Animation World History

Interlochen Center for the Arts

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The Breadwinner and Persepolis

This Award-Winning Animated Film Gave Us a Dangerous Twist on Coming-of-Age
Review: The Breadwinner | Never Felt Better


The Breadwinner, talks about the struggles of a family after the start of the Taliban. showing what some people had to do to save their family from hunger and death. Parvana sacrificed her identity to help her family and get her father back from jail. While Persepolis, talks about the Iran-Iraq War and the experiences that the writer of the comics had seen first hand. It talks about her, Marji, and the story throughout it. From the beginning to the end.

Both of the films talk about the oppression of women and girls. The governments that start to rise in power are the villains in the movies, they made the girls cover up outside, and couldn’t be seen out alone, not to mention the way the men are being harsh to the women and girls. 


The Scenes that I’m going to compare are the ones from when they are telling a story. While both of the movies are animated in a certain style, the story that is told within is different. They both use a paper puppet style of animation, like stop motion. The color pallets are also different. In The Breadwinner, the colors are prominent, while in Persepolis there is no color at all, just black and white.

Jan Svěrák

Jan Svěrak is a Czech director and filmmaker who is award winning and nominated (Academy award, Golden Globes Award, Crystal Globe, Tokio Grand Prix etc.) for several of his films. Born 1965 in Czechia, Svěrák studied film specifically for Documentary at the FAMU. (Filmová a televizní fakulta Akademie múzických umění v Praze/Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). He found his go to style in sci-fi ecology, and fictional documentary. His first feature film, Elementary School (1991) won an Academy Award for best foreign language film.

Admittedly, almost all the sources I found on him were in Czech- and some of them translated rather awkwardly.

Aurel Klimt

Klimt was born in 1972 in Slovakia (formerly Chezchoslovakia)!

He is currently a writer and director and is known for multiple films.

He graduated from animation school in 1999 and does a lootttt of puppet films! He has sort of this grungy dirty style that’s super interesting. I found information that said he also works on TV and commercials as well, so he’s a part of both sides of art, the personal side and the more business side- he seems pretty well-rounded.

Klimt was also a teacher at an animation academy and the leader of an entire studio which is very impressive. I’d say the most interesting thing about him is how many things he’s involved in. He sort of has his hand in pretty much every side of producing art.

https://vimeo.com/aurelklimt here is his Vimeo link that has all of his films on it as well as just his general bio and things:

His music video Laika is about the dog Laika who went to space! Probably everyone knows but she was a stray dog who was taken to space and the first animal to orbit the earth. She was given very little food and water to help her survive and there were no preparations for her to return to earth so she unfortunately passed away in space

Very famous dog, and I think the animation is honoring her

https://vimeo.com/aurelklimt

Citations:

“Aurel Klimt.” Vimeo, 2015, vimeo.com/aurelklimt. Accessed 27 Feb. 2025.

‌IMDb. “Aurel Klimt – Writer, Director, Animation Department.” IMDb, 2017, www.imdb.com/name/nm0459571/. Accessed 27 Feb. 2025.

Jiří Barta

Jiří Barta was born in 1948 in Prague, Czech Republic. he studied animation at the University of Applied Art. After graduating, he began working on his first animation film in the Jiří Trnka Studios in 1978.


Czech Stop-Motion Animated Films by Jiří Barta

He is most known for his interesting production design in stop motion by using mysterious horror themes and his wooden curved puppets used for the characters. Back in the day, he had a difficult time releasing his films in Czechoslovakia for about 15 years because of the censorship from the Communists.



One of his most popular films is Toys in The Attic (english release 2012, czech release 2009). Toys in The Attic was adapted for an english release by Vivian Schilling. she had written, casted, and directed the english version. the style of the movie is both stop-motion, hand-drawn, and live action.



another one of his films, The Club of the Laid Off, talks about the Velvet Revolution and communism in the Czech Republic. The Club of the Laid Off tells the story of Laid-off old mannequins that spend their lives in an old, abandoned warehouse. New mannequins are brought to the warehouse. They are old, but from a younger generation. The two groups must live together, but it’s not easy.


Works Cited

http://notcoming.com/features/jiribarta/
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