Polish director Izabella Plucińska has been a familiar figure in the animation festival circuit, beginning with her 2005 Berlin Festival winner Jam Session, which was followed by Annecy favorites Sniadanie (2007), 7 More Minutes (2008), Esterhazy (2010) and Darling (2013). This year, she’s back in the Annecy official competition lineup with a fascinating plasticine-animated short titled Joko. Produced by Animoon and co-produced by Las Sztuki, Maur Film and Clay Traces, the 15-minute protect centers on a young man whose life becomes even more challenging and absurd when he’s asked to carry city notables on his back.
“The short was inspired by a novel by Roland Topor,” Plucińska tells Animation Magazine. “This is my second adaptation of Portrait of Susanne by this author. His ideas are so strong that it’s hard to break away from them. I entered his crazy world of obsession, surrealism, grotesque notions, and I can’t get rid of it!”
The meticulously crafted short took about four years to complete. “Development took about a year,” she notes. “The film is a co-production between Berlin, Szczecin, Warsaw and Prague, so it took many months to submit the application. We animated 15 months in Szczecin, Berlin and about 6 months of post-production. We had a great team in Szczecin (Poland) and in Berlin. Marta Magnuska drew the storyboard and tackled the most difficult stages of animation. Puppets were created based on the drawings. Sometimes we needed 20 puppets for one second. We were fortunate to have great work done by Kasie Mierzejewska, Karolina Golębiowska, Gosia Borowiec, Anna Molska, Dominika Wyrobek. We also had a wonderful trio of animators: Martin Petříček from Maur Film in Prague, Karolina Golębiowska from the Academy of Art in Szczecin. I mainly animated the scenes with dialogue.”
Plucińska has been creating stop-motion animation using plasticine for 20 years. She mentions Jan Svankmajer, Norman McLaren, Jerzy Kucia, Piotr Dumała and Koji Yamamura as some of the masters who have influenced her art. “Plasticine for me is a combination of artistic techniques of painting, drawing, sculpture,” she notes. “I feel most comfortable in it. The puppets we used were of different sizes. They were very small, ranging from a few centimeters to 20 centimeters. The backgrounds was built by the wonderful Susanna Jerger from Berlin.”
The director says she is pleased with the state of animation in her native Poland. “It is great,” she says. “We have a great Polish tradition of animation artists such as Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lennica, and it still continues. But today there are more women artists working in this field, for example Marta Pajek, Marta Magnuska, Paulina Ziółkowska, Wiola Sowa, as well as directors such as Tomasz Siwiński and Tomasz Popakul and many more.“
And how would she like audiences to respond to Joko? “I would them to experience a lot of emotions, to understand the main character Joko and to see his process of manipulation. Our film is a grotesque vision of eternal exploitation and domination of man over man, full of absurdity and macabre humor. I also hope to surprise you with the short’s technique and animation!”
Here is a link to the trailer:
Joko is one of the shorts competing for the main prize at Annecy Festival this month.
For more info, visit izaplucinska.pl and animoon.pl.
Film promotion is made possible by Polish Film Institute.
