And the director of The Congress, to be released June 12, says from experience. That’s what it’s about his latest film, after the success of Waltz with Bashir
punk Israeli animation , became known to the general public thanks to the success of Waltz with Bashir , and never realizes two films with the same technique. For the animated documentary about his experience in the army in Lebanon in the early 80s and then in Sabra and Shatila, Ari Folman had used an unusual mixture of Flash and hand drawing. This time, however, for The Congress went on the classic, inspired by the design of the Fleischer brothers (those of Betty Boop) to science fiction.
The Congress , out in Italy on June 12, is in fact in the words of Folman’s “ A documentary of dystopian fiction animated ” made with mixed media, half with actors in the flesh (there are Robin Wright and Harvey Keitel ) and half fully animated.The story of Congress of futurology Stanislaw Lem, in which the future is legalized and marketed a drug whose employment allows everyone to perceive reality as an animation. In this way, each one relates to others through an avatar of himself, an animated version and in many cases paradoxical (almost never realistic but full of signs and symbols like a cross between the characters of Second Life and World of Warcraft ).
The film is an incredible productive effort for an independent, a fusion of the classic dystopias (totalitarian regime) with the obsessions of science fiction of the twentieth century (the redefinition of personal identity because of the technology) and more modern themes such as life through a Avatar : “ Do you really think that someone would have given me the money for such a folly? I’ve only been able to do thanks to the success of Waltz with Bashir. “
Waltz with Bashir you had invented a new technique of animation, something totally original. Why do this once you have returned to a style iperclassico?“ First of all I did not want to use the same technique twice, I wanted to explore something new and different for Me. And because the story tells of a reality animated because of the drugs, which is why I wanted a style very much fluid that allowed so much freedom.
“Imagine that the book from which it is drawn is really something wild and more in the movie it took me too much of what I knew about drugs from my experiences with them. Really, the only animation in this style makes it good. “ Once the drugs were something countercultural and today, as we see in The Congress , are perceived more as an instrument of control.“You have to consider that 40 years ago you gave lithium to people, something really old school, even the great directors of Hollywood as if it were taking lithium nothing. Now, however, every mechanic, farmer, or student can go to the doctor with the recipe into giving of legal drugs. I mean, 40% of the children in my son’s school take something like Ritalin and statistics rises to 70% if you look at teenagers.
“Are you depressed, go to the doctor who prescribes you something and you’re OK, so you can get back to work. There is the perception that everything can be arranged, by drugs or by the technology but it is only an illusion. “ live through avatars is the typical modern phobia about the future, the cinema There is coming with motion capture. You funds that animation and live actors in other ways as you see it?“This is nothing new. The film speaks often of another perception of reality, but it all comes from the book by Stanislaw Lem. A true science fiction fan can count all the things that have stolen Wachowsky Lem Matrix!
“Anyway I think now if you and I we say that the motion capture is the death of let’s just film the figure of idiots in front of those who read in a few years. As those who said that the sound was not true cinema. You can not compete with the progress. What the film does not really filmed on authentic set, but more than anything else postprodotti is a new type of job and I think we should call it in another way. It has nothing to do with the classic filmmaking. “ Yet you had to make this film through 10 different countries, right?” Yes, because each agreed to fund a little ‘movie only if you spend that money on their territory. I had a studio in Tel Aviv, one in Luxembourg, one in Hamburg, one in Berlin, one in Brussels, one in Poland and one in the Philippines. Then I learned that the Poles had subcontracted the work to two studies Turks and Koreans.
“But this I have drawn also benefits, because I did treat the characters hard and virile male to countries with traditions such as Israel and female characters to countries like Luxembourg and Belgium. In this way, the former have the outlines and the animation that serves hard and rigid, the second sinuous they deserve. “ Why do you think the second half of the twentieth century science fiction is so obsessed with consequences that technological progress can have on an individual? “I think it’s because we are bombarded by technology. Dick and Lem were geniuses and they understood that our life is changing so much for this bombardment technology.
We are traceable everywhere, whatever we do to the phones by advertising on Gmail. Everything is changing, I do not want to be a judge or say stupid things like ‘fuck the computer ‘ but I’m just saying that if you want to turn this into a dystopia, well it’s really easy.
“My role as a filmmaker is not to judge the world but to put on the table the important issues of our lives and then are you as a viewer to decide what to think.”
It is no coincidence that, in the one scene of The Congress , which takes place in the future and is not animated, it seems that your inspirations tadpole most from the parts of a craftsman of science fiction as Terry Gilliam.
“It’s a nice compliment. Can we just leave this as my answer?
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