The 'Mad Genius' of Animation

A Yugoslav affair.

Vlado Kristl in Yugoslavia, circa the late ‘50s or early ‘60s (courtesy of The Zagreb Circle of Animated Films 1)

Happy Thursday! Hope you’re doing well. Today’s issue takes us into the story of one of the most volatile, polarizing artists in animation history: Vlado Kristl (1923–2004).

In the late ‘50s and the ‘60s, communist Yugoslavia was an animation world power. The country no longer exists — but, in its city of Zagreb, the artists of Zagreb Film invented a new type of cartoon.

Borrowing from sources like UPA, Jiří Trnka and Norman McLaren, they crafted bold, challenging animation for adults. Stories about modern life and modern problems, told with a modernist approach to sound and image. This was the so-called “Zagreb School of Animation.” It dominated festivals and, in 1962, won the Oscar.

The Zagreb School had several masters — among them Dušan Vukotić (that Oscar was his). Another, though, directed just two cartoons before leaving the studio in the early ‘60s. He was incorrigible, delusional and by all accounts brilliant. He was the avant-garde of Zagreb’s avant-garde. He was Vlado Kristl, whose Don Quixote (1961) remains one of the best, strangest pieces of animation ever made.

Here’s what Ronald Holloway, a chronicler of the Zagreb School, wrote in the ‘70s:

Time has worked in Vlado Kristl’s favor. The ill will many in the Zagreb studio harbored against him has long since passed, and most cartoonists now admit he was the most important figure in the growth of the studio. … While he was around, he was often referred to as a mad artist. Today the least said about him is that he was a mad genius.¹

But how did someone like Kristl come to create these films — and to change animation in the process? That’s what we’re discovering today. Here we go!