The Present in the Past

On 'The Cybernetic Grandmother.'

A still from The Cybernetic Grandmother (1962)

Welcome! Glad you could join us. In this Thursday edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter, we’re looking at a classic film by Jiří Trnka (1912–1969).

If you’ve read us for a while, you know our feelings on Trnka’s work. He made stunning films with puppets — beginning with Bethlehem in 1946. From there, he quickly established himself as the grandmaster of stop motion.

Echoes of Trnka’s influence remain all around us. Pixar made its breakthrough with human characters in Geri’s Game — whose director said that his solution was just to “rip off one of [his] childhood heroes, Jiří Trnka.” The impact of Trnka’s films has reached many: Yuri Norstein, Kihachiro Kawamoto, Rebecca Sugar, Reiko Okuyama, Jan Švankmajer and more.¹

By the mid-1960s, Newsweek was calling Trnka “the most celebrated animator in Europe.”² His films were beautiful, thoughtful, funny, emotionally resonant. As one example, take The Cybernetic Grandmother (1962).

Stills from The Cybernetic Grandmother

A snippet of animation. See the film with subtitles (click the CC button) on the Internet Archive below: