Martin Kotík • President, Association of Czech Animation Film cineuropa.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cineuropa.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
looks like a solid line-up for the Czech Republic.
But this is the maximum that Czech production can stretch to in terms of animation under current conditions. And if you take a closer look, you can see that these are films whose premieres span a period of four years. Some of them were postponed because of COVID-19, and others are going to be completed later. It means that we re still talking about the potential capacity to produce 1.5 films a year, and that s really a very low number. The distribution share of all animated films in the Czech Republic is about 25%. It is the fastest-growing audiovisual industry in the world. Surveys show us that the Czech market requires many more domestic animated productions than just 1.5 films per year. The real potential of animation is much higher. So in the end, we can see that there is a huge amount of untapped potential in the field of Czech animated production.
Video of Michaela Pavlatova - Reci Reci Reci (1991)
In the days when computers were not widely available, animators had to be much more thorough in their work in many regards. Every detail had to be carefully planned if one did not want to lose time because there was not an unlimited amount of trial versions. As Pavlátová explains, this advantage that modern technology provides had both a positive and negative impact on filmmaking.
“The positives definitely prevail. But I should also mention the negatives. One of them is the beloved ‘undo’ button. It allows you to keep on altering your work forever. And you can make an unlimited number of versions. That’s both an advantage and a disadvantage. Sometimes it’s easy to lose yourself in it. As for the negatives, before computers were used, I could, and had to, remember a whole film. You really had to think it through well because you didn’t want to animate something which would not be used. As for the work itself, since we
How Czech Animation Managed the Pandemic Year 2020 And What Lies Ahead This Year
Last year, the Covid-19 pandemic hit all creative industries, and animation was no exception. Many domestic and foreign festivals, where premieres take place and distribution cooperation is negotiated, have been cancelled or moved to the online environment. How did Czech animation creators cope with the limitations and new challenges?
As early as in March, the Association of Czech Animation Film responded to the crisis with a statement, proposing steps to strengthen the segment of domestic production of animated content, especially of series, so that the Czech Republic can disengage economically from the dominant focus on live action film, thus boosting a significant sector of creative industries which may largely exist and work online.