Focus
A Midsummer Night´s Dream
Jiří Trnka:
© NFA
Jiří trnka
The Puppet Master
A complete retrospective of well-known Czech animator Jiří Trnka tours North America. The retrospective, presenting all 24 of the artist’s films, premiered in April 2018, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in New York, before setting off on a six-month tour of North America. by Irena Kovarova
24
“Trnka—the name is the sum of childhood and poetry.”
The Emperor’s Nightingale
—Jean Cocteau
films in total—was rivaled only by Walt Disney Studios in output. By the 1940s, Trnka (1912–1969) was already known in Czechoslovakia as a prolific artist, author, and beloved book illustrator. He frequently designed theater and film productions, but the art form closest to his heart was puppet theater. Trnka possessed an incredible facility in
© NFA
O
ne of the revelations of the inaugural Cannes International Film Festival, in 1946, was the strong showing of animated films from Czechoslovakia. Among them the festival presented several shorts from the newly founded Prague animation studio headed by artist Jiří Trnka. And Trnka’s second film as a director, The Animals and the Brigands, took home an award from Cannes. It was a brilliant start to an illustrious film career punctuated by many more awards and bringing Trnka international acclaim, from Cannes to Venice and beyond. His body of work as a director—18 short and 6 feature-length animated