INTERVIEW WITH MICHEL OCELOT
Director of Kirikou and the Wild Beasts
Seven years after the remarkable success of Kirikou and the Sorceress, its director, Michel Ocelot, has given us Kirikou and the Wild Beasts,
which has drawn close to 2 million spectators, a record for a French animated
film.
It took two years to
make Kirikou and the Wild Beasts, from script
through animation, not to mention everything in-between: story-boarding,
recording and editing the dialogue, setting up the image layout—which consisted
of creating a complete file for each of the 1,200 shots in the film, including
camera movement, dialogue, etc. All of
this meant non-stop work for a 100-person crew in Paris and Angoulême,
but also in
What was the genesis of your second
film?
Michel Ocelot: In
my mind, there was a never a question of Kirikou
2. In the absence of a second
feature film, Les Editions Milan requested some short books featuring Kirikou as the hero.
Two volumes were published. The
producer of the first Kirikou then suggested
that my long-time collaborator, Bénédicte Galup, take it upon herself to produce two short films for
television. Little by little, the
project grew, pushed by a number of individuals, until it took the form of a
feature film. In the end, Kirikou and I are inseparable, and so I took it
on. After some consultation with three
other screenwriters, I wrote the scenario and the dialogue, and buckled down to
co-directing with Bénédicte. It was fascinating to rediscover Kirikou as he was seven years ago, just as real.
At
the end of the first Kirikou your hero becomes a
man. Yet in this new adventure we
rediscover him as a little boy.
M. O.: That’s right,
since the second film is not a sequel to Kirikou and the Sorceress . . . This is a memory, a return to the
childhood village, the rural life, in the company of the most dazzling of its
little brothers. This time, the indefatigable
kid becomes a gardener, a potter, a detective, a traveler, and a doctor . . .
To a greater extent even than in the first Kirikou, the film attaches great
importance to its music, something that comes naturally if you want to
celebrate
On that point, tell us about your childhood in
M. O. : I knew nothing but happiness in
What led you to animation?
M. O. :
I began to draw as a child, like everyone, but
I continued. I dabbled quite a bit,
played around, and little by little I became interested in all kinds of
artistic activities. I wound up studying
art, and came to realize that animated film combined all my passions. I never formally studied animation, but
everything that I’ve done since my earliest childhood prepared me for this
profession. When I meet up with
children, I tell them, “Find what you want to do, and do it!”
Could you define how you’ve evolved from the time of your first
creations?
M. O. : I can’t really speak of an evolution. My feature films were made with the same innocence and the same passion as my short films. I try to make contact with the public, to invent stories that have some meaning to them, to offer up some beauty. I don’t try to be clever or seem intelligent, but rather to be honest and only do what I believe in, do the best that I can. The only difference is that I’ve moved from being the unknown artist to being “Mr. Best Seller”!
Were you surprised by
your success?
M. O. : Yes
and no. You know, I didn’t start as a
loser. I’d already received
international awards for my short films, I had a
reputation in the world of animation. I
was confident about my subject, and I had a very capable crew, who had done
superb work in the past. What I hadn’t
anticipated, was the nature of the success, the extent to which I was able to
touch people, young people in particular.
I was taken aback by the age of my first viewers: 18 months!!! But I’ve always been conscious of the ability
of children to follow serious subjects, to guess at the meaning of unknown
elements or to store up things that are incomprehensible to them now in order
to understand them at a later time.
If you make a film in which a child understands everything,
you’re making a bad film, and you’re doing a bad thing: you’re not helping the child to grow.
Interview by by Orianne Charpentier
Source: