press kit - Office national du film du Canada

PRESS KIT
Produced by the National Film Board of Canada
Meaning of the title
The word “bydlo” is Polish and means cattle.
It’s also the title of the fourth movement of
Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite for piano in
10 movements composed in the summer of
1874 by Modest Mussorgsky, inspired by an
exhibition of paintings by his friend Victor
Hartmann, who had died the year before.
Only six of the original 10 pictures survive
today; unfortunately the one titled Bydlo,
most likely a depiction of an ox pulling a
heaving cart, is not one of them. Maurice
Ravel’s orchestration from 1922 helped the
work find a larger audience.
BYDLO
In Poland and in certain regions of Central
Europe, the term “bydlo” is sometimes used
to belittle the poor and those members of society forced to do manual labour, relegating
them to the status of beasts of burden.
PRESS KIT
Like a dream in the morning mist, a mighty ox
emerges from the rain-soaked earth dragging
the remnants of an old cart. A prisoner of its
yoke, the great beast pulls its heavy load,
which carries within it a greedy and angry nation of people—a hungry parasite that saps
its energy and consumes its body and soul.
2
The film
An allegory of mankind heading for disaster,
Bydlo is a tragic vision inspired by the fourth
movement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an
Exhibition. Drawing on the composer’s brilliant ability to evoke work and labour in
his music, Patrick Bouchard brings the earth
to life through animated clay sculptures,
creating a concrete and terrifying world, a
tactile nightmare in which man is his own
slave driver.
Patrick Bouchard
Filmmaker
PRESS KIT
BYDLO
featuring clay figures that constantly mutate.
This experience revived a teenage dream of
his to make a film inspired by the fourth
movement of Russian composer Modest
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. He
has teamed up with the NFB for the fourth
time to make Bydlo, which explores a new
aesthetic using Plastiline modelling clay.
3
Born in Saguenay, Quebec, in 1974, Patrick
Bouchard studied at the Université du Québec
à Chicou-timi, where he made his first film
with puppets, Jean Leviériste (1998), as part
of an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts. After
impressing NFB producer Pierre Hébert,
Patrick began work on his first professional
film, The Brainwashers (2002), a comic but
chilling look at a musician tormented by his
overactive imagination. This ambitious puppet film won the Jutra Award for animated
short film. Dehors novembre (2005), based
on a song by Les Colocs and scripted by
Marcel Jean, also won a Jutra, and screened
in competition in Annecy. Working again
with scriptwriter Martin-Rodolphe Villeneuve,
his partner on The Brainwashers, Patrick
followed up with a third puppet film, Subservience (2007), about a society suffering from
bourgeois selfishness and the foolish passivity
of its servants. At the Off-Courts de Trouville
festival in 2007, he made Talon d’argile, a
very short film that was created in 24 hours
Julie Roy
Producer
BYDLO
PRESS KIT
Most notably, she produced Hungu (2008) by
Nicolas Brault, which won three awards; The
Necktie/Le nœud cravate (2008) by JeanFrançois Lévesque, winner of 10 awards; and
Mamori (2010) by Karl Lemieux, which won
the Grand Prix of the 25 FPS Festival in
Zagreb. Working closely with emerging filmmakers, she is in charge of the Cinéaste
recherché(e) competition, which seeks to
showcase new talent, and also heads the
animation department of the ACIC (Aide
au cinéma indépendant canadien) of the
NFB. She has also co-produced short films
with France’s Folimage studio through its
Résidence d’artistes Folimage program,
including Rosa, Rosa (2008) by Félix DufourLaperrière; Rains by David Coquard-Dassault;
and The Banquet of the Concubine (2012)
by Hefang Wei. Her most recent productions
include Here and the Great Elsewhere
(2012) by Michèle Lemieux, Bydlo (2012) by
Patrick Bouchard and the international
co-productions Kali the Little Vampire (2012)
by Regina Pessoa and Edmond Was a
Donkey (2012) by Franck Dion.
4
Julie Roy has been a producer at the Animation and Youth Studio of the National Film
Board of Canada (NFB) since April 2007. She
holds a master’s degree from the University
of Montreal in Film Studies and has also written widely on women and animation film. She
has been invited to several festivals as program organizer. Before becoming a producer,
Julie Roy was responsible for marketing some
60 short animation films made at the NFB
between 2000 and 2006, as well as heading
the high-profile marketing campaign for the
NFB’s 65th anniversary, coordinating the presentation of a Norman McLaren retrospective
that ran in several countries and overseeing
the release of the DVD box set Norman
McLaren: The Master’s Edition.
Alexeïeff also created a film that
was inspired by Pictures at an
Exhibition. Have you seen it?
I didn’t see it for a long time. It was only as I
was getting ready to shoot Bydlo that I had
the chance to see it.
I learned afterwards that Mussorgsky had
been inspired by 10 paintings done by a friend
of his, Victor Hartmann, who had died the year
before, and that he had composed Pictures
at an Exhibition very quickly, in a state of creative frenzy. The version we listened to in class
had been orchestrated by Ravel (the piece
had originally been composed as a work for
piano), and so it was this version that stayed
in my memory. I became very interested in
Mussorgsky, and when I later saw Fantasia I
discovered that Disney had animated Night on
Bald Mountain.
Night on Bald Mountain also
inspired Alexandre Alexeïeff,
the inventor of the pinscreen.
Yes, it was a film I only discovered later on,
once I had already started doing animation.
BYDLO
It’s an old project whose roots go back to my
high school days, when the music teacher was
introducing us to different musical genres. The
teacher chose a movement from Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition entitled “Bydlo,”
which means cattle in Polish, as an example
of a symphonic poem. She asked us to close
our eyes while listening to it and try to imagine
an ox pulling a cart. It was an experience that
affected me deeply.
PRESS KIT
What are the origins of Bydlo?
Over the years, I kept thinking about it, but I
couldn’t see how to transform it into a script.
I could see an ox pulling a cart appearing on
the horizon, moving closer and passing just
in front of the camera and then moving into
the distance. I could see the mud mounting
the wheels of the cart, arms in motion, and
hammers, but it refused to take shape. There
was not enough there in terms of dramatic
content. Soon after making The Brainwashers
I had spoken to producer Alain Corneau
about the project, but nothing came of it.
Six years later, I spoke to producer Julie Roy
about my idea and she immediately grasped
its essence, even though there was still no
real script. She suggested that I work with
screenwriter Cynthia Tremblay, something
which really kick-started the whole creative
process.
5
Interview with
the filmmaker
Given that you first had the idea
so long ago, why did it take you
so much time to get around
to making Bydlo?
Why not?
I’m not a very political person. I’m more interested in human nature and the human condition than I am in current affairs. I think about
man in the context of several millennia,
though obviously I have my own share of
fears and worries. In the end, it is this more
personal vision that you see reflected in my
films rather than an analysis of the intricacies of current events.
For you, what does the ox represent?
For me it’s the strength and force of nature.
The yoke suggests the idea of labour and
working the earth. The arrival of the humans
transforms the ox into an object to be exploited, and emptied of its essence. I also see in
it the nobility of nature, of the environment
(it’s an ox made of earth), of labour...
BYDLO
In the case of Bydlo, I needed to find a way to
unblock ideas that I had been thinking about
for a very long time. And this came about
thanks to a series of exchanges with the
screenwriter. It was through working with
Cynthia Tremblay that we came up with the
idea of an ox that emerges out of the earth,
which was the key to the script. It seems so
simple, but we started with the idea of an ox
that appears on the horizon and moved to an
ox that emerges from the earth. It’s not the
same thing at all; it has a completely different
meaning. Although it was my idea, without
Cynthia’s help I would never have got there.
What’s clear is that I needed someone’s help.
I would never have been able to come up with
the idea without it. Because for me, everything is first and foremost visual. I work based
on my intuition, and so I need someone to
put words and order to the images. As soon
as the idea of the ox emerging from the earth
appeared, I knew that we had the essence
of the film. But it took us several different
versions of the script to get there. At one
point we were even thinking of talking about
child soldiers... It’s a powerful and emotional
subject, but it just didn’t feel right for me.
PRESS KIT
No. For The Brainwashers, Martin-Rodolphe
Villeneuve and I would brainstorm together,
and I would say that in the end each of us is
responsible for half the ideas that found their
way into the script and eventually onto the
screen. Dehors novembre was based on an
original idea and script by Marcel Jean, while
Subservience was based on an idea and
script by Martin-Rodolphe Villeneuve. In both
cases, my contribution came at the moment
of creating the storyboard, when I adapted
and transformed ideas found in the script to
make them technically feasible.
She was a bit like a midwife who
helps at a birth?
6
You’ve worked with a screenwriter
on every one of your films. Has
the process been fairly similar
in each case?
Your earlier professional films all
used marionettes moving around in
a set. Then in 2007, at the Off-Courts
de Trouville festival, you made a
short called Talon d’argile in 24
hours, working with a block of clay
to create animation. When you made
Talon d’argile, was it a way of experimenting with a new technique that
you wanted to use in Bydlo?
Not in the least. I’d wanted to try the technique for some time and the Off-Courts
festival was a good time to do so. Thanks to
the festival I had the resources to do so,
including the chance of collaborate with Yan
Lanouette-Turgeon on the editing.
What were the biggest challenges
in making Bydlo?
Each film has its own technical challenges,
and in Bydlo they were linked with my choice
of Plastiline modelling clay. It’s a material
that is not easy to manipulate, and one that
tends to tear or break easily when you work
with it. It’s much less malleable than other
types of modelling clay.
BYDLO
This was something that it took Cynthia and
me a while to agree upon, because like all
good scriptwriters she was looking for a way to
limit and focus the meaning of the film, while I
wanted something that was more open-ended
and allowed for a variety of interpretations.
Yes, and I don’t think I do enough of them.
Each one of these film exercises helps me
with the work that comes after. These projects
take me further. And in fact the difference between a major film project and a film exercise
is the freedom they give me. When you work
on film exercises no one expects anything
from you, and you do it for yourself alone, and
with a degree of ease and pleasure and a
certain purity of action that does me a lot
of good. You can’t compare the quality of
Talon d’argile with Bydlo, but making Talon
d’argile was a completely joyful and nourishing experience, while the making of Bydlo
gave me pleasure, but it also involved a lot of
suffering and hard work and took an incredible amount of energy. That’s why I think I
should allow myself to do these film exercises
more often.
PRESS KIT
You could interpret it that way. But I’m not a
filmmaker with a message. Let me be clear,
Bydlo is not a film about current affairs. It
can be interpreted as being about global
warming, overpopulation, overconsumption,
the exploitation of nature and of others, or
you can make it be about war, but its interpretation remains open and this is the way I’ve
always wanted it.
Between major film projects you also
sometimes do short film exercises,
like Talon d’argile, using more
artisanal techniques. For example,
I remember seeing some short films
that used pixillation.
7
So there’s an environmental
subtext to the film?
Another of the qualities of Plastiline is that
you can easily make a patina. It has a very
greasy surface, so you can make anything
adhere to it: tar, dust, straw, shards of wood.
How much Plastiline did you use
to make the film?
It’s a reflection of all the work that has gone
into the film. It’s part of the beauty of the
technique. I am not interested in so-called
“realism.” I don’t want people to think that
my characters are real, that they are made of
flesh. I want to celebrate the materials I use.
Constantly. Throughout the making of the
film I had to re-evaluate what it was possible
to do. I wasn’t able to reach the degree of precision in creating the characters that the
script demanded. Because the characters
became more stylized than we had originally
envisioned, the effect was to make the story
more allegorical and less real.
Another challenge for me was that we filmed
a lot of sequences starting with their endings. Which meant that sometimes there
were four or five different shots that had to be
edited together, each of which had been
filmed starting with the end. So it sometimes
took a considerable mental effort to work on
the editing because we were going against
everything that felt logical and natural.
BYDLO
Is this tactile quality
important to you?
Did the laborious nature of
working with Plastiline force you
to make any concessions?
PRESS KIT
The main reason was that you can melt it
and use a mould to create your characters.
Because we had literally hundreds of characters in the film, it was essential to be able to
use a mould and not have to model every
single one of them. The second reason is that
unlike the latex that is usually used in moulding, there is an earthy quality that fits well
with the film’s subject, because I wanted the
film to have a tactile quality, so that viewers
could see the traces left by my fingers. Once
moulded and cooled, Plastiline reasserts its
original texture, so that you can see the
traces of the animator’s touch, just as you
would with clay.
8
So why choose it?
At least 500 kilos. The main set we created,
which was four metres square, was entirely
covered by Plastiline. And then if you include
all the characters and the different versions of
the ox, it all adds up. It’s a very dense material
and weighs about twice as much as butter, so
that a block that is about the same size as
a 500-gram block of butter actually weighs
one kilo.
It all happened very smoothly. There were
certain characters that I could see very clearly in my head, so once we were on set, I simply told him I was going to work on those
ones. We divided the remaining characters
between us. I gave Pierre certain directions,
and he offered some suggestions and then
we went to work!
Would you work with another
animator on a different project?
BYDLO
Yes, if it was necessary for the project. But
there is something very personal about the
act of animation and so it’s not always easy
to share the process.
PRESS KIT
Pierre M. Trudeau joined us at a time when
there was a lot of animation to do, and lots of
different characters to create. It was my producer Julie Roy’s idea and I’m grateful to her
for it. I couldn’t have worked with just anyone,
because like everyone else I have my own
ideas and ways of working, but Julie suspected
that Pierre and I would be a good fit and she
was right. Pierre is a talented and experienced
animator who is also a director in his own
right. At the same time, he’s also very
discreet and non-competitive and is good at
taking direction from another filmmaker. He
believed in the project and so it was easy for
me to trust him. In fact, communication between us was so good that at times we were
even able to communicate directly through
our characters. Pierre adapted himself to my
style, which is different from his, in a way that
was truly remarkable. He is also an excellent
sculptor, and he arrived at a time when I was
taking a few days off and immediately found a
solution to a problem I had been having with
sculpting the ox emerging from the earth.
How did you decide which of you
would animate which characters?
9
In making Bydlo you worked with
another animator for the first time.
Was this challenging for you?
Team
DIRECTION, ANIMATION
Patrick Bouchard
MusiC
Robert Marcel Lepage
Key Grip
Stephane DeErnsted
Script
Cynthia Tremblay
ORIGINAL MUSIC
AND ADAPTATION
Original music and adaptation of
“Bydlo” by Modest Mussorgsky,
© 2011 National Film Board of
Canada (SOCAN)
Digital Imaging
Consultant
Jacques Lévesque
Sound Design
Olivier Calvert
Foley
Lise Wedlock
Editing
Alain Baril
Stéphane Lafleur
Recording
Geoffrey Mitchell
Luc Léger
Visual Effects and
Technical Support
Benoît Chagnon
Re-recording
Serge Boivin
Dolby (Digital)
Animators and
Direction Assistants
Pierre M. Trudeau
Chantal Masson
Digital Imaging
Specialists
Pierre Plouffe
Susan Gourley
Set Builder
Dany Boivin
Online Editing
Denis Gathelier
Model Maker
Jean-Philippe Morin
Shooting Special Effects
Director of Photography
Pierre Mignot
Mould Maker,
Characters
Claire Brognez
First Camera Assistant
Carla Clarke
Ox Armature
Construction
Dominique Bédard
Props Masters
André-Line Beauparlant
Diane Gauthier
Second Camera Assistant
Jimmy Medellin
With the participation of
ARTE France
Film Program Unit
Short film program
manager
Hélène Vayssières
Logo ARTE
Line Producer
Francine Langdeau
Executive Producer
René Chénier
Producer
Julie Roy
Bydlo
French Program
Animation and Youth Studio
© 2012 Office national du film du
Canada / National Film Board of Canada
BYDLO
ELECTRONIC
ARRANGEMENTS
Nicolas Borycki
Chief Electrician
Daniel Chrétien
nfb.ca/animation
PRESS KIT
Consultant
Marcel Jean
Technical Coordinator
Julie Laperrière
10
Based on an
original idea by
Patrick Bouchard
Press
Publicity
Nadine Viau
n.viau@nfb.ca
514-496-4486
See the trailer of the film:
nfb.ca/film/bydlo_trailer/
Consult the making of:
nfb.ca/film/bydlo_creative_process
Download high-resolution images:
onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/salle-de-presse/galerie-photo/
Distribution
PRESS KIT
11
Festivals
Élise Labbé
e.labbe@nfb.ca
BYDLO
International Sales
Christina Rogers
c.rogers@nfb.ca
310-399-4519