The National Film Board of Canada announces that its French Animation and Youth Studio will co-produce the latest film by world-renowned Estonian animation filmmakers Priit and Olga Pärn, entitled Pilots on the Way Home.
Annecy, France – The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has announced that its French Animation and Youth Studio will co-produce the latest film by world-renowned Estonian animation filmmakers Priit and Olga Pärn, entitled Pilots on the Way Home. The NFB is once again partnering with some of the best filmmakers on the international scene in its first co-production with Estonia, a country with an exceptional animation tradition.
The new short will use sand animation, a first for Priit Pärn, in its depiction of three pilots making an arduous journey home through the desert, where their exhaustion and their fantasies intermingle. With a running time of about six minutes, the film will be co-produced by Kalev Tamm of Eesti Joonisfilm and Julie Roy of the NFB’s French Animation and Youth Studio. Oliver Calvert, who worked on Patrick Bouchard’s Bydlo and Michèle Lemieux’s Here and the Great Elsewhere (Le grand ailleurs et le petit ici), will do the sound design. The Pärns will come to the NFB’s head office in Montreal for post-production in fall 2013, and the film should be released in early 2014.
Co-producer Julie Roy provides some background on the film: “The NFB has been collaborating for many years with well-known animation filmmakers from all over the world such as Koji Yamamura, George Schwizgebel and Regina Pessoa. Our decision to co-produce a film with Olga and Priit Pärn, who are true icons of auteur animation, reflects our desire to develop new international alliances with renowned creative talents, to push the envelope of ideas and creativity and to strive for excellence. This first experience with Estonia is opening our eyes to different artistic visions and new ways of seeing the world.” It should also be noted that, in another exciting collaboration with a Baltic country, NFB producer Marc Bertrand is currently working on a short film with Latvian director Vladimir Leschiov.
Priit Pärn is a major filmmaker from the great international family of auteur animation cinema, a field that he has worked in since 1976. As an illustrator, cartoonist and graphic artist, he has presented numerous personal exhibitions. He has directed some 20 short animated films, some of which are acknowledged classics. His film Hotel E (1992) was included in the list of the 100 best animated films of all time published in 2006 by the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, as well as the list of the 50 best animated films published by the International Animated Film Association (ASIFA) in 2010. This latter list also includes Déjeuner sur l’herbe,which Pärn directed in 1987. The films in his impressive filmography have received numerous international awards and honours.
Olga Pärn, who is married to Priit Pärn, graduated from the graphics department of the State Academy of Fine Arts in Byelorussia and studied film direction at the La Poudrière school of animation in France. She has directed several films, including I Feel a Lifelong Bullet in the Back of My Head (2007) and Divers in the Rain, co-directed with her husband in 2009.
Source: National Film Board of Canada
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
