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Vukotić, Dušan

Entry updated 26 August 2024. Tagged: Film, People.

(1927-1998) Yugoslavian/Croatian director, animator, cartoonist and writer. Early on he studied architecture (at the Faculty of Engineering in Zagreb) and worked as a cartoonist; the latter including a 1953 magazine comic strip (created with BoŽidar Stošić) called Špiljo i Goljo – Prethistorijski ljudi ("Cave and Goljo – Prehistoric People") (see Prehistoric SF). Joining the animation studio Duga Film in 1951, on its closure he and some of the other animators formed a company to produce animation for advertising, the small budgets leading to a focus on limited animation – that is, using fewer drawn frames. This company eventually became Zagreb Film, where Vukotić would work for the next four decades.

His shorts include Nestašni Robot (1956; vt Mischievous Robot) where a Scientist builds a Robot to tidy his laboratory whilst he sleeps; the robot builds two child robots, instructs them to do the cleaning and goes to sleep next to the scientist: instead they cause chaos, transforming into musical instruments (see Shapeshifters) and hatching a strange bird from an egg – though all ends happily. The depiction of the laboratory is particularly good. Cowboy Jimmy (1957) begins as a Western which is then revealed to be a film shown at a theatre, but Jimmy falls out of the screen and is unable to get back in. A boy takes him home where he and his friends – all big western fans – have built a mock-cowboy saloon; Jimmy ends up humiliated and thrown back into the screen. The short's landscapes and architecture are impressive. Abrakadabra (1958) has a boy looking at some books, his eyes light up when reading one about Spaceships, but another about Magic, called Abrakadabra, is thrown dismissively away: outraged, the wizard on the cover peels himself off and performs magic to impress the boy. However the boy responds with the wonders of modern Technology: firstly a telephone and a radio, then the wizard's crystal ball is outshone by a television set; a magic carpet by an airplane and so forth. In the end the wizard dumps his magical accoutrements, adopts a smoking jacket and reads sf.

Krava na mjesecu (1959; vt The Cow on the Moon), has a girl scientist's (see Women in SF, Feminism) attempt to build a Rocket being hampered by a mischievous boy, so she tricks him into the rocket, then fakes a Moon landing by transporting it to the desert. She dresses up as an Alien, terrifying the boy, who already believes – in the manner of the parable of the blind men and an elephant – that he has touched such a monster (it was actually a cow). It is possible the film influenced Dexter's Laboratory, with the two leads even having the same body shapes, but Gender-swapped. Surogat (1961; vt Ersatz; vt Substitute) involves a man holidaying on a beach, and we learn everything is inflatable – and deflatable, this being the fate of a shark; an attractive woman; the Adonis she runs off with; the beach; the ocean; the man's car and, finally, the man himself. This short was the first foreign film to win an Oscar in the "Short Subjects (Cartoons)" category, in 1962. It was also the acknowledged inspiration for The Simpsons' "Worker and Parasite" cartoon within the 1993 episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled" (though more by its style than subject matter).

After the early 1960s Vukotić produced less animation, concentrating on live action work: one of the exceptions was Ars Gratia Artis (1970), about a performer who eats razor blades, glass and suchlike (these sections are live action); the audience then turns on him but he wins them back, whereupon they leap ecstatically into his mouth; he then devours himself. Of his live action works, the short film Mrlja na Savesti ["A Stain on Conscience"] (1967) has a man haunted by animated stains that he cannot escape nor destroy (see Psychology).Vukotić directed Sedmi Kontinent (1966; vt The Seventh Continent), his first full length film: a Fantasy about two kids who discover a magical island and, speaking through a map of the world (see Communications), invite all the world's children there: they come, floating on an armada of toys and furniture, creating a Utopia (see Children in SF). Their disappearance causes consternation in the adult world and an international commission is set up: it argues over whether to use "missing" or "lost" to describe the absent children, whilst its technical experts pointlessly report on the buoyancy of the objects the children sailed away on (see Satire). Three children briefly return to ask how to play a seashell; the answers are unsatisfactory; when they depart the adults follow them, running into the sea. The film then ends. In 1981 Vukotić directed and co-wrote the full-length sf film Gosti iz Galaksije (1981; vt Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy). A later genre film is the short Dobro Došli Na Planet Zemlju ["Welcome to the Planet Earth"] (1993), where plant-based aliens make First Contact with a farming couple on Earth. Of his non-genre films, Akcija Stadion (1977; vt Operation Stadium) is notable, a story of the German invasion of Yugoslavia (see World War Two), the setting up of a Croatian fascist state with Zagreb as its capital, and the protests against the subsequent persecution of Jews, Serbs and Roma.

Vukotić's use of limited animation was more a stylistic choice than a budgetary one. Even his non-genre animated shorts, such as Osvetnik ["The Avenger"] (1958) and Koncert za Mašinsku Pušku ["Concerto for Machine Gun"] (1958), often had a sense of the fantastic due to their cartoon physics and surreal events (see Absurdist SF). He also wrote scenarios for other directors, such as Zlatko Grgić's Posjet iz svemira ["A Visit from Space"] (1964), about an alien meeting a small child. Though Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy is disappointing, his 1950s/1960s animated shorts are memorable and include several classics. Vukotić is of major importance to the animation field. [SP]

Dušan Vukotić

born Bileća, Yugoslavia: 7 February 1927

died Krapinske Toplice, Croatia: 8 July 1998

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