Page 59 - Studio International - January 1968

The 'Mouvart' Group

Kevin Gough-Yates

The 'Mouvart' group, formed in September at Mon-
treal, gave its first programme at the Cambridge
Animation Festival on November 18. The group con-
sists of seven artists, working in animation, who
admire each other's work not because of anythematic
or stylistic connexions but because the films are per-
sonal statements. In its Manifesto the group asserts,
'If animation is an individual way of expression it has
to be separated from the studio work and the indus-
trial production. . .
Peter Foldes, a founder member of 'Mouvart', spoke
briefly at the show. Hungarian by birth, he is a natura-
lized British subject at present working in Paris. (He
saw his first modern painting whilst travelling to Eng-
land in 1946, when he was 22. His first one-man
show at the Hanover Gallery in 1949 enabled him to
produce Animated Genesis which deals with mobile
paintings and won a Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival
in 1952 and a British Film Academy Award in 1953.
Short Vision (1955) deals with an atomic explosion and
is a masterpiece in its class. The subject is developed
entirely through paintings and has a gruesome in-
evitability. The two films by Peter Foldes shown at
Cambridge, Bongo Bongo and Eveil, are markedly dif-
ferent. The first was made in one afternoon. It con-
sists of positive and negative silhouettes dancing
against each other, of collages and figures appearing
through a central figure, and an interplay of hands,
again in outline, which suggests familiarity with
Zadkine's sculpture. Parts of Eveil are brilliantly con-
ceived, especially those in which Pop-Art images are
used. The heavily-drawn mouth spewing consumer
products and the images which appear to be shim-
mering on metal are remarkable in every way.
The Box by Fred Wolf, an American, is more trad-
itional in form but reveals a sophisticated sense of
observation for someone working within the medium
of animation. Shelley Manne's music is much in evi-
dence. The film is played strictly for laughs and con-
sists of three sequences round a box which contains
some vile animal in need of a mate.
The Japanese, Joji Kuri, like many others in anima-
tion, earns his living through television but continues
to produce disturbing, privately-financed cartoons.
These, though recognizeably by Kuri in their pen and
wash style, have the black humour of some French
cartoonists. Au Foul is a set of violent jokes. The Eggs
is a fable full of Kuri's personal imagery. Its roots,
however, are to be found in Bosch. Eggs burst, devel-
op eyes and tongues, and continually engulf man.
The films of Piotre Kamler (Meurtre), Jimmy Murak-
ami (Breath) and Robert Lapoujade (L'Ombre de la
Pomme) each have their merits. Breath is a bagatelle
in free brush technique, and suggests the earlier film
from Zagreb, The Substitute, made by Dusan Vukotic.
L'Ombre de la Pomme relates the Fall in a variety of
ways, breaking into the style of Expressionist painting.
"'Mouvart" films', says Peter Foldes, 'fol low the subject
to its logical conclusion.'
The 'Mouvart' group is committed to animated film.
Its members describe it as a medium able to absorb
the characteristics of most other art forms: ' "Mou-
vart" is a total art form: painting, cinema, poetry,
narration, music, rhythm, line and colour at the same
time. If Leonardo were alive today he would animate Two series of frames from Eveil,
his paintings.' by Peter Foldes