Fine artist and occasional filmmaker László Csáki helmed Hungary’s first-ever animated feature, a story zooming in on the travels and the adventures of three friends set in the early 1990s.
After celebrating its world premiere at Tallinn last November, the film has been showcased in the Contrechamp strand of this year’s Annecy. The story unfolds in early 1990s Hungary, at a time when travel was possible but still unaffordable. By forging international train tickets, three friends helped an entire generation to experience the outside world.
How did the idea for Pelikan Blue come about? How was it being part of Hungarian youth in the late 80s and early 90s?
For my generation, it was really great to be a youngster back then. We felt really free, and everyone wanted to take part in this freedom, enjoy new opportunities. We wanted to explore and ‘exploit’ new things. And, at the time I used forged train tickets myself to travel to Western Europe.
Why did you choose to make this film as an animated documentary instead of going more ‘conventional’? You probably had enough interviews, research material and archive footage…
I chose animation because it provided a certain artistic freedom that archives and research materials cannot really depict. We also chose it owing to the sensitivity of the topic, as not all of the participants wanted to expose themselves. Moreover, certain topics are somehow ‘attracted’ by certain forms, so I think the animated documentary [format] fits best with the theme of travelling across Europe on forged tickets.
You didn’t stick to one particular animation technique but you mixed them, adding some ‘snippets’ of live action. Could you elaborate on this choice?
As the film is quite hybrid, I didn’t want to use a homogeneous animation [style] or technique to tell its story. With the fake archives shot on Super8, I wanted to show the physical reality of objects back in the 90s. By doing so, it was easier to give the film a certain documentary ‘feel.’ In the courtroom trial scene, we used the paper-cut, stop-motion animation, which is inspired by the trials depicted in the US newspapers… Somehow, I wanted to involve the audience in a little exercise of visual story-telling.
Read the full interview on the first issue of The European Animation Journal.
