INTERVIEW WITH FRANCOIS CHALET
How long have you known the ITFS and how are you affiliated with the Festival?
I have known the Festival for about ten years. It’s the most important festival in Europe along with Annecy, so I come regularly to watch the latest films and go back to Switzerland enchanted.
You have been a frequent guest of ITFS. How do you perceive the Festival?
In contrast to the Fantoche Animation Film Festival in Baden, Switzerland, with its family atmosphere, the ITFS seems rather large and sprawling to me. It’s easy to disappear into the crowds and reappear somewhere else. Then you meet up with the hard core of the animation industry at Café le Théatre. The Schlossplatz is ideal for watching the stars in the sky once in a while and dropping your eyes.
How did you come up with the idea for the trailer?
I had revised the twelve principles of animation in preparation for teaching at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and once more had to realise how little I have actually mastered them. So, I thought it would make sense to focus on the fundamentals of animation once again. The trailer is about the “bouncing ball”, “squash and stretch”, “exaggeration”, “expressions”, failure, reduction and basic shapes, and naturally “à la sauce” Chalet. Also, I really wanted to address for a moment the immersion in another world and the forgetting of our everyday life: The light in the film suddenly goes on and the hall is instantly illuminated by the inversion of the image. We see our neighbour sitting next to us in the cinema and want to immerse ourselves in the magic of animation again as quickly as possible.
I approached Michael Fakesch as an avatar in the ITFS virtual club a year ago before his DJ performance and asked him if he would like to develop the music for it.
The trailer is very minimalist, and the use of colour is also reduced to a minimum. What is the intention and the message behind it?
All my work is based on reduction. I always start from the basic shapes and am convinced that you can say a lot with very little, just as you can say very little with a lot. As to the unasked question why 2D instead of 3D, my answer is that things don’t necessarily have more depth if they are three-dimensional. In the trailer I try to leave free space so that the audience can fill it with their own experiences and stories. A trailer is also supposed to attract attention. The starting situation is a time when everything is overly colourful and cluttered. My proposal is black and white and few strokes. “Black is Back!” is also an ode to cinema, which we finally have back after the pandemic year of 2020.
What or who has influenced you?
Swiss graphics, Grapus, Norman McLaren, Michel Gondry, mathematics, Laurel and Hardy, Scacciapensieri, Lotte Reiniger, Felix Valloton, “Tom und das Erdbeermarmeladebrot mit Honig”, Michael Fakesch, Bauhaus, Pierre Soulages, Mummenschanz, La Linea, Yukimasa Okumura, Illustrator, CC Animate, Lovely the cow (Swissmilk advertising), Roman Signer, Hans Richter, Emil Cohl, Louis de Funés, Monty Python, Gaston Lagaffe, Oskar Fischinger, Roman Cieslewicz, Henryk Tomaszewski, Winsor McCay and many more.
