Jiří Trnka

The Czech stop-motion puppet animation master Jiri Trnka directed some of the most acclaimed animated films ever made. In 1966, four years before his death, Newsday lauded him as "second to Chaplin as a film artist because his work inaugurated a new stage in a medium long dominated by Disney." Trnka continues to astound audiences to this day, particularly those discovering this amazing animation for the first time. This collection includes five of the master's shorts and his feature-length classic "The Emperor's Nightingale" based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale and narrated by Boris Karloff. Includes: The Emperor's Nightingale (1951, 67 min.), The Hand (18 min.), The Story of the Bass Cello (13 min.), A Merry Circus (11 min.), A Drop Too Much (14 min.), The Song of the Prairie (21 min.), Jiri Trnka: Puppet Animation Master documentary (12 min.).

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Short documentary on "the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe", Czech puppet animation director Jirí Trnka.

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Documentary about Jirí Trnka and how he works.

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The Czech stop-motion puppet animation master Jiri Trnka directed some of the most acclaimed animated films ever made. In 1966, four years before his death, Newsday lauded him as "second to Chaplin as a film artist because his work inaugurated a new stage in a medium long dominated by Disney." Trnka continues to astound audiences to this day, particularly those discovering this amazing animation for the first time. This collection includes five of the master's shorts and his feature-length classic "The Emperor's Nightingale" based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale and narrated by Boris Karloff. Includes: The Emperor's Nightingale (1951, 67 min.), The Hand (18 min.), The Story of the Bass Cello (13 min.), A Merry Circus (11 min.), A Drop Too Much (14 min.), The Song of the Prairie (21 min.), Jiri Trnka: Puppet Animation Master documentary (12 min.).

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A happy little potter is approached by a huge hand which wants him to sculpt its statue. The potter refuses, wanting nothing more than to be left alone with his only friend, a potted plant. As the hand's request gives way to bribery, demands, and threats, the potter becomes more desperate to escape its clutch, leading to tragedy.

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Taken from Boccaccio's Decameron, this lovely puppet film tells the bawdy story of the beautiful young Venetian lady who confesses her sinful passion for the Archangel Gabriel to a lustful monk, who promptly impersonates him in her bedroom with predictable results. Amidst the film's ribaldry, the hypocrisy and false piety of the monk are mercilessly mocked.

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Trnka’s sci-fi vision of the future in which machines and robots try to substitute themselves into the most beautiful human relationships. A cybernetic robot is supposed to substitute for the loving grandmother of a little girl. The wise grandmother, however, comes back and the girl finds the warmth of her grandmother’s loving arms again. Trnka’s artistic ideas in this film can be described as both poetically fragile and dramatically cautionary.

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The passion for high speed can nowadays almost be seen in the new-born. The film shows that such passion, if not controlled, is self-destructing and even suicidal. At least this is the way Trnka presents it in this satiric story. —kratkyfilm.cz

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The first puppet film shot in CinemaScope. It is based on the famous poetic comedy by William Shakespeare. Three worlds meet in this story: the noble world of three Athens couples, a common popular world of tradesmen amateur theatre and a fairy-tale happiness of magic creatures as elves and nymphs. The film is considered the most remarkable Jiří Trnka's work and a milestone in the history of the world animation.

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The cartoon film sets out to justify the existence of UNESCO as an instrument for world peace.

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Adapting Jaroslav Hasek's raucous satirical novel, and also bringing Josef Lada's equally famous illustrations to garrulous puppet life, posed Trnka one of his biggest creative challenges. Trnka himself felt that the final episode was the most artistically successful, but there's much to enjoy in all three, not least the way that the lackadaisical layabout Svejk's own self-serving anecdotes are realized through cut-out animation.

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Hurvinek cannot go to a circus because he injured himself when sliding down the stair rail. He daydreams that he is an acrobat riding a scooter and an animal-trainer taming beasts. (MUBI)

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Two mischievous frost spirits make things chilly for a pair of travelers in this wintry comic folktale.

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Folk art–like hand-drawn stills illustrate this sweetly simple pastoral fable, in which a peasant comes into possession of a small fortune—but realizes there are treasures greater than gold.

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How do you wake up a sleeping puppet? Made by Trnka in collaboration with actor and puppeteer Josef Pehr, this winsome mix of live action and puppet play is enchanting entertainment for the youngest of viewers.

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A monumental piece of art bringing the heroes of the ancient Czech myths back to life. The picture consists of seven parts: Cech the Forefather, Bivoj, Libuse, Premysl, Girls War, Horymir, Lucka War.

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Bayaya, a young peasant, protected by the spirit of his dead mother, arrives at the castle of the King, where he entertains his three daughters. He soon realizes that the three princesses are nagged by evil spirits. The little peasant manages to rid them of them, fights a duel with a wicked lord who wanted to marry one of the three princesses. He finally wins the heart of the youngest sister while saving the soul of his mother who was in purgatory.

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Trnka brings to life a surrealist circus of tightrope-walking fish, musical monkeys, balancing bears, and high-flying acrobatics in this whimsical feat of cutout animation made in collaboration with leading Czech painters of the era.

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A poor fisherman catches the golden fish that promises him to fulfil three wishes if he sets her free again. He does so and the fish fulfils two of his three wishes. However, she refuses to fulfil the third one, the last one in which the fisherman’s wife wants to be equal to God.

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Adaptation of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, about an emperor who prefers the tinkling of a bejeweled mechanical bird to the song of a real nightingale. When the Emperor is near death, the nightingale's song restores his health.

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An animated singing western short in which a cowboy takes on the villain to save his beloved.

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"Román s basou" is another short by master a stop-motion puppet-animator Jiri Trnka. The story is based on Anton Chekhovs story "Roman s Kontrabasom". Princess Bibulova decides to go fishing along the river while not far away a bass player leaves his two companions to go for a swim.

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A barrel organ grinder meets the devil on a mysterious moonlit night in this haunted-house fable, which showcases Trnka’s atmospheric use of sound to conjure a macabre mood.

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The first full-length puppet film made by Jiri Trnka. Like the painter Ales who illustrated the national songs, Trnka depicts the traditional customs and tales of the Czech village in six separate sequences: Shrovetide, Spring, Legend About St. Prokop, The Fair, The Feast and Bethlehem." A Treasury of Fairy-tales" made Trnka famous all over the world and it is a masterpiece of Czech and world animation.

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Trnka reached new heights of modernist abstraction with this innovative, surrealist mini-masterwork, which critic Jean-Pierre Coursodon praised as the Citizen Kane of animation.

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The second cartoon by Jiri Trnka that was a sensation at the festival in Cannes in 1946 when it defeated the world animation elite of the time. It is a musical fairy-tale based on a famous folk story about animals that deterred thieves.

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A fable about a fox who wanted to drown a pitcher to get revenge on him.

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The first animated picture made by Jiří Trnka for adults. It is a comic story of a legendary chimney-cleaner who, with the help of a spring from an old lounge-chair, became the terror of the Prague-occupying SS troops in World War II.

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The first Czech cartoon based on a fairy-tale about grandpa, grandma, their granddaughter, dog and cat who all wanted to pull a big beet out from the ground. The picture shows children that a big task can only be fulfilled by joint effort.

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Children play in a park.

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