DMITRY GELLER
Fishes, Swimmers, Boats
Hand-drawn animation (ink, rice paper) 9′57″, 2017
Producer: Zheng Liguo.
Film Directors: Dmitry Geller, Andrey Koulev.
Script: Andrey Koulev, Dmitry Geller.
Art Director: Anna Karpova.
Sound, music: Artem Fadeev.
Animators: students Jilin Animation Institute, China.
Fish
Fishes, swimmers, boats
Transform the water.
The water is soft and moves
Only for what affects it.
The fish advances
Like a finger into a glove,
The swimmer dances slowly
And the sail breathes.
But the fresh water moves
For what affects it,
For the fish, for the swimmer, for the boat
Which it bears
And which it carries away.
1920, Paul Eluard
The film does not use this poem literally as a script. The verses were recorded for the film in Chinese, with no translation. Dmitry Geller says that together with the second director Andrey Koulev they used the poem as a kind of tuning fork. They turned to it whenever they had doubts about the artistic or directing decisions, and every time the feeling of Eluard's poetry prompted the right choice. Repeated short scenes mark the film's inner rhythm, and stop the narration flow. These repetitions express the main characters’ inner doubts or, on the contrary, emphasize his irreversible determination. It is a typical method for poetry, but not for cinema. The authors used this poetic language to create a complex visual rhyme with no verbal text.
Dmitry Geller has always mixed various techniques and approaches. This is his first film created in the classic technique of hand-drawn animation, although even here his approach is quite original, as the whole film is painted with ink on rice paper. The film was created in collaboration with Jilin Animation Institute students. The Chinese Institute served as the venue where the film was shot. The exhibition includes animation phases, and drawings made by students.
The exhibition also shows drawings by art director Anna Karpova, who created all the film’s characters.
A quote from Dmitry Geller:
"I see every new film as a search, an inner challenge. If I do not discover anything while working on a film, I take it as time wasted. It is true on all levels: there must be a completely different theme, different technique, different style. Everything must change. This eternal search and experiment is the most valuable part of our work."