|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A beautiful, 2D-animated film about the true story of a friendship between a bear and a Polish soldier during the World War II might be one of the timeliest projects unspooling at Annecy this year. Directed by Scottish animation veteran Iain Gardner, who previously directed the shorts The Tannery, The Loch Ness Kelpie and Akbar’s Cheetah and has worked on such features as Ethel & Ernest and The Thief and the Cobbler, A Bear Named Wojtek touches upon timely subjects, such as refugees, nationalism and xenophobia, while filling the screen with stunning handcrafted visuals.
The origins of the short go back to when Gardner was a student at the Glasgow School of Art and he enjoyed drawing at Edinburgh Zoo. “I sketched and animated a polar bear for my degree show,” he tells us during a recent interview. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the enclosure the polar bear inhabited used to be Wojtek the Bear’s. One of my tutors at the time, Dave Harding, sculpted Wojtek during the ’70s, having drawn him from life in the 1960s — presumably from the same spot I stood. Currently, my studio is located at Edinburgh University’s former veterinary school, and Wojtek’s remains were brought here for examination after he passed!”
True Labor of Love
Gardner says he has been working on A Bear Named Wojtek for over a decade, but the actual production for the animated project began in 2021. “I did the ‘Writing for Animation’ residency program at the Abbaye de Fontevraud back in 2012 and recall discussing the story with composer Normand Roger in 2014, when he and his wife, [animation producer] Marcy Page, were visiting Scotland as part of the Norman McLaren Centenary celebrations I initiated (McLaren 2014). I presented my story treatment to producer Iain Harvey from the Illuminated Film Company, and we subsequently joined forces with Polish producer Włodek Matuszewski to pitch at Cartoon Forum in 2018.”
Before the COVID lockdown, Peter Dodd, animation director on Kensuke’s Kingdom, was asked to prepare some character designs with development money from Screen Scotland. That’s when the core team in Scotland (which included editor Rachel Roberts, animation director Ross Hogg, art director Rachel Bevan Baker and compositor Will Anderson) was put together, along with co-producer Filmograf in Poland. It took the half-hour film about two years to complete.
It’s not surprising that the short’s lovely animation recalls other acclaimed hand-drawn favorites, such as The Man Who Planted Trees and The Snowman. Gardner says The Man Who Planted Trees is his personal all-time favorite animated film. “Frédéric Back has been a huge influence on me. I met him briefly at the Bristol Animation Festival in 1987, a man of tremendous humility. When I was little, animation was considered a ‘cartoon’ medium due to its predominantly Disney association with the uninitiated. Back’s ‘less is more’ approach to design blew me away when I first saw it. Because I consider it to be an unsurpassable masterpiece, I’ve perhaps set myself up for failure by signaling it as my inspiration — nothing (certainly nothing I can do) can come near it, in my estimation.”
He adds, “Having said that, some contemporary critics have favorably compared Wojtek to Back’s legacy (his centenary being this year) and I’m not going to refute that honor! I’ve always loved the contribution of music to animation and was delighted to collaborate with Normand on Wojtek — aside from my admiration of Normand’s work, I wanted the influence of TMWPT to be transparent to those who recognize the homage!”
‘The themes of the story and political context into which the film is released presents challenges; the original intent for a young audience was to present a warning from history, but now it feels like a commentary on contemporary events. Context is everything!’
— Director Iain Gardner
Like many European animation veterans, Gardner was also influenced by the 1982 adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ classic The Snowman. “Dominating the Christmas schedules in the U.K., The Snowman has always represented a career aspiration,” Gardner notes. “I was fortunate enough to work for the incomparable John Coates (the producer of The Snowman, whose boozy Annecy lunches are a thing of legend) at TVCartoons after graduating and met Iain Harvey, who had been exec producer on The Snowman. The heritage that Normand and Iain brought to the project really helped with the pitch.”
In addition to Back, Gardner name-checks Yuri Norstein, Jan Švankmajer, Michaël Dudok de Wit, Joanna Quinn, Dianne Jackson and Norman McLaren as big influences on his work. “Clare Kitson is also worth mentioning, as without her programming and commissioning role at the beginnings of Channel 4 in the U.K., I wouldn’t have been exposed to many of these filmmakers. Jackie Edwards is also an incredible ambassador for children’s content and animation. I studied animation alongside Rachel Bevan Baker (who art directed on Wojtek), and she’s an exceptional talent — she has such an innate ability for drawing movement! My ‘apprenticeship’ in animation was with Richard Williams on The Thief and the Cobbler, and he was incredibly generous with his knowledge — although it’s taken me a fair while to wean off animating in single frames!”
The filmmaker says the project couldn’t have been realized without the talents of its very large team. “When we had a crew screening in Edinburgh, I was overwhelmed by the number of people who had contributed — and that was just from the U.K. side. On the Polish side, Jana Shypova did wonderful work animating the bear.”
The main production tool used on Wojtek was TVPaint. “In an era of digital aesthetics, it has really liberated my joy for drawing and animating,” says Gardner. “The general color backgrounds are hand-done on watercolor paper and scanned in as a base for the bespoke TVPaint brushes we created, and final image was composited in After Effects. We also had some CGI previz for certain technical shots supplied by Interference Pattern.”
When asked about toughest challenge of the job, Gardener says he had to make sure the main character wasn’t infantilized, as was done in previous literary interpretations. “It was key for me not to have a film depicting ‘Baloo the Bear in the trenches,’” he replies. “My interest has always been in how humanity projects itself onto the natural world as a method of understanding and contextualizing ourselves, creating our own mythology; so, the bear had to feel authentic in my telling. The themes of the story and political context into which the film is released presents challenges; the original intent for a young audience was to present a warning from history, but now it feels like a commentary on contemporary events. Context is everything!”
The director mentions that he loves Normand Roger’s soundtrack. “Without detracting from the wonderful contributions from across the whole creative crew, I am still moved to tears by his evocative soundtrack,” he says. “There’s a temptation when making a film set around the time of World War II (or any major conflict for that matter) to go for militaristic themes, but I knew with Normand that he would capture not only the emotion but the culture of the people caught up in and displaced by war.”
As Wojtek gets ready to capture the hearts of wider audiences at festivals and screenings around the world, Gardner says the most important lesson he took away from the project was how crucial it is to work with the best people. “I feel so blessed with the core creatives behind this film … I’m very proud of the exposure the film is giving to Scottish animation and would love to grow and enhance the talent base we have here. With good fortune, Wojtek may leverage opportunities to do so!”
A Bear Named Wojtek will screen at Annecy Festival in the TV Film competition category.
For more info, visit abearnamedwojtek.com.
