GlanceSurreal at the Past Or Perhaps the Future?

Peep Pedmanson interviews animation director Priit Tender whose new puppet animation Dog-Apartment is doing very well internationally and was also nominated for Best Animation Film at the Estonian Film and Television Awards.

Photos by Erlend Štaub

Priit, your last film Dog-Apartment is flying really high! Congratulations! Thank you! The dog has really unleashed itself and run free.

The film has been masterfully animated. Would you please talk about the working process?

The animating of a puppet film is a result of teamwork. The process begins working with the storyboard together in order to understand what specific characters should do and express in the film. The puppet master will then make the puppets accordingly. When the puppet cannot be easily controlled, and does not have plasticity, then not even a virtuoso animator will be able to create high-quality animation. Besides, every perspective used during the animating includes so many technical aspects that all need to be collectively discussed, with the director, animator, and cinematographer. Animation supervisor Märt Kivi has played an important part in the whole process. And our immense gratitude goes out to animators Egert Kesa, Marili Sokk, Nina Ovsova, and Lucille Braconnier.

What also plays an extraordinarily important role in this film is light.

Light art is cameraman Ragnar Neljandi’s creative contribution to the film. I proposed several references to him (Béla Tarr, the series Chernobyl) in order to explain what kind of pictorial aesthetics I imagined for this film. And Ragnar designed a light solution according to all that. The light design of a puppet animation won’t essentially differ from that of a feature film – and yet, smaller proportions, and frame-by-frame filming add numerous extra nuances, and all this requires a true professional in the field.

The source of the initial inspiration for the film is the poem “To Be a Dog-Apartment” by Estonian poet Andres Ehin. While the poem evoked your fantasy it otherwise has not reached the film. You have followed a separate path in your creation?

It’s true that when constructing the screenplay I have gone down my own path, but in my opinion, this should not minimize the importance of the initial impulse I got from the surreal poem by Andres Ehin. The poem has supported me during the creation of the film’s world; many characters and images have been born as a result of Ehin’s wordplay, for instance a barking apartment or a rooster that is simultaneously an axe.

You have mentioned that in the process of designing the visual environment of the animation you were inspired by the desolate areas in Mid-Estonia. In the story of the protagonist we can also sense the conflict between the past and the present. The mood and atmosphere of the whole animation is certainly familiar to those who grew up in a former Soviet Union country. And yet, the film receives awards also in the West. How is the film perceived outside of Eastern Europe? Besides the fact that the audience would (probably) recognize Serge Gainsbourg in the physiognomy of the dancer. Is there anything in the audience’s reactions that has surprised you?

Indeed, it has been really interesting to follow the reactions of the spectators with various cultural backgrounds. The Western European audience can see some kind of a dystopian future world in this film, and the Eastern European audience on the contrary relates to the communist past, as well as the images of lost dreams. In the West, the relationships between the film characters are often described as toxic. And sometimes a spectator may have a deeply personal issue realised by the film; for instance there was a middle-aged Russian lady in Bulgaria who start crying during the screening.

Toxicity is a nice and fashionable word that can cover everything. Can you name the prototype for the character of ex-cellist/butcher?

The design of the butcher was borrowed from a Soviet-time puppet with the purpose of creating disturbing associations with childhood. And yet every spectator has the right to find visual parallels with well-known people in the field of culture.

Indeed, this is the mass-produced baby puppet from out of the past, the one that often lost its legs and arms. You have grown it up for the animation. But how will the younger generation understand and interpret the film? Since they lack the experience of the past ancestors.

I am positively surprised that the younger generation has welcomed the film, despite the fact that it is a very classical, even old-fashioned puppet animation. Probably the retrospective qualities of the film also make it seem contemporary. Generally, the audience reacts to the protagonist’s suffering, no matter the age of the spectator. Storytelling as such works with every age.

Dog-Apartment is a masterfully crafted puppet animation about a decayed male ballet dancer and his barking apartment.

In Tampere Film Festival the film received the Best Animation Award. The jury has commented that the film contains “a clever critique of capitalism while managing to bring a quality of lightness”. Please explain the context of this statement.

I have not asked the jury for a more specific explanation, though – I guess I succeeded in criticizing capitalism the way that was both somehow clever and yet light. It is a well-known fact that artists whose work embodies criticism towards capitalism live most successfully in the very same system. And the Tampere award also included the financial part.

This story becomes the protagonist’s farewell to his former life. Please tell us what will happen to the dancing man tomorrow?

Well, I think that after having seen a good film, the audience should leave the cinema hall with questions rather than answers. Questions that will haunt them for a long time. Even I have no idea what will become of the next day’s journey to get the sausages. I hope everything will be ok.

This answer leads us to the next question. For me, Estonian animation can be characterized by the following things: firstly, a design that combines humour and alienation; and secondly, storytelling by a strong author’s position, whereas the audience serves not as a lifeless object but as a dialogue partner; and thirdly, of course that “something” that cannot be put into words, something that is imbued in us by the fogs of local moorlands. Would you like to add anything smart to this list?

Constructivism. The creative process of making an animation is based on combining various elements. This applies also to the most insane animated films – even these require a rational and constructivist approach. We are rather mad scientists than artists who cut off their ears.

You have practised this mad science in the biggest puppet animation studio in Estonia, in the biggest animated cartoon studio in Estonia, as well as led the department of animation at the Estonian Academy of Arts. You must be the right person to answer the question: what is the present status of our domestic animation? Including its pluses and minuses.

I’d rather argue whether I am the right person to answer this. I am like a fish swimming in water called Estonian animation. And the fish can describe water only after it has been lifted up from it. And then of course it won’t have much time to contemplate these questions.

The director Priit Tender has already presented the film at more than 20 international film festivals where it has won several awards.

You have founded the first animation festival in Estonia. Animist Tallinn will take place for the third time in August 2023. What is trending in the animation field in general? Why should the audience visit the festival and see something that they won’t see elsewhere?

While organizing the animation festival, my personal interest was to expand the field as well as to find a common ground between animation and anthropology. We have achieved great synergy and I have gathered ideas for building the festival programme and organizing professional lectures and workshops. In my opinion, Animist is the only animation festival where animators and anthropologists meet; and this is not a coincidental meeting but a planned and enriching one. In addition, the audience will see very good animation films in a beautiful cinema hall and the foreign guests can enjoy the absolutely wonderful old city of Tallinn in August.

And the classical final question: what’s next? You have an animated documentary in development, is there anything else?

I just returned from Kenya. I had a really great time. And I am thinking about moving to Africa. EF