ANIMAFEST PRO | ANIMAFEST SCANNER XI | Panel 1: Studying Early Animation (Tracing Some Basics)

From Pure Cinema to Narrative Abstraction. Animated Film as a Theoretical Concept - Olga Bobrowska (Poland)

PANEL 1 - STUDYING EARLY ANIMATION (TRACING SOME BASICS)
04/06 TUE 11:20-11:50 KIC

This presentation will start with a brief recapitulation of the beginnings of Polish animation; however, the main research focus will be on the emerging and rapidly developing theoretical reflection regarding animated film and its potencies. The corpus of Polish animated films made before 1945 is regrettably lost, but the writings of 8 various film and culture theoreticians, avant-garde artists, and intellectuals interested in animation remain an available and inspiring source material that has not been yet widely discussed in English language. In many respects, the theoretical concepts and approaches presented by authors such as Karol Irzykowski, Stefania Zahorska, Jalu Kurek, or Jan Brzękowski, were aligned with the main currents of the European avant-garde energizing the modernist borderlands of abstractionism, futurism, constructivism, surrealism, and dadaism. It will be argued that the writings on animation of the period, however ramified and diverse, reveal certain common denominators in viewing the form and function of the animation medium. The postulates posed called the filmmakers to pursue an ideal of an ‘absolute’ (pure) cinema, forms of synergy that would enable creation of ‘visual music’ and ‘visual poetry’, or modes that would transpose qualities of abstract painting into motion pictures (e.g., Irzykowski claimed that hand-drawn animation was the ‘true cinema of the future’). Especially emphasized will be the concerns related to a distinctive, structural approach to storytelling in abstract animation, which was formulated in the course of the 1920s’ debates (Jalu Kurek, Jan Brzękowski). The heritage of early Polish animated film theory continuously inspires the subsequent generations of Polish animators and scholars (most notably, Marcin Giżycki), and it deserves wider acknowledgment.

Olga Bobrowska, PhD, is an animated film scholar, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Journalism and International Relations (IDSM) of the UKEN University in Kraków (Uniwersytet Komisji Edukacji Narodowej) (Poland), co-founder and festival director of StopTrik International Film Festival (Maribor, Slovenia / Łódź, Poland), film culture activist and curator. She authored two monographs published by the CRC Press (Chinese Animated Film and Ideology, 1940s-1970s. Fighting Puppets, 2023; Chinese Animated Film and Ideology. Tradition, Innovation, and Interculturality, 2024). She co-edited books Obsession, Perversion, Rebellion. Twisted Dreams of Central European Animation (2016), and Propaganda, Ideology, Animation. Twisted Dreams of History (2019). She is a permanent contributor of Zippy Frames.