Zagreb School of Animated Film

• Reduce the characters to a flat caricature assembled from a few geometric pieces (triangles, circles, squares, semicircles) with thin, wiry lines for limbs; no modelling and no soft rounded volume.
• Cut the set down to almost nothing: let one small figure stand or float in an empty field, and let a horizon, a single object or a row of shapes stand for the whole world.
• Lay the flat figures over a hand-made ground (sponged, washed, sprayed or canvas-textured paint, plain paper or a cut-out photograph), and collage flat planes and photographic fragments when the crowded world has to come in.
• Repeat identical figures and units in rows, rings and grids, and set one lone small man against them, to stage bureaucracy, conformity and mass society.
• Ground the picture in one tinted, often textured field (grey, earth, grey-green, turquoise or pale pink) and keep the figures to a few flat colours in harmony with it, with one or two saturated accents of red, ochre, yellow or black.
• Tell the fable with as few words as possible: let shapes inflate, deflate and turn into other things to carry the satire, and hand-draw the title as part of the picture instead of setting it in type.

Zagreb, Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia: the Studio for Animated Film (Studio za crtani film), set up in 1956 inside the production company Zagreb Film (founded 1953) after Nikola Kostelac and Dušan Vukotić's reduced-animation advertising films of 1954-1955; directors, painter-designers and animators began working as a group (by the late 1960s many wrote, designed and directed their own films)

1. Zagreb school of animated films, Wikipedia (term attributed to Georges Sadoul; 'golden age' 1957-1980 in three waves; Holloway's influences, Trnka's The Gift and UPA's The Four Poster, Vukotić reading about UPA in Graphis; 'German Expressionism, New Objectivity, Dada', the main support for the expressionist-graphics influence; 'Suprematism, Surrealism, and Mondrian's geometric abstraction', for the suprematism, surrealism and de-stijl influences; Don Kihot's character design 'reduced to forms reminiscent of Suprematism and the art of Paul Klee'; Joško Marušić on stylisation against Disney realism), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagreb_school_of_animated_films
2. Zagrebačka škola crtanog filma, Croatian Wikipedia ('Ključne su 1954. i 1955. godina kad Nikola Kostelac i Dušan Vukotić rade 13 kratkih promidžbenih animiranih filmova', a 'nova koncepcija reducirane animacije'; footnote: the 13 advertising films of 1954/1955 'predstavljaju početak reducirane animacije'; 'raskida s koncepcijom diznijevske "pune animacije, punog prostora i punog pokreta"'; 'plošnost, dvodimenzionalnost i geometričnost likova'; drawings per film cut from 12,000-15,000 to 4,000-5,000; Vukotić 'maksimalno reducira scenografiju'; in Don Kihot 'svi likovi svedeni su na kvadratiće, krugove, polukrugove'; Sadoul and Martin, 1958; citing Holloway, Filmska enciklopedija and Bendazzi), https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagrebačka_škola_crtanog_filma
3. Sanja Bahun, 'Croatian Animation, Then and Now: Creating Sparks or Just a Little Bit of Smoke?', KinoKultura, Special Issue 11 (2011) (limited animation that reduces detail 'in a fashion reminiscent of abstract art'; 'the Paul Klee-inspired shapes and palette of Vukotić's Ersatz', 'the reduced stick drawings of Dragić's Tup-Tup', 'the graphic austerity of Jutriša and Marks's The Fly', 'the almost impenetrable abstraction of Gašparović's Satiemania (1978)'; the 'emancipation of the "white space"'; Golden Age 1957-1980), http://www.kinokultura.com/specials/11/bahun.shtml
4. Museum of Modern Art, press release no. 5, 6 January 1968: four programmes of Zagreb animated films, 8-21 January 1968, chosen by Adrienne Mancia, who cites 'a satirical wit, experimentation with modern graphic forms and composition, color harmony, and a contrapuntal use of music and sound effects'; 'Although they began working as a group, in recent years individual artists such as Grgić, Bourek, Kolar and Dovniković write, design and direct their own films', https://www.moma.org/docs/press_archives/3988/releases/MOMA_1968_Jan-June_0005_5.pdf
5. Harvard Film Archive, 'Drawn to Bits: The Zagreb School of Animation', 24 November 2024 (the label given by André Martin and Georges Sadoul at Cannes in 1958; its zenith from about 1957 to 1980; 'Suprematism, Surrealism and the abstract hyperlinear geometrics of Mondrian'; 'anti-illusionist techniques'; Eastmancolor; 'seventeen gorgeously saturated copies' held at the archive; 'intertitles often rendered in a buffet of major languages'), https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/drawn-to-bits-the-zagreb-school-of-animation-2024-11
6. Zagreb Film, film pages with credits and awards: Surogat, Samac, Don Kihot, Igra, Koncert za mašinsku pušku, Premijera, Bumerang, Peti, Muha, Znatiželja, Krek ('Berlinale ’68. – Srebrni medvjed'), Tup Tup, Satiemania and Duga profesora Baltazara (e.g. https://zagrebfilm.hr/filmovi/surogat/, https://zagrebfilm.hr/filmovi/samac/, https://zagrebfilm.hr/filmovi/igra/, https://zagrebfilm.hr/filmovi/bumerang/, https://zagrebfilm.hr/filmovi/krek/, https://zagrebfilm.hr/filmovi/satiemania/); the film stills on these pages were viewed for the visual traits (Krek: a cut-out photograph of a vintage car before a photographed lake seen through window bars; Bumerang: a block of identical units, each with a staring eye, on stilts)
7. Zagreb Film, home page (the studio's logo, a walking horse with a flowing mane, used as the site icon: https://zagrebfilm.hr/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Zagreb-Film-1.png), https://zagrebfilm.hr/
8. Zagreb Film and Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, 'Od imaginacije do animacije: šest desetljeća Zagreb filma' (exhibition, 30 January-14 June 2020; Studio za crtani film founded 1956 within Zagreb Film, founded 1953; Venice award for Samac in 1959; Oscar for Surogat in 1962; nominations for Igra 1964, Tup-tup 1973, Lutka snova 1980), https://zagrebfilm.hr/od-imaginacije-do-animacije-sest-desetljeca-zagreb-filma/
9. Hrvatska enciklopedija, 'Zagreb film' (founded 1953; Studio za crtani film founded 1956; work known 'pod skupnim nazivom Zagrebačka škola crtanoga filma'; Dovniković's Silver Bear at Berlin for Krek; the Zagreb animation festival organised by Zagreb Film 1972-1990), https://www.enciklopedija.hr/clanak/zagreb-film
10. tportal.hr, 'Velika izložba posvećena Zagreb filmu u Muzeju suvremene umjetnosti' (31 December 2019; Sadoul and Martin naming the school after Cannes 1958; Oscar nominations for Igra, Tup-tup and Lutka snova), https://www.tportal.hr/kultura/clanak/velika-izlozba-posvecena-zagreb-filmu-u-muzeju-suvremene-umjetnosti-20191231
11. Zagreb City Museum (Muzej grada Zagreba), permanent display 'Zagrebačka škola crtanog filma', text by Nada Premerl and Joško Marušić ('A professional animated film studio was created in Zagreb Film in 1956'; links to the Exat 51 group and to 'Croatian expressionism', further support for the expressionist-graphics influence), https://www.mgz.hr/en/collections/zagreba%C4%8Dka-skola-crtanog-filma,1143.html
12. Paul Morton, 'Boomerangs and Bombs: The Zagreb School of Animation and Yugoslavia's Third Way Experiment', Slavic Review 79, no. 1 (2020): 115-138, doi:10.1017/slr.2020.12 (abstract consulted: the group 'neither dissidents nor propagandists'; a formalist reading of Kolar's Bumerang), https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/abs/boomerangs-and-bombs-the-zagreb-school-of-animation-and-yugoslavias-third-way-experiment/463FAF5968BF1DC1434E2B2F59B58AA4
13. Paul W. Morton, The Zagreb School of Animation and the Unperfect (PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 2018), abstract (the 'small man' as its defining character type; accepted technical mistakes such as 'a stray line in a frame'), https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/items/8f419e8a-f377-4ff0-bfb9-7958fd25477a/full
14. Animation Obsessive, 'The animation trove that keeps growing' (Vukotić's advertising films of about 1954-1955, made by a small team, 'pulling from the modernism of UPA and Jiří Trnka' with a 'daring, avant-garde surface'; Vukotić's rejection of Disney's 'use of only round shapes in the characters' and 'soft and very flexible animation'; La Peau de Chagrin and The Man and His Shadow, 1960, designed by painters of the EXAT 51 movement; Typhus (1963) 'a visual stunner in the expressionist woodcut style', for the expressionist-graphics influence; the school as an 'inheritor of the UPA revolution'), https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/the-animation-trove-that-keeps-growing
15. Paola Orlić, '50 godina Animafestovih plakata' (exhibition leaflet, Galerija Prica, Samobor, 2023): Dovniković's 'Z' logo drawn from the initial of Zagreb; posters by Zlatko Bourek (1972, 1988), Zvonimir Lončarić (1974, 1980, 1982, 1998) and Pavao Štalter (1978), https://www.samobor.hr/storage/upload/novosti/animafest_151552.pdf
16. Professor Balthazar, Wikipedia (created by Zlatko Grgić, directed by Grgić, Boris Kolar and Ante Zaninović; 59 episodes, 1967-1978; the characters 'do not speak in any intelligible language'), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Balthazar; title card viewed at https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profesor_Baltazar
17. Nedeljko Dragić, Wikipedia (joined Zagreb Film as a designer and animator in 1960; animation that 'grows from the caricatures'; Tup Tup nominated for an Academy Award in early 1973), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedeljko_Dragi%C4%87
18. International Film Festival Rotterdam, Don Kihot (Vlado Kristl, 1961, 10 min, music Milko Kelemen, world rights Zagreb Film), https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2021/films/don-kihot
19. Ronald Holloway, Z is for Zagreb (Tantivy Press, 1972) and Giannalberto Bendazzi, Cartoons (1994) (books; cited from the Wikipedia articles above, not consulted directly)

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