FROM THE HISTORY OF CROATIAN CINEMA

Animated Films by Dušan Vukotić

Dušan Vukotić is one of few Croatian directors who enjoyed the status of a film star. Everyone, of course, knows why — because of the Oscar. However, outside Croatia, Oscar winners for short animated films remain completely anonymous. This is why Dušan Vukotić is not a name you hear on television quizzes, but a forgotten classical figure that took part in one of revolutionary movements to free the animation from the Disney stereotype. This text tries to examine Vukotić’s work on the animated film from the perspective of an impartial and sufficiently attached observer in terms of time period. It also tries to put it in the social context and animation tendencies of the time. Together with a few other distinguished representatives of the Zagreb School of Animated Film, Vukotić influenced world animation by accepting the modern painting as an expressive potential in the animated film and by transforming reduced animation from a condensation method to a specific artistic technique.

Jurica Starešinčić