Zagreb Film
Entry updated 17 June 2024. Tagged: Community, Film.
Zagreb Film was founded in the then Yugoslavia, now Croatia, in 1953. Though it produced many live-action documentaries and feature films, it is mainly known for its stylized animated work, which has been internationally influential, labelled the "Zagreb school of animation" by the French film critic Georges Sadoul. The best known of the Zagreb directors, Dušan Vukotić, referred to a "diversity of graphic treatments and the variety of directing processes ... the style of animation, which is not based on real-physical movement — that is, on the anatomical law of motion ... [and] the absence of words ... All verbal solutions are replaced by graphic, visual ones, which eliminated language barriers". The Simpsons' "Worker and Parasite" cartoon within the 1993 episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled" is a parody of this style – specifically of Vukotić's Oscar winning short "Surogat" (1961). Nonetheless, not only were there considerable differences between the works of different directors and animators, but also within an individual's oeuvre: for example, Dragutin Vunak directed both "Mali Vlak" ["Little Train"] (1959), a perky child-friendly story of a steam train, and the contrasting "Između Usana i Caše" ["Between the Lips and the Glass"] (1968), centred on a prolonged dour funeral for all humanity and dedicated to the poet Frano Alfirević.
Influences on the Zagreb school include Czechoslovakian animator/director Jimi Trnka, particularly his Dárek (1947; vt The Gift) (he also created The Cybernetic Grandma (1962)), and the work of United Productions of America (UPA) who pioneered "limited animation"; this would later be used as a means of reducing animation costs, but UPA also intended it as a stylistic choice – an alternative to the more realistic-looking cartoons being produced by Disney (see The Walt Disney Company) and others. Aside from one-off shorts (usually 5-15 minutes long) Zagreb Film also created some animated television series, most notably Professor Balthazar (1967-1978) and Inspektor Maska (see below).
As well as Dušan Vukotić and Dragutin Vunak, Zagreb Film had several other significant directors. In Nikola Kostelac's "Na livadi" ["On the Meadow"] (1957) two boys fight over a flower growing on the borderline dividing a meadow; matters escalate in a militaristic manner (see War), bombs go off and the pair ending up warming themselves on the burning flower in a Post-Holocaust landscape. Less bleakly, in his "Djevojka za sve" ["A Girl for All"] (1959), the house-cleaning Robot Minus swallows a magnet which causes it to compulsively hoover Scientist Doktor Sinus's head: the plot involves the doctor attempting unsuccessfully to find a place to work in peace, including in space. "Susret u Snu" ["Meeting in a Dream"] (1957) has a boy dreaming of the caveman era (see Prehistoric SF), which turns out culturally to be much like ours (though at one point he and a friend use pterodactyl egg shells as parachutes). Kostelac's non-genre "Premijera" ["Premiere" or "Opening Night"] (1957) is also noteworthy for its animation.
Vatroslav Mimica's short "Inspektor se Vratio Kući!" ["The Inspector Has Returned Home!"] (1959), concerns the inspector's pursuit of a fingerprint, and inspired the television series Inspektor Maska ["Inspector Mask"] (1962-1963), whose detective is a master of disguise (see Crime and Punishment). "Mala Kronika" ["A Little Chronicle" or "Everyday Chronicle"] (1962) has a city beggar's Dog getting lost and putting on the bowler hat used to collect money, to temporarily become a commuter: the light mood shifts when, on seeing its owner, it rushes across the road only to be run over. Boris Kolar's "Bumerang" ["Boomerang"] (1962) shows a country's growing militarization and its monitoring of the skies for enemy aircraft (see Cold War; Paranoia): a butterfly perched on the radar equipment is mistaken for one such and almost starts World War Three. Though the series was largely nonfantastic, one of the Inspektor Maska episodes directed by Kolar, "Građanin IM-5", involves a gangster building a robot to rob banks.
Zlatko Bourek's work frequently invokes history and folklore: "Kovačev šegrt" ["The Blacksmith's Apprentice"] (1961) has a blacksmith's wife, a witch (see Supernatural Creatures), turning their apprentice into a flying mount so as to meet a demon (see Gods and Demons). The apprentice and the blacksmith get their revenge by killing the demon and shoeing the wife (the short is marred by an irritating vocal track). "I videl sem daljine meglene i kalne ..." ["I've Seen a Lot of Clouds and Clouds ..."] (1964) is inspired by Miroslav KrleŽa's poetry collection Balade Petrice Kerempuha ["The Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh"] (coll 1936), and looks at the violent history of Croatia during its sixteenth-century conflict with the Ottoman Empire. Some of Bourek's later shorts show a psychedelic influence.
Vlado Kristl's extremely odd – and excellent – "Don Kihot" ["Don Quixote"] (1961) sets Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and their donkey in the present day (see Timeslip) where they are pursued by the police and military. The designs are very abstract, but a windmill does appear.
Zlatko Grgić's cute "Posjet iz Svemira" ["A Visit from Space"] (1964) has a young girl meeting a nervous stranded Alien; with her help it is able to return to its home planet using a basket and a kite, with bellows as propulsion. In "Muzikalno Prase" ["Musical Pig"] (1965) a singing pig finds humans are more interesting in eating it than appreciating its musical talents. "Mali i Veliki" ["Small and Large"] (1966) is a series of gags about a large man trying to kill a small man, always failing, often in the manner of Wile E Coyote's pursuit of the Road Runner (see Warner Bros. Cartoons): standing at a cliff edge, the large man cuts the string of the small man's parachute as he falls past, but the latter stays in mid-air as the cliff collapses; at another time the small man evades capture by hiding within the egg of a giant brooding bird; at another a shift of perspective transforms a corridor into the vertical space between tower blocks, the large man duly plummeting to the ground.
Pavao Štalter and Branko Ranitović's "Maska Crvene Smrti" ["The Masque of the Red Death"] (1969 ) is a hit-and-miss interpretation of the Edgar Allan Poe story. Milan BlaŽeković's psychedelic "Kolekcionar" ["Collector"] (1971) has a dandyish lepidopterist attempting to net a giant, brightly coloured butterfly. He fails and collapses through exhaustion, and is carried off by the butterfly and impaled on a spike attached to a wall: we see he is but one of hundreds the butterfly has collected in this manner.
One of the more interesting later directors is Joško Marušić, whose work is often visually strong: in "Riblje Oko" ["Fisheye"] (1980), after the men have left the for the night to trawl for fish, their village is attacked by large blue fish that slaughter the remaining inhabitants, then drag them by net into the ocean – just before the men's boats return the following morning laden with their catch. "Perpetuo" ["Perpetual"] (1978) has hordes of ant-like humans massing to create cathedrals and tanks from their bodies, until the screen is black; then a man appears, then more, and the cycle of creation and destruction repeats. In "Iznutra i Izvana" ["Inside and Outside"] (1978) a man builds a pair of wings as a crowd gathers, and then soars into the air (see Flying); after a while the camera pans back to reveal that a huge cage is being built around him. Zlatko Pavlinić's 1980 interpretation of August Šenoa's (1838-1831) folklore-based poem "Kugina Kuća" ["The House of the Plague House"] (1869) is an interestingly animated Horror piece about an anthropomorphized Plague (see Pandemic) persuading a young mother to take her into a village by arguing if she does not, someone else will; but if she does, the plague will spare her house and those therein. The mother agrees, unaware that her son has gone to his aunt's home.
Other notable directors include Nedeljko Dragić, Vladimir Jutriša, Aleksandar Marks and Krešimir Zimonić. After the experimentation of the 1950s and the early 1960s, Zagreb Film's later animation tended to become less angular and often (though by no means always) more conventional. A wide variety of topics were covered by the studio's films, but the frustrations of modern life – bureaucracy, business and the military – were common targets of their Satire; this, perhaps inevitably, would occasionally wander into Cliché territory. [SP]
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