They first met in an advertising studio in the early 1960s and made a few, quirky animated shorts together. Their creative partnership peaked with 1971’s Benny’s Bathtub, an animated feature about a boy who explores a magical world at the bottom of his bathtub. Revered for its highly imaginative style, the film is included in the official Danish film canon. The partners then went their separate ways. Hastrup created his famous children’s TV series about Circleen and her mice friends (1968-70) and series of films with a political content that would be a defining characteristic of the director. Hastrup’s heart is on the left and beats for the world’s small and vulnerable beings. He next brought out a number of now classic theatrical animated films, including Samson & Sally (1984), War of the Birds (1990), The Monkeys and the Secret Weapon (1995), and three features, including Little Big Mouse (2004), starring his hugely famous Circleen with spiky black hair and a polka-dot dress who sleeps in a matchbox on the artist’s desk. Quist Møller, continuing along a parallel but more rounded and gently satirical path, made three popular animated films and a TV series about 14
the fantasy creature Hugo. Jungle Jack (1993), The Movie Star (1996) and Jungo Goes Bananas (2007) are contemporary classics in Denmark, where children and their adults love the rare, lovable, self-involved, sly and temperamental, food-loving and drop-dead charming Hugo, who, it is said, embodies a big chunk of the Danish national character. When the two filmmakers finally reunited professionally and co-directed their first feature in 36 years, A Tale of Two Mozzies, their chemistry was clearly intact. The success of the film naturally led to a second opus, Mini and the Mozzies, featuring Miranda, Egon, Mini and all the other half-inch heroes •
Benny’s Bathtub Photo: Susanne Mertz
Directors Flemming Quist Møller and Jannik Hastrup Photo: Miriam Dalsgaard
INTERVIEW / JANNIK HASTRUP & FLEMMING QUIST MØLLER / MINI AND THE MOZZIES
Mini and the Mozzies is selected for Berlinale’s children’s programme Generation Kplus. The film is produced by Marie Bro for Dansk Tegnefilm. For more information, see reverse section.
FILM | Berlin Issue 2015