‘We Searched for a Kind of Harmony’: Interview with Leon Vidmar and Jean-Claude Rozec (‘Tales from the Magic Garden’)

Puppet-based stop-motion feature animation ‘Tales from the Magic Garden’ (by the Czech Republic’s Maurfilm, Slovakia’s Artichoke, Slovenia’s ZVVIKS, and France’s Vivement Lundi!) lit up the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus section with a vibrant three-stories-in-one film that made its world premiere at the festival. Based on the book Of Unwanted Things and People by Czech writer and playwright Arnošt Goldflam (who also voices the character of Grandpa), the project oversaw three stylistically different but ultimately tonally unified mini-films within a larger 70-minute feature film, tied together by a touching framing story of three children and their grandfather telling stories to each other. All of the titular tales deal with coping with loss in some way and the power of found family, all while incorporating magical elements.

Czech director David Súkup, Slovakian director Patrik Pašš, Slovenian director Leon Vidmar, and French director Jean-Claude Rozec joined forces to tackle a unique part of the work and make it their own. At the Berlinale, Zippy Frames sat down with Vidmar and Rozec to discuss their approaches to ‘Tales from the Magic Garden,’ creating a story that appeals to as broad of an audience as possible and working collaboratively while still remaining autonomous as a co-director.

 Tales from the Magic Garden

Zippy Frames: I’d love to start by learning about the broad strokes of this ambitious project, including the two of you as directors.

Leon Vidmar: It started with Martin Vandas, the Czech producer, and David Súkup, who was the director of the Czech part — they were making their own short film. In between, they came with this idea that, why shouldn’t we use all the other stories from Goldflam and make an omnibus [a work consisting of several shorter pieces]? There was once the idea of making four films [instead of three with a broader unifying story] — adaptations of the book done from different countries. They invited different producers and invited the directors. But during the process of collaborating, it came to doing it unison, to also have this connecting story and the stories within the story.

Jean-Claude Rozec: It was an evolving project. I was the last director involved in the film. I directed the overarching story with Suzanne, Derek, Tom, and their grandfather. When I started to work, there were already two films which were done, and the third one was about to begin. It was kind of a jigsaw. We had to connect the film together, develop a story, and unify the three tales. It was very difficult and very fun too, because it was a lot of work and a lot of depth.

 ZF: Given that you were working somewhat autonomously on your parts of the film, with different styles, how did your collaboration work? Did you have any particular conversations about creative approach or style?

LV: The style was already kind of set with the [final] story, as it was already in production. All of the stories within the stories were done by Patricia [Ortiz Martínez], the art [designer]. When I was invited to the project I already saw the visuals, so I knew what to expect. The discussion was more like searching how to connect with the images. The environment is somehow from the same place, or somewhere I know. For the cemetery, for example, I was searching how it is in the Czech Republic, which is different from Slovenia. At the time, I’m trying to make it aesthetic, so it’s not just a gloomy place.

JCR: For my part, it was a little strange, because for each director who made a story, we see that they were independent. I went on set early on, and I saw the shots. When I came back to France, and I started to shoot my own part, we didn’t try to imitate the style. It was a kind of mood and general atmosphere with stop-motion. Stop-motion is a very hard technique because the puppet doesn’t always do what you want it to do. My story was about how to connect these three stories together, and we searched for a kind of harmony.

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ZF: What were the foci for your own approach to the film as animators? As Jean-Claude said, stop-motion is a very time and labour-intensive medium.

JCR: I was really happy to use stop-motion because I love this technique. For me, it’s a very naïve technique. You take your puppet, move it frame by frame on the set with a spotlight, and it’s really magic. It was very close to the tone of the books of Goldflam. It’s a little surrealistic that this little puppet moves and will become alive when you touch it. When I started to shoot my part, I wanted to keep this feeling, so we made a lot of things in front of the camera. There is CGI sometimes, especially in the film’s last scene with the lantern and projections of the grandmother. But for the rest of the film, I really tried to use what I like in stop-motion.

LV: I’m in love with stop-motion. It’s just the technique I’m best at, so there was no question. The way it’s done was a little bit new because it’s actually my first dialog film. To have dialog in the film was interesting. I’ve done lipsync before, but not in my own directing. For Bogdan, the old man, it was nice because the mouth is [partly hidden] behind the beard. But with the ladies, such as Anita the cashier lady, the puppets have a very small [mouth hole]. So, to make it work with talking, I had to really learn. When I was drawing which expressions I needed Patricia to make, it was quite a challenge to find something that worked. It needed a lot of detail.

ZF: All the stories and the broader tale deal with ways to cope with grief and loss across different age groups. It is not isolated to just being about children, which I found very striking.

JCR: My youngest child, my son, is six years old, and he understands the film. But we were trying to make the best story for everybody. At the premiere, there were a lot of children. Some were a little afraid, maybe some were sad, but there were also a lot of positive reactions.

LV: Maybe for the ones that were a bit too young. I don’t have this feeling about age, compared to when I just saw it with my daughter — she was growing along with the film, in a way. She will be nine now. When she saw the whole film, she had questions that were really interesting, and we did discuss [some aspects] about it because it was still possible to change some things.

Watch the ‘Tales from the Magic Garden’ international trailer:

Source： Olivia Popp/zippyframes