Director: Michelle Oslow
Writers: Michelle Oslo
Starring: Pronel Charles Amblon / Enzo Lazito
Type: Animation
Country/Region of Production: France / Belgium / Germany
Language: French
Release: 2019-12-21(Chinese mainland)
Runtime: 94 minutes
Written: There is no Akane in the southeast, north and south
Edit: Steamed buns
Interview site translator: Hu Yu
Those of France's greatest women
When it comes to Paris, France, the first thing that comes to mind are some landmark buildings, such as the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée Rodin, or the pilgrimage route often chosen by literary and artistic youth, to the Seine River cruise, to stroll on the Champs Elysées, to explore the underground Paris in the bone tomb...
Indeed, Paris is always too romantic in people's impressions, even if it is not long ago, Notre Dame de Paris has returned to people's vision because of the fire, but it is mostly in the name of Notre Dame de Paris to feel many literary and artistic works with this as the background, rather than the building itself.
Michel O'Silo, the director who won the 44th French César Award for Best Animation for "Di Lily's Fantastic Paris", also seems to be interested in connecting the street scenes of the city of Paris, and the protagonist of the story, Princess Di Lili, sits in a French tricycle and explores every corner of Paris with the young Orriel.
To some extent, the wandering around in "Di Lily's Fantastic Paris" is to visualize Benjamin's literary image of the French poet Baudelaire's "saunterer" in "Paris, the capital of the 19th century", and to draw a lot of inspiration from the helmsman of the French New Wave, Truffaut's "Four Hundred Strikes" (1959) in the streets of Antoine The Younger, and the changes in the streetscape show the local customs and customs.
Although the drama of "Crossing The Ancients" (an interview with the literati and inkers of the late 19th century) is preceded by Woody Allen's Midnight Paris (2011), which is regarded by literary and artistic youth, the daily life of parisian celebrities shown in "Di Lili's Fantasy Paris" does have a completely different appearance from the former's literary and artistic films that superficially seem to collide with the ideas of great people of different eras, but in fact they still use the protagonist to present petty bourgeois sentiments.
It was the Kanak girls and not the French girls
The first to explore Oslow's work, the most notable is his "Twitter Trilogy" [The Adventures of Twitter (1998), Twitter and the Beast (2005), and Twitter and The Man and the Woman (2012)], which revolves around a magical little boy, Twitter, which combines African fairy tales with the precious experiences of Eslo's childhood in Guinea. Among them, "Twitter Adventures" has set a box office revenue of 1.5 million in France, and "Twitter and the Beast" won the Children's Jury Award at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, which allows the director to get rid of the early poor creative career and freely choose the technique of telling the story.
But it was also the paper-cut animation that Othlow was forced to choose in the early days because of the limited production cost, which laid the foundation for his future work style. In Three Inventors (1980), he adopted paper-cut animations, in which the Rococo style of painting is presented frame by frame, with a relief-like aesthetic. The director also said in an interview that he is more like a meticulous jeweler.
Unlike the "fake 3D" that other directors are trying to get rid of, Oslow is obsessed with finding the truth in the layers of paper cuts on the tablets. In The Prince and the Princess (2000), Oslow has already skillfully used silhouette animation to construct his fairytale kingdom.
It is worth mentioning that the earliest use of silhouette animation was the 1919 production of the German female director Lautrenigg's "The Adventures of Prince Archimedes", unlike her silhouette animation, Oslo retained the eyes of the character (influenced by Chinese shadow puppet art). Although the technology has improved and no longer needs to use paper for cropping, Oslow still uses three-dimensional modeling when making "The Story under the Night" (2011), lighting and rendering in the computer, and outputs video images similar to silhouette animations. It can be said that the silhouette animation satisfies the simplicity and refinement of the style he pursues when telling the story.
As far as the master of fairy tale craftsmen himself is concerned, the reconstruction of the content of classic fairy tales may be his more authorlike conscious expression. The animated short films "The Three Inventors" and "The Legend of the Poor Hunchback" (1982) show Othlow's encouragement of new things and the humanistic care of the vulnerable; a series of short stories created in 1992, "Dancing Shepherd", "Sleeping Prince", "Jewel Prince", and "Icarus", form his narrative master version of rewriting fairy tales with old people, boys and girls.
In the more mature "Night Story Trilogy" [Prince and Princess (2000), Tales Under the Night (2011), Prince Ivan and the Princess of Change, in which "Night Story" was selected as an animation in the main competition section of the 61st Berlin Film Festival] [The Prince and Princess of the Night" were rich and diverse, and they broke the conventional story routine of prince and princess: for example, the witch casts a "sleeping curse" on the prince, and the princess kisses the prince and transforms. The witch no longer appears on the screen as a very evil image, and the plot reorganization is somewhat playful, funny and even nonsensical.
This reversal of plot is not just to do the opposite, but is based on Oslo's exploration of human nature. In Oslow's view, the quality that a director needs to have is to be honest, to show the audience a sense of truth and reflect reality. So we'll see twitter in The Adventures of Twitter trying to figure out what caused the villain Witch to destroy the entire village.
Azul and Asmal (2006) is how to connect the friendship between a son, a Caucasian boy, and the son of a former employer, an Arab boy, with the kindness of a great mother. When it came to "Di Lili's Fantasy Paris", the mixed-race girl Di Li Li asked the audience seriously, "Why is everyone talking about the Kanak girl instead of the French girl?" In the face of commonplace phenomena, Di Lili questioned, debated, and subverted, just like her creator, director Oslo.
In contrast to michelle O'Solo's story of the prince and princess (os-lo said in an interview that they are the embodiment of male and female ideals), in "Di Lili's Fantasy Paris", the director weakened the narrative of the princess and added a considerable number of real historical celebrities in France in addition to the fictional character Di Lili. Because in terms of the background of the fairy tale itself, there are already real characters participating in the narrative, and the focus is no longer on the reality of the fairy tale, but on the authenticity in the current historical context.
It is no exaggeration to say that "Di Lili's Fantasy Paris" uses a near-perfect silhouette animation to play those great female figures in Paris, France, at the end of the 19th century, the fashion capital of the world.
Mrs. Louis Michelle, "Greater Than a Man"
The Declaration of The Rights of Women and The Rights of Women and Women citizens, published by the women leader of the French Revolution in 1791, opened the feminist movement. In the "History" section of The Second Sex I, De Beauvoir points out that the legal status of women has changed little from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the nineteenth century, and that it is only a change in the specific situation of the privileged class, because they are either financially rich or free of education, and thus can break free from the status of male subordination. This is an important reference factor for Oslow in choosing Duchess Louis Michelle as the teacher of Di Lili in the play.
As a heroine of the Paris Commune, Victor Hugo wrote the poem "Greater Than a Man" for Louis Michel. In 1873, Louis was exiled to New Caledonia, france's then Colony in the Pacific. During her exile, she was touched by the misfortunes of the colonial people, and she enthusiastically taught the local Kanak children literacy, founded schools for them, and collected Kanak stories, legends, and songs for publication. In the face of the local people's regard for white people as "eating human beings", Michelle personally visited them in the coconut grove and used popular language to enlighten them to the truth that the oppressed are brothers regardless of race.
So, in the movie "Di Lili's Fantasy Paris", the student Di Li Li inherited the mantle of Duchess Michelle, she used a childlike tone to question people's habitual language and way of thinking about problems, and had a knowledge of her mixed-race skin color beyond her age. She also assists the police in cracking down on the accomplices of the "masters", cleverly escapes after being kidnapped, encourages trapped girls to break out of their cages, and it can be said that Di Lili has used women's agility and wisdom to the extreme.
"In 1623, the Papal Ambassador wrote: 'In France, all great events, all great conspiracies, often depend on women.' Beauvoir quotes this sentence on historical events that actually took place at the time, such as the "women's conspiracy" perpetuated by Princess de Condé and the key role played by some duchesses in the French catapult events of the mid-seventeenth century. When it comes to conspiracies, it is also an important motivation for the actions that drive Di Lili and others to wander the streets of Paris, a powerful underground organization that has continuously abducted girls, the League of The Masters. Perhaps this statement by the Papal ambassador can be a footnote to this conspiracy of women. Mrs. Michelle's main function in the whole film is to endorse the women's movement on the one hand, and to encourage and support Di Lili to uncover the conspiracy behind the abduction of girls.
A New Recipe for Science and Literature: Marie Curie and Sarah Bernhardt
In his essay "A Culture and a New Sensibility" in "Against Interpretation," Sontag details that although there are many differences between scientific culture and art culture, such as external and internal, accumulation and absorption, in fact, the two are not separated, and even change with each other, but are "a creation with some new (potentially consistent) sensibility." "Of course, this new sensory force is inseparable from our experience, the experience of social mobility and physical fluidity. This is also an important reason why "Di Lili's Fantasy Paris" has chosen many celebrities in the field of science and culture-art in the choice of real people, in addition to the political selection of Mrs. Louis Michel, the representative of the feminist movement.
The story takes place around the time when the Curies first won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
It can be said that Oslow very cleverly uses female scientists to string together several technical plot settings in the film. Thanks to Marie Curie's addition, it would be more reasonable for Orrell to use pasteurization when bitten by a red vicious dog. At the same time, the use of the most critical prop at the end, the human airship, directly echoes the human airship invented by the French in the nineteenth century, and this imagination based on the real and verifiable scene reduces the sense of violation of the plot.
In the field of culture and art corresponding to science and technology, Oslot has swept away the celebrities of the French literary and artistic circles. There are mobile crowds emerging in the mobile places: Di Lili hates Bergson's philosophy, loves Verne's novels (Verne's works such as "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and "Around the World in Eighty Days" directly intertext Di Lili's fantastic journey to Paris), and the young Orel visits Proust, the author of "Remembrance of The Age of Water", listens to the female writer Camelot talk about what happened after her marriage to a four-year-old publisher, meets the Fauvist painters Matisse and Picasso at a concord ball, observes Debussy's piano solo, and searches" The sculpture of "Gates of Hell" came to Rodin's studio to meet his lover, the same sculptor, Camille Claudel, and visited the Moulin Rouge, an important stronghold of the "Masters"... Di Lili travels through a dizzying array of celebrities and places, converging and then separating, like the impressionist painters Monet and Renoir on the banks of the Seine, following them in search of changes in light, to capture the fluttering and flowing atmosphere in the air.
"Foreigners in Paris have two things they can't fail to see, one is the Eiffel Tower and the other is Sarah Bernhardt." It is also confirmed by this statement that Oslow used the Eiffel Tower and the home of the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt as the key narrative space in "Di lily's Fantastic Paris". Connecting the two venues is Emma Calvi, the most famous French soprano singer of the late nineteenth century, who sits in the swan boat of the dungeon and sings softly to Di Lili.
Arguably, in contrast to the static beauty of actress Sarah Bernhardt, Emma Calvi brings together figures from various fields with her singing voice and her salon. Sharon's invention is the source of the existence of female evil in the eyes of the villain "Master", whose fear of women's desire for independence and equality rises to the point of being used as a means of evil to suppress. Historically, it was the salon invented by the French that gave more women the opportunity to learn and communicate. In France in 1800, it was considered illegal for women to appear in public wearing pants, and by 1900, the originator of modern fashion designers, Paul Polly, liberated women's bodies with clothes designed. At the end, when Di Lili wears the slightly modified clothes of Paulo Polly to rescue the kidnapped girls, it is the most beautiful part of this magical journey to Paris.
As Sontag puts it, "The difficulty of cultivating artistic sensibility and the length of the apprenticeship period are comparable to the difficulty and length of time required to master physics or engineering." "Based on fictional events, interspersed with real historical celebrities, layer by layer around a suspicious point, interlocking landmark attractions participate in the narrative, and the end of the sigh of life." This skill may only be controlled by Oslo, who is over seventy years old, and the humanistic care for women embodied in the film is even more precious in the current surging affirmative action movement.
Deep Focus DeepFocus × Michelle Oslow
Audiences who like to watch cartoons should not be unfamiliar with director Michelle Oslow. As one of France's greatest animation directors, almost every one of his works has not disappointed audiences.
This year, director Oslo came to China again with his new work, "Di Lili's Fantasy Paris", which won the best animation award at the 44th César Film Awards in France. This time, he set his sights on Guinea, Africa, where he lived as a child, back to his hometown of Paris, France, and chose 1920 to show the era of talent.
Dilili's Fantasy Paris Dilili à Paris (2018)
It can be said that "Di Lili's Fantastic Paris" covers the greatest historical figures in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. How to weave 64 historical celebrities into a story tests not only the choreography of director Oslow, but also the familiarity with historical figures, the accumulation of life and the insight into human nature.
The whole interview with director Oslo was lighthearted and enjoyable, and he was often able to extend richly around one issue. Due to the constraints of time (the director's close itinerary) and the limitations of the on-site translator's personal change, we have not explored some of the questions in more depth, but the content of the director's answers and the clues provided are extremely rich, and some clues can be extended by the reader independently.
In order to facilitate the reader's reading, this interview will be sorted out in the first person, and some adjustments will be made in some words to maximize the preservation of the director's original intention.
Michelle Oslo in China
【About creation】
Keyword 1: Female
Deep focus: The plot settings and endings of many of your previous fairy tale works are often different from the endings of traditional fairy tales, and the conception of characters, such as the "Twitter" series, breaks the traditional fairy tales, is this because of your habit of thinking about problems or other considerations?
Michelle O'Slow: I don't imitate people too much, I like to express my ideas as purely as possible. Maybe it's also because when I was very young, adults taught me not to lie, and I have always maintained this state of innocence and never lied.
I felt that my personality was somewhat similar to that of the little boy Twitter, who, like most people in his village, was very pure, like a "fool", he could say whatever he wanted, he would not calculate too much, he was very persevering, very tenacious, willing to do a thing to the end.
Kirikou et la sorcière (1998)
Deep Focus: How did you come up with the image of the witch in the "Twitter" series?
Michelle Othello: Regarding the image of the witch in the "Twitter" series, the inspiration for this story is an opening point in an African legend (fairy tale).
I found the original part of this African fairy tale particularly beautiful, and for this reason I used it almost verbatim in my film.
The fairy tale begins with the voice of a small child (not yet born) saying, "Mother conceive me." ”
But the plot behind it I don't think is good, according to the original plot direction, that is, the only purpose of the child is to "kill the witch!" I don't think this should be done, and the protagonist should be made to "fall in love with the witch!" ”
For me, it's a great way of justifying and speaking up for a group of people who are often attacked by society as a whole, because women in some places are called witches if they insist on their opinions and have their own unique way of life.
Deep Focus: So, how do you see the feminist tendencies of female figures in many of your works?
Michelle O'Slough: I've thought about that. If the world were divided into two halves, and half of them said to the other group, "You are inferior to me," I felt that this was completely wrong, it was not true, and I would be very angry at this statement. I think any statement that lowers women to inferiority in religion or culture is a false way of thinking, and that's not the truth I see.
For my own part, I live with my mother and sister, and I never feel superior to them. If men and women can get along equally, all people in this world will be much happier. That's why in the movie "Di Lili", I would choose 1920, because the relationship between men and women in that era was in a more positive state.
The reason why the status of women at that time was rising was first of all because of the first female college student, the first female professor, the first female lawyer, and the female taxi driver. Secondly, returning to the female figures in the film, Sarah Bernhardt and Emma Calvi were the first female movie stars to appear in that era.
Deep Focus: Can you briefly talk about the female figure in your film?
Michelle Othello: Like Sarah Bernhardt just mentioned, she invented the working mechanism of stars, she was very clever at the time to advertise stars everywhere with the new technology of photography, and she was actually a beneficiary of this mechanism, and she later became famous. Another Emma Calvi (singer), who was also an international star at the time, I'm not sure what I said was accurate, I was interested in her before, I remember she went to India, China and Japan, she had some insights into the civilizations and ancient ideas of the Far East, but now almost no one knows. If you're interested, you can check again to see if I'm right.
Deep Focus: These female stars also make up more of your films.
Michelle Othello: Yes, I have a lot of admiration for these women, because they are actually holding up the sky alone. Like Emma Calvi, who was born very poor and had a shepherd family, it would be even more miserable, she was born a prostitute, and they all fought a bloody path for themselves, such as Emma Calvi, who by the time she retired and had made the headlines of the New York Times, and they were all very remarkable people. In addition, her contemporaries were Marie Curie, a prominent representative of the scientific community. In fact, they can have these achievements and status, they have made great efforts.
Deep Focus: Yes, you also highlighted Marie Curie in "Di Lily's Fantastic Paris".
Michelle O'Slough: If you're more interested in feminism or the women's affirmative action movement, you can read some more about Marie Curie's life. It should be said that she has been working hard all her life, and if we summarize her, she is actually a very successful woman in all aspects. She has won two Nobel Prizes, has a husband who loves her, she is also a very successful mother, her children are raised very well by her, and she also makes very delicious apple pie!
She has a little book, and after making the apple pie, she will add some new experience to the previous recipe to make it better next time, and in "Di Lili" we can also see her daughter saying there: "Mom, this time the apple is better than the last one." ”
In short, the life of Marie Curie is a very extraordinary story, and she has achieved great success in all aspects. But in fact, she came from a country (Poland) where women could not go to school, but fortunately she came to France and began her successful life.
Deep Focus: Di Lili is a Karnak girl, did you consider the French colonial history of New Caledonia when you created it?
Michelle Oslow: Actually, it doesn't have much to do with colonization, and the reason why I chose Paris in 1920 is, first of all, I still think it was a very beautiful era, and that era itself is also very worthy of attention. The status of women is rising, and the best and most talented artists from all over the world have gathered in Paris, and it should be said that paris in that era is the so-called "talented". In fact, it is not only the French, everything seemed to me to be almost perfect, and perhaps the only thing that made me feel that the fly in the ointment was that all the pictures were made of white people. Since I spent my childhood in Africa, I am more accustomed to presenting a multiculturalism in movies, and if there are only white people in this movie, I think it is not rich enough. So I found the Toulouse Lautrec, whose painting showed a chocolate-colored clown, and then a waiter in a bar, who was Chinese, but I didn't think that was enough.
Among the outstanding women of the era I have just mentioned was one whose name I forgot to mention—Louis Michelle. She was known as a revolutionary of her time, an activist in the Paris Commune, and was eventually exiled to the island. When she arrived on the island, she did not discriminate against the local indigenous people, the Kanaks, and she returned to her old job and became a primary school teacher again. I have checked the information that there were some Kanaks on the island of New Caledonia at that time who were literate and french-speaking.
In addition, at that time, France also set off a wave of imitation of primitive tribal buildings, and then invited the indigenous people on the island to come over, which also gave me a possibility to find a more suitable arrangement of characters in my creation, that is, the character image concept of Di Lili.
As for this history of colonization, I don't have this intention here, I just made a presentation, did not express my attitude, and this presentation also shows to some extent that Di Lili has a very strong curiosity, and she also wants to explore the new world.
Keyword 2: virtual reality
Deep Focus: How do you think about the setting of the villain? Why is the boss of the police authorities arranged to be the villain? Is it based on historical fact or is there some other factor?
Michelle O'Slow: It's not that the whole police agency is a villain, it's that there are some villains in it. But I didn't like that very much of that choice myself. There are good and bad cops, which is normal. I had no intention of criticizing the police, and at that time, as far as the chief of police was concerned, he was a very remarkable figure.
For this, I will blame myself a little, but as a screenwriter, the story needs to have such a plot setting. If the plot is completely based on the prototype of the police at that time, the "masters" may be eliminated in an instant. To tell this story requires constructing a formidable obstacle so that the story can be told, so I designed such a plot.
In this process, in order to balance the image of the police, I also made some adjustments. For example, after the jewelry theft was over, I designed a very kind and lovely policeman image, and he returned Di Lili's jump rope.
It's not easy from a screenwriter's point of view, because the screenwriter has to tell a good story, but also may be constrained by some moral or other aspects, and the screenwriter needs to weave a story among all the impossible things.
Deep Focus: How do you grasp the proportion and rhythm between fictional characters and real people?
Michelle Othello: First of all the whole story is fictional, there is no such thing as a girl being kidnapped, there is no so-called cult. Many of the films I make have a more consistent intention, that is, to talk about things, such as women, to talk about some of the disrespect for women in every era. I would like to use this story to say something from my heart, which I think exists in any society.
There are three characters in the story of Di Lili who are fictional, two heroes and heroines and Emma Calvi's driver, these are fictional, and all the other characters are real. Throughout the story, there are a lot of people who bring pleasant feelings to people, and I will highlight their position in the story, because it is a very pleasant thing to tell their achievements.
Arguably, telling these artists and scientists is one of the themes of my film, and although these people are no longer there, they are all real, and the well-being they have brought to humanity has always existed and will always exist, whether in the fields of art, literature, or science.
Keyword 3: space
Deep focus: In many of your works, you like to present underground scenes and pictures, such as the plot of "Twitter and the Witch" in which Twitter digs a hole when looking for grandpa, the underground castle appears in the second story of "The Story Under the Night", "Di Zhong and the Unknown Beauty", and in "Di Lili", the nests of the villain "masters" are set in the sewers of Paris, how do you consider the use of this underground space?
Michelle Othlow: Maybe it was a little bit of a hobby when I was writing a script, but it didn't become an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I didn't present it every time.
I think one thing is actually quite interesting, that is, if it is a building, give you a flat profile, you can see both the scenes above the ground and the secret passages below the ground, which will give people a feeling of decryption.
We all know that Paris is a particularly fascinating and fascinating city, it can be as high as the Eiffel Tower, but its secrets can also be found underground. Many people learn from Hugo's Les Misérables that Paris also has a city under the city, in which there are more passages than the streets on the ground of the city.
In all my films, where the location is involved, I personally go to the scene and take pictures. The same is true of the scene in the underground sewers in Di Lili.
Moreover, during the investigation, I also found that the underground sewers did not have any light, and all the actions of the workers needed to rely on wearing headlamps on their heads to find the light. In my communication with the workers working in the sewers, I also had a new understanding of them, and I thought they were ordinary people, but after visiting them, I gradually found that without their efforts, the whole underground space could not exist. This also became a source of material for me to conceive the dungeon workers in Di Lili, and to show my gratitude to them, I changed their previous image from ordinary people to a pleasing image.
At the same time, I also distinguished in color, when presenting the sewer, I presented the primary color of the photos taken at that time, and later when it came to the masters, when presenting their underground scenes, I chose a gray specially made by the computer, without giving the scene where the masters were in any other color.
Keyword 4: style
Deep Focus: You like to create in the form of silhouette animation, will you consider trying other styles in the future new films?
Michelle O'Silo: Like "Dilly's Fantastic Paris", it actually has a lot of 3D scenes in it, and there are digital technologies. I personally would be more accustomed to using floor plans, because floor plans are faster to make, if I have an idea right away, I can quickly draw it and then quickly take shape, but in 3D, every character needs to take a long time to design. Of course, my previous works like Azul and Asmal were also in 3D.
In my next work, I may still combine graphic and digital technology, and then the audience will still see that very innocent style, and I want to use this technique to say a lot of things, I have a lot to say.
【About yourself】
Keyword 1: life
Deep Focus: You mention "life" many times in the film, such as adults telling Di Lili "don't ask about life" and saying at the end that "life is not satisfactory, just the beginning".
Michelle Othello: If I remember correctly, this sentence should be said by an old man under the tree in the film to Di Lili, but this old man is actually quite stupid, and I don't actually have a strong sense of identification with his sentence.
Life is not satisfactory, just the beginning": It may be a matter of film translation, I would like to say that "life is uncertain", because Di Lili walks on the streets of Paris and looks a bit like a stray child, doesn't she? Then because she was of mixed race, both white and black would reject her, and she was depressed.
I think that when the film was placed in that era, the overall standard of living was OK, but in fact, life was full of uncertainty, so we had to look at life with a relative eye.
Deep Focus: So what is life for you? What weight does it represent in your creations?
Michelle Othello: I think this question of life is a big one. Humans often scare me, make me feel afraid, and while sometimes it brings me joy, it's more scary. In fact, in my films, you can see that there are some people who are comforting because they bring a lot of good, but there are also some people who are constantly creating evil, such as those who abuse women.
Keyword 2: Sensitive
Deep Focus: Do you have a favorite director, or have you been influenced by any films?
Michelle Othello: I'm actually very sensitive, almost everything affects me, I receive all kinds of inspiration and influences from all directions, but I don't focus on being influenced by one person, and I don't feel particularly influenced by a certain director.
I have been very independent since I was a child, for example, in China, I should be able to find that kind of color-filling picture book, on the one hand, I can imitate the original version of the printed picture, and on the other hand, let us fill in the original according to the original. When I was a child, someone would give me a coloring book as a gift, but I especially disliked these gifts, because first of all I thought I could draw, I didn't need someone to sketch out for me in advance, and the second was the color, I wanted to draw any color, don't follow the example designed for me to fill in.
【About China】
Deep Focus: When you came to China to promote "Prince Ivan and the Ever-Changing Princess" before, you mentioned that you like Chinese ink and paper cutting, is there anything that impressed you about China?
Michelle Oslow: I've been fond of Chinese ink painting since I was a kid, and I've wanted to paint Chinese painting since I was a kid, but I've tried many times without success. Later, I found out that because the paper I used at that time was not right, the paper used in Europe had too much glue on it, and the paint was not easy to penetrate, unlike Chinese rice paper, which could make the ink blend and dye. And I later had the privilege of going to Japan and studying ink painting in Japan, which should be when I was in Japan, and I found that the reason why I did not succeed in painting Chinese painting was that the paper was not used correctly, and I could now easily draw bamboo, and I could grasp the strong and powerful appearance of bamboo and the shape of bamboo leaves blown by the wind.
I also love Chinese theater, especially the costumes and makeup in Chinese theater art, and I am particularly obsessed with these things.
Chinese culture is a dizzying and beautiful culture, and the early civilization of mankind should have originated in two places, one is the Mesopotamian plain, and the other is in the land of China.
Prince Ivan and the Princess of Change (2016)
I also really like Chinese ceramics, which are imitated all over the world, and Chinese realized very early that ceramics have a very high value, so it was sold abroad commercially very early.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Chinese style arose in France, and these Chinese works of art could be seen everywhere, and they often used these works of art to decorate their homes. By the 1900s, Europe at that time was already relatively familiar with China, so at that time began to set off a Japanese style, especially Japanese prints, if the film "Di Lili" is about the 16th and 17th centuries, there may be a lot of Chinese art, but now that the 1900s have been chosen, everyone will see a lot of Japanese things.
Shen Jiao: You had a long period of constraints in the early days of creation, do you have any suggestions or messages to young creators in China?
Michelle Othello: I don't really give advice to young filmmakers, after all, there is a huge difference or a lot of differences, that is, when I first started, the environment in France at that time and china now is very different.
When I first started working on movies, it was basically not a full-fledged cartoon, only Disney. At that time, there were some filmmakers who made some relatively original small animation films out of their own interests, but this volume could not enter the big market of commercial films.
One thing I suddenly understood after making a few small movies based on pure interest is that animation is a very good choice, it can bring me a lot of things, and I can create a lot of content with personality through animation, as both an author and an artist.
Azur and Asmar Azur et Asmar (2006)
The first half of my career was very hard, there were very few works at that time, I couldn't find a job, and then there was "Twitter", and from then on I could really do what I wanted to do, and I could make some movies that I was more proud of, such as "Azul and Asmal", and now "Di Lili's Fantasy Paris".
But in fact, when I first conceived of "Twitter", I had a big disagreement with the producers at that time. The African elements I wanted to join weren't selling in the market at the time, and my producers thought some of my images were scandalous because it was showing african women naked, and the little boy "Twitter" was also naked, and there was no way to play it publicly. And the opening scene of his mother giving birth to him in Twitter and the Witch is also very inappropriate for a film with a family as its main audience. But what I was thinking at the time was that I grew up in Africa when I was a child, and when I was in school there, I often heard about these things happening, these are actually normal, we can do some balance, I want to pass on these through the picture.
I stuck to this idea to the end, and I can say that I won this little war with the producers. The film went on to be a huge success internationally, and almost everyone saw that what the film wanted to express was the purest kind of humanity.
I don't know what young Chinese filmmakers can do or do, to be honest. In my own case, my only way is to be honest and sincere, to know how to distinguish between good and bad in different suggestions, and to be able to resist some bad suggestions.
Finally, I would like to use my most sincere wishes to wish young Chinese filmmakers success.
Michelle Othello
【Sequence of works directed by Michelle Oslow】
short:
1980 Three Inventors (Paper Cut Animation)
1982 The Legend of the Poor Hunchback
1992 Dancing Shepherd, The Jeweled Prince, Icarus, Myth of the Night, Beauty and The Witch, etc
1987 4 Wishes (Nominated for the Palme d'Or for Short Films, 40th Cannes Film Festival)
Feature Films:
1998 The Adventures of Twitter (aka Twitter and the Witch)
2005 Twitter and the Beast (2006 Chicago International Children's Film Festival Children's Jury Award)
2012 Twitter with Men and Women
——
2006 Azul and Asmar (aka One Thousand and Two Nights) (Nominated for Best Picture at the 22nd Goya Awards in Spain)
Prince and Princess 2000 (Best Animation at chicago international children's film festival)
(Story Collection: Diamond Princess, Fig Boy, Witch Castle, Old Lady's Coat, Cruel Queen and Fab Heron Trainer, Prince and Princess)
2011 Tales at Night (Nominated for the Golden Bear at the 61st Berlin Film Festival)
(Collection of Stories: The Tale of the Werewolf, Di Zhong and the Unknown Beauty, The Creator of the Golden City, The Boy Who Beats the Drum, The Boy Who Doesn't Lie, The Girl Who Turns into a Deer and the Son of Architecture)
2016 Prince Ivan and the Princess of Change
(Story Collection: Lord of Monsters, Wizard Apprentice, Sailor and His Cat, Prince Ivan and the Princess of Change)
This article is the featured content of today's headline number