Edith and I

The best film, as voted by the audience at the Cinema City Festival held in Novi Sad from June 6-14, Technotise – Edith and I, by director Aleksa Gajić, was shown at the Exit Festival on July 10 at the Cinema Café del Danube Stage at the Petrovaradin Fortress.

By Milorad St. Ilić
Photo by Aleksandar Anđić & Technotise

The first Serbian animated feature film fascinated audiences at the Cinema City Festival; three projections attracted more than 7,000 spectators.

Aleksa Gajić, an artist who creates comics and works in applied arts, has received recognition for his special contribution to the development of Serbian cinematography. A special projection of his film at the Exit Festival was part of a campaign to promote Technotise – Edith and I, an event organised by the Exit Festival so as to give support to this outstanding artist and to introduce his work to young people.

- What is your animated feature film about and why has it achieved such remarkable success?

- The story follows Edith, a girl who lives and studies in Belgrade in the year 2074. She volunteers in a research centre where she takes care of Abel, an autistic maths genius who, upon discovering a formula that unites all the energies on Earth, stops communicating with the world around him. Faced with problems with her studies, Edith plants a computer chip of dubious origin in her body to increase her intellectual potential. Her chip, by coincidence, scans the graph of a mysterious formula and, becoming aware of itself, starts developing, first mentally then physically, into Edith’s parallel personality – called Edi… Edith and Edi are aware that in this situation only one of them can win…

- What can you say about yourself as an artist and about your work?

- I can say that I have been drawing all my life and that it is amazing that I have never questioned my choice. Everything somehow runs smoothly and it actually started with a one-page comic about myself that I used to sell to my mother. I undertook a short diversion when I enrolled in the Technical School of Electric Engineering, but now I can see that I trained my nerves there for technical drawing and for detail. Some time later, everything seemed to be go automatically and occasionally I published something, which encouraged me to carry on. I was searching for myself for a long time in various branches of media art until this search exhausted me. The contract I signed with the French publishing house Soleil was a true relief. An extensive engagement I had avoided for a long time turned out to be an excellent way to work on my art free of all financial limitations and at the same time it was good for me not to make detours and fall into deep abstraction.

- Your signature can be recognised in Edith and I, a story about a beautiful and attractive girl.

- Right, she is a blond tall girl in sportswear, with a perfect uniform haircut. The eight-member crew created this 75-minute animated film, produced by Cinears, which takes the public through her exploits during which she is faced with strange physiological and psychological problems because her body becomes a vessel for another person, a male at that. The plot is set in Belgrade, in the year 2074, so this SF story has frames of Belgrade as its background, in an imagined future, thus creating a strange combination of familiar places in a futuristic milieu. After six colour albums produced for the French publishing house Soleil, and more than 300 tableaux of drawings I realised that comics were no longer a challenge I enjoyed. I wanted to try something not too different from comics, but something with a new dimension. This is movement, definitely. A movie has the same rules of direction and editing as comics have. All I had to do was – begin.

- As a rule, you write your own scripts. The same is true of this film?

- When I was working on this script, I really endeavoured to create something that would be very much to my liking, but I was careful not to overly accent the author’s signature. The story treats the psychology of character more deeply than is usually the case with comics.

- However, the script of my most extensive work (six albums of The Scourge of God serial) was done by Valerie Mangin, the script writer from France.

- The plot is set in Belgrade …

- It could have been set anywhere, but considering that it is the author’s film and that its producers had no different requirements, I decided to set all the events here, in Belgrade. It will be interesting to recognise sites wrapped in a mild futurism. Finally, I believe that for foreigners this will only deepen the impression of an exotic story and characters (who speak a juicy Serbian).

- What technique did you use in shooting this animated film?

- The film Edith and I is done like any contemporary animated film and is the product of four animations (classical 2D, 3D, vector and collage), while the models are Japanese animas.

- How did the actors react?

- For people, it is strange but interesting to see a local story in the technique of animated film. The same applied to the actors. During several days of fine socialising and working, I believe that they enjoyed giving their voices to something so unusual. The animated heroes speak with the voices of Petar Kralj, Seka Sablić, Srđan Todorović, Sanda Knežević, Marija Karan, Boris Milivojević, Nikola Đuričko and Nebojša Glogovac. The excellent film score was composed by Boris Furduj and Slobodan Štrumberger.

- Besides animated film, the novelty is that you produce cover pages for domestic comics, thus attracting the attention of ninth art fans…

- I was lucky to do a number of covers for domestic comics. In the manner of American comic sheets, domestic publishers opted on the engagement of a cover artist rather then leave the creation of the cover to the authors of the comics. And, here I am…

- You see comics and film as two kin media, which they actually are, but it seems that you have a reason to insist on this concept…

- People actually fail to appreciate comics and there is no reason for this because the authors of comics are many-sided artists. A good comic author is at the same time also a good director and a good script writer and a good costume designer and an architect. Indeed, whatever one sees on film, a good comic author should be able to draw. I aim at being a complete author of my comics. Then, one has the utmost possible freedom, though that freedom is, on the other hand, a specific slavery. However, a step forward in comics is made only with an author’s comics.

- You are known for placing historical figures in the fantasy of galactic space…

- True. In Attila, the Scourge of God serial I did for the French publisher Soleil, I created a saga about Attila set in a futuristic space milieu. I like the combination of SF and history. People should be constantly reminded of history, but modern man needs spectacle, to cross laser guns with swords and, indeed, relate the same story. We are all big children who want to be entertained, and if one can present useful information and to convey some historical lessons through this entertainment – why not? This is the best way to attract someone’s attention. Nobody today has patience for dry information.

- What would push comics today to make them attractive?

- Well, advertising, I would say. It is proved that a comic, if its marketing is done well, sells well. Just like other products.

Publishers plan in advance which collections will be boosted in accordance with the dictates of the market. Naturally, sometimes something comes up owing to its own quality, but publishers also foresee such an upshot so that good things are well advertised.

- Finally, how did Rust in Peace come out? For this work you won the Trophy Award for Best Film of Southeastern Europe and also the Award from the International Association of Film Animators at the Balkanima, the 3^rd International Festival of Animation, held in Belgrade?

- I had long entertained the idea of making a short film about a robot cemetery. As a paraphrasing of King’s Cemetery of Pets, this film is actually a music video, which through a series of frames shows how people in the future will bury broken robots. Like Edith and I, this work also combines techniques, its atmosphere is highlighted and it is accompanied by classical music arrangements that create an unusual and slightly post-apocalyptic vision of the future.

And, finally, I would like to announce that Edith and I is scheduled to be released at the end of September. See you…