THE 40th ANNIVERSARY OF ZAGREB FILM — A REBUTTAL

Failed analogies

In a polemical reaction, primarily to the Ingo Petzke article 40 Years of Animated Films from Zagreb film Studio (published in CCC No. 7, 1996), the eminent animation author attempts to correct some of the mistaken interpretations and facts about the Zagreb School of Animation found in the aforementioned article. The lumping of Zagreb’s situation with the situations of other socialist animation studios — as state controlled and supported art — is mostly wrong because Zagreb’s animators were never accepted ideologically, but mostly and beneficially, ignored.

This was the basis for completely free and creative authorial work in Zagreb’s studio. No one was assigned to malevolently watch over and control the creation of the films, therefore the two film directors mentioned by name in Petzke’s article as usurpers and ideological controllers over the work of Vlado Kristl were wrongly accused. They were simply film directors (and named as such in the credits of Kristl’s film) in a period when directorial work was dissociated and distinctively categorized from animation work and actual drawing. The practice of unified work in animation (with credits as »authors«) was introduced much later. Some other factual mistakes in Petzke’s article and the award list are also pointed out.

Borivoj Dovniković-Bordo