Midnight East is celebrating International Animation Day with “In A Clear Mind” – Ofra Kobliner and Eli Ben David’s animated film which won the award for Best Student Film in memory of Tal Yakobson at the recent Asifa Awards 2010.
Drawn with a fine, loose, somewhat quirky line, a woman sits on a park bench, her body turned slightly away. She is alone in the middle of the city, and finds her own way to navigate through the people, noise and traffic: taking off her shoes, she dives in. Swimming through city scenes, her hands propel her body forward, pushing through the fragments of reality.
Midnight East spoke to the recent graduates about the film, which was their final project at Bezalel. Ofra Kobliner began her studies as a student of architecture, because “I loved to draw. When I saw Bezalel Graduate Exhibit at the Ben Gurion Airport Terminal (July 18 – August 1 2006) I understood that cardboard models were not for me, my love for drawing would not be expressed in architecture.”
“Eli and I worked together on several projects and found a common language from the first year,” said Ofra, “This was our graduate project. We were inspired by a poem of Dan Pagis which describes a woman swimming in her home. (Sport, published in The Selected Poetry of Dan Pagis, translated by Stephen Mitchell) We were looking for an idea, reading poetry. That poem has a connection to the Holocaust that we left out. We took off from the original – she doesn’t swim at home, but in the city. She is not part of the mainstream. There is a distance, a barrier between her and society.”
Asked about the scenes where the woman literally swims through the city, with fragments of photographs, Ofra said, “First we drew the figure of the swimmer then we inserted the photographs taken by Eli. My friend Lotem stood in front of a green screen and modeled the hand positions according to the drawings. Sometimes the drawn hands were very wrong anatomically and it was clear that it would be complicated to replicate the position.”
Eli Ben David also came to animation fairly late. He liked Miyazaki, anime and Disney, but discovered a whole new world in his studies. Describing the process of merging the drawings with the photographs, he said, “We photographed Lotem’s hands in stop motion animation and added the patches of Tel Aviv on computer from photographs I had taken
Some of the photographs were random, taken while wandering around the city, and then we saw how it fit with the drawings. The patch gives a feeling of the city and that is what was important to us. One specific image that was planned was the streets approaching the screen; we wanted that mass of vehicles. We wanted the frames to be interesting and real.”
Enjoy Eli & Ofra’s film here:
in a clear mind from Ofra Kobliner on Vimeo.
Another terrific way to celebrate International Animation Day – join ASIFA Israel, the official group of the Israeli branch of ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d’Animation). Write to asifa.israel@gmail.com for information.
AYELET DEKEL
