wordiness typically associated with any Shakespeare adaptation (if only because English-speakers hold him in such high regard that to do otherwise seems unthinkable). And yet, it seems that approach was exactly what was necessary to make the film work as well as it did.
I hope the new Sokolov film does well. I was a big fan of his "Hoffmaniada" feature, but not so many of the general public agreed (and no surprise there, as it was really more a late-1980s-style Soviet arthouse animation only with modern production quality). Still, Soyuzmultfilm has been doing its best promoting it since it's the only one they have, and it HAS at least brought the studio some international-festival-awards prestige. Anyway, that might explain why the public has not rushed to support his new film. Plus, I don't think he's ever tried crowdfunding before. He's not a pro at this process like, for example, someone like Garri Bardin is.
And thank you for the animatsiya.net mention. :) This past month I finally found an Armenian-speaking helper and so the new updates have focused mostly on Armenian animation. It turns out that Robert Saakyants (Sahakyants) is not the only Armenian animation director of note. Who knew? My favourite newly-subtitled film so far is probably "The Magic Lavash", directed by Stepan Andranikyan, who was Sergei Parajanov's art director: https://www.animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=1458 I've been told that it is a beloved classic in Armenia, but little-known outside its borders (even within the Soviet Union; it seems that a Russian-language version was never made). The studio has done a wonderful restoration of it recently.
Happy to shout out Animatsiya! It's such a fantastic site. Great to hear that you've found a new collaborator to translate films from Armenia, too. The Magic Lavash is a gem, as are The Pot of Gold and Underworld Lamp (uploaded a little while back). Thanks for continuing to make this work available to the world! Can't wait to see what's next.
All that said, glad you enjoyed the article -- we've been wanting to write more about Trnka and this seemed like a decent place to start. You make a good point about A Midsummer Night's Dream. Trnka's handling of the text was very controversial at the time, and it seems even the directors of Banya in the USSR were critical of it at first, only to come around to it later. Looking back at it now that the dust has settled, it really does work well. (And definitely agreed about Sokolov -- Hoffmaniada was mesmerizing and it would be a shame to see his next one fail to get made. Here's hoping!)
"Slowly, over the decades, this availability problem has disappeared Trnka. It’s a vast loss, hard to compare to anything else in animation. The masters tend to have their work well preserved and properly released."
Amen. Have you discovered the reason for this? I watched a beautiful print of Midsummer at the BFI followed by an interview with Pospíšilová back in 2012 and I remember them talking about wanting to produce a DVD back then... my understanding is that there were disputes amongst surviving family members.
It is, at least, much easier to see Hermína Týrlová's and Jiří Barta's work, but I can't find it a little sad (and sometime galling) that so many exploitation films receive blu-ray releases with beautifully curated extras while works of great delicacy and sophistication are only available via streaming sites and torrents.
The rights battle does seem to be the trouble, like you and Toadette mentioned. It's shocking that no one has reached a decent agreement about all this -- it's not helping anyone to let Trnka's work fade from memory more and more with time! We've got the Artus DVD and Blu-ray releases from France, but they only have a few films: just The Czech Year, The Hand (both DVD only) and Old Czech Legends, plus some documentaries. Not sure why those releases were okayed if there's a problem with the others.
All of it is definitely frustrating -- and, as you noted, the fact that so many other movies (some never meant to be more than throwaway VHS tapes) have gotten good releases before Trnka is bizarre, and unfortunate. Here's hoping that something changes soon.
I think Artus Films, a boutique French distributor, should be praised for releasing restorations of "The Czech Year" and "Old Czech Legends" on DVD and Blu-ray (though at time of writing, "The Czech Year" was out of stock on their website). No doubt the production of Blu-rays and DVD releases with high quality extras is an expensive business, and the unfortunate fact that Trnka is not widely known probably makes such releases commercially precarious.
The package for Old Czech Legends is particularly impressive, with a 96 page book and also a copy of the wonderful behind-the-scenes documentary by Bruno Šefranka, “The Puppets Of Jiri Trnka” – however, the films are in French and Czech only, with no English subtitles. The DVD of the restored "Old Czech Legends" with subtitles in English is generally available if ordered from online shops in the Czech Republic, and as of this date is also available for 7 Euros from the e-shop at the Czech National Film Archive website if you’re happy to negotiate the ordering and payment system.
Back in 2020, my friend Marin Pažanin asked the Czech National Film Archive about the animated films they were uploading to their (now-defunct) "Česká filmová klasika" YouTube channel, mentioning Trnka's "Hand" as an example, and from the sound of it, there are indeed issues with Trnka's heirs and their inheritance of his author's rights when it comes to his films in particular (otherwise, the NFA by default owns the rights for all films produced under Communism that are more than 50 years old, and even several which aren't that old depending on the studio they were made at - hence all those lovely, widely-available restorations of Týrlová's films in particular). Per the NFA representative, "the distribution [of Trnka's films] is restricted because of the negotiating with the heirs."
Thanks very much for adding this information! It's so unfortunate that these films continue to be tied up.