Animated Films to Classical Music
1997 – 1989
Motto
„Even if you gave me Europe’s best grand piano, but make me play before an audience which doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to understand, and is unable to share with me what I’m playing – I would lose the willingness and joy that my music gives me.” – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
61 auteur animated films set to classical music (55 films commissioned by Channel 1 of Polish Television S.A. and 6 independent films). The series is primarily aimed at children and young people. Its aim is to popularise best performed classical music.
Animation, which gives unlimited possibilities of creating images, is „musical” by its nature, affecting the viewers’ imagination through condensed ideas achieved by the texture of movement, visual and literary associations and editing, thus allowing to create musical film impressions without destroying the inner structure of the music. Music is the protagonist of those films, performing the function of a narrator, creating the rhythm of the images, the pace of movement, organising the space in the film frame. Through simultaneous activity of sounds and images, the viewers’ attention is at the same time focused on listening and watching.
Films from the „Animated Films to Classical Music” series have received 71 awards and commendations at international and national film festivals, including 7 awards granted by Children’s Juries. In addition to main awards, the films were awarded and appreciated for script, artwork, directing, animation, perfect transposition of music into pictures, for creativeness of form and imaginativeness, for the best TV films and best video clips for children, for stylistic purity of animated painting, for original artwork and for unique artistic values.
The series of animation films set to classical music has always been a very attractive commercial offer of Polish Television. The film miniatures have been sold to over 50 television stations in a number of countries, including Cyprus, Sweden (5x), Mexico, Japan (3x), Spain (5x), United Kingdom, Switzerland, Korea (2x), Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary (2x), Lithuania, Norway, Finland (3x), Iran, Kuwait, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Russia (2x), USA, Taiwan (4x), Brazil, Portugal, Republic of South Africa, Canada, France (2x), Germany, Costa Rica, China (3x), Hong Kong (2x), Czech Republic (2x), Romania, Greece.
The series was also released on DVD: China (2x), Russia and the CIS, English-speaking countries of Africa, including the Republic of South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, Hong Kong. In 2010 the series was released on DVD in Poland.
COLLECTIVE AWARDS FOR THE SERIES
HONORARY DIPLOMA for the series of films to classical music, International Festival of Animated Films for Children – Biennial of Animation BAB’99, Bratislava, Slovakia / 1999
PRESS AWARD – ‘My Oscars’ granted by Professor Marek Hendrykowski: This year, I would like to distinguish Television Studio of Animation Films in Poznań for an excellent series of animated video clips set to classical music, realised using diversified, often novel, techniques. TV SFA does not make much noise about its works (if we forget about the awards for its productions granted in Shanghai, Cairo or Chicago). However, not everybody may know this but the unique video clips to the music of Mozart, Moniuszko, Albinoni, are one of the ‘export hits’ of Polish Television, Poznań, Poland / 1994
SPECIAL DIPLOMA for the series popularising classical music, 12th National Festival of Films for Children and Young People, Poznań, Poland / 1992
