Michel Gondry‘s decade-spanning career is a marvel to dive in, from his first experiments to acclaimed features such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, from memorable clips with The White Stripes or Björk to the tender animated stories of Maya Give Me A Title.
For Marcel Jean, Annecy’s artistic director, “Michel Gondry assumes the legacy both of Georges Méliès and Norman McLaren. His abundant creativity and innovative approach have brought hand-crafted animation back into the mainstream, as brilliantly illustrated by his 2006 film The Science of Sleep.”
While Gondry had never been to Annecy before, his documentary Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?: An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky was awarded Annecy’s Prix André-Martin for best French animated feature in 2014. This year, Gondry has been honoured as he brings the second part of his latest animated film to Annecy this year: Maya Give Me Another Title.
Gondry told to a captivated Annecy audience during his “Leçon de cinéma” Sunday 8th:
I don’t think I would be the same artist without animation. In some way, animation is the explanation of cinema itself. Once you start to dive into animation, you can understand movement, narrative, and the true value of an image. With I create, I love going back to the very beginning, that moment when cinema was just a machine recording 25 frames per second. Knowing and understanding how it works helps me a lot in that process.
Working gizmos and peculiar machines have always accompanied Gondry in his filmmaking career, building this distinct blend of live action and animation. For the acclaimed director, creating is more about finding the right solution to match the right problem.
To me, this is where freedom lies, with creating what you want to see rather than what you’ve already seen. Of course, I have many inspirations, but I see them more as stimulations rather than direct influences. Finding the right solution to share what I imagined is how I envision my cinema. It’s an art of compromise, of adaptation, it’s necessary but that doesn’t mean one has to accept everything of course. There is nothing worse for me than being forced to do other people’s bad ideas. As soon as someone tells me what to do, I strive to do the exact opposite.
With his numerous clips, Michel Gondry managed more than once to break new grounds of animation. From his collaboration with The White Stripes to his many clips for Björk, Gondry always explored new creative techniques, often integrating this research in his final film.
When I was young, I really loved those cartoons in which you could see how it was made. I think that stimulates the imagination rather than the opposite. Also, I’m not good at listening to the lyrics, I usually just go with my ideas and discuss them with the artists. For Hardest Button to Button, we had this idea of duplicating the amplifiers, and then we tried with the batteries as well, and that is how it started.
Discussing with moderator and journalist David Allouche, Gondry expanded on the adjectives his cinema has been associated with.
I’m happy if people think my cinema is poetic, but I cannot walk into a meeting and say ‘I’m poetic’. I’m more interested in being naive, put ideas and thoughts out and letting the viewer make their own interpretations, finishing the story with their own imagination. There’s always a transformation between what we want to tell and what people take from it, especially when you draw from dreams as I do.
A self-taught animator, Michel Gondry still marvels at the beauty of creating animation, even though he acknowledged how long and painful it can be.
Everyone knows it’s a patient process. But as soon as you see a result, even for 1 second, you’re amazed and the only thing you want to do is go on and make another second. Funny anecdote: when I’m travelling, I animate on my iPhone, capturing frame after frame. And then, I sneak to the toilets and watch the shot I just made. It’s so impressive being able to see your work come to life so quickly.
An amazement that one can feel watching Maya, Give Me a Title, a feature Gondry made of the animated shorts he created for his daughter, drawing on her ideas as a collaborative creation. The second part of that film screens this year in Annecy, with yet another batch of quirky cut-out animation made by Gondry himself.
Children know much more than what we think, and that is something that I’ve always tried to take into account when discussing with my daughter. We always have deep conversations, explaining words and concepts, so I’m very happy to be able to share my universe with her through animation, and she came into it open heartedly. Every time I animate a shot, it brings me back to the wonder and amazement of animation. I love what I do, and with each of my inventions, I feel so lucky to be able to create these ideas and have wonderful teams bringing them to life.
