Børge Ring's Home Lost to Fire

UPDATED



Børge and his wife are unhurt, but they have suffered a major loss of their possessions and artwork due to a fire. Their daughter Anna-Mieke, has set up a website where the pictures above come from and that has information on how to donate. There are other pictures of the house prior to the fire, including artwork by Børge and his wife, Joanika, who sculpts.

I've made a donation and hope that the Rings are able to put their lives back together after this horrible event.

You Can't Go Home Again

Børge Ring called the above to my attention. It's a 2005 Tom and Jerry, co-directed by Joe Barbera. In some ways, it does a remarkably good job of duplicating the look and feel of the Hanna-Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons of the 1940s and '50s. However, in other ways, it doesn't, and surrounded by those things that work, the lapses stand out even more.

Børge pointed out that Bill Hanna's timing just isn't there and that this cartoon inadvertently shows the importance of Hanna's contribution. He's right. For instance, the gag at 3:05 where Tom hurtles into the garbage truck is timed too slowly. Hanna never would have had the extended pause between Tom landing and the jaws closing. Furthermore, the jaws would have closed faster. That wouldn't have been true to life, but it would have been funnier.

Like the opening titles, a collision of Warner Bros. and MGM fonts, some of the character poses look to be from Warner Bros. rather than MGM. Jerry's look to the audience at 2:36 smacks of Chuck Jones. Jerry's pose at 1:36 has the look of a Robert McKimson cartoon. Tom's look to the camera at 3:26, with his eyes merging, is also more reminiscent of Warners.

The music can't compare to the exuberance of Scott Bradley's scores.

There are good things here. The characters stay on model. The animators have captured the way Tom scrambles off screen, including the subtle stretch in his mid-section, and have also captured the way Hanna and Barbera had characters shooting and rebounding into holds. As I said above, because so much of this is right, what's wrong stand out and that is why you can't go home again.

Revivals work in the theatre because the originals only exist in memory. There is no expectation that a revival will duplicate the look and feel of the original because the original is not there for comparison. In film and TV, though, the originals are not only there, they are often front and center, showing right next to attempts at a revival. The comparisons are inescapable.

Creative works are not only the product of people, they're also the products of a time and place. As the world keeps changing, it is impossible to recreate something from the past. While artists often wish to duplicate what they love, they can only approximate it. Paradoxically, the closer they get to it, the more they've succeeded in doing nothing more than an good imitation. And since the originals are everywhere to begin with, is an imitation necessary?

From a corporate standpoint, it's another cartoon to add to the library. From an artistic standpoint, it's a dead end. What could this budget and these creators, including 94 year old Joe Barbera, have come up with if they tried something new?

Børge Ring's New Website

As a 90th birthday gift, Børge Ring's children have created a website for him. You can watch his independent films there and leave him a message. Eventually, the site will include links to articles about Børge and information about his musical career.

Happy 90th Børge Ring!

February 17 is Børge Ring's 90th birthday. I want to wish him the warmest of birthday greetings and thank him once again for the films he has made, Oh My Darling, Anna and Bella and Run of the Mill.

All the best to you, Børge!

Animating for the Concert Hall

(The following came to me from Børge Ring.)

At Toonder's Amsterdam Studios during the 70s, we made an animated film for the famous British rock band that called themselves Pink Floyd. We delivered the film in a silent version, and the Floyds ran it on the concert stage. Hidden behind the film screen, where they too could see the film, the Floyds performed the whole soundtrack in a live performance.

The film was written and designed by a well known London artist named Allan Aldridge. At that time Winsor McCay, the founding father of American animation, had not yet been rediscovered, excavated and repositioned on his rightful throne. McCay was practically unknown outside a small circle of comic page archeologists.

Allan Aldridge knew about McCay .He dug up one of Winsor's virtuoso newspaper comics of yore. Winsor's story (about a small boy) was named Little Nemo in Slumberland. Allan redrew it in his own drawing style and added ideas of his own, so as to bring the story on film length. Little Nemo dreams that his bed has long, long legs and gallops with him through Manhattan in the night.

Pink Floyd liked the story. Their backer sent it to us to be animated and everybody loved the finished film.

Some of you might call this artistic theft. But the majority of the highest regarded live action films - produced during Hollywood's golden years - were "based on" somebody's theatre play or novel or were a remake of an older successful film.

The name of Winsor McCay was not mentioned on the titles of the Floyd cartoon.

Their backer considered Little Nemo in Slumberland to be a grave find in the public domain.

To the lovers of rock music, Winsor's name was as familiar as Sutton Ho.

Happy Birthday Børge

Kaj Pindal tells me that February 17 is Børge Ring's birthday, so I want to take this opportunity to wish Børge many happy returns.

I wrote about his film Anna and Bella here, and it remains a touchstone film for me. Many independent animated films can only be appreciated by artists or fans, but Børge's films don't require any special knowledge or perspective in order to be appreciated. Because his films are about families and relationships, they speak to the world.

I recently read a profile of filmmaker Jean Renoir by Penelope Gilliatt and she quotes Renoir as saying, "Something many people ignore is that there is no such thing as interesting work without the contact of the public -- the collaboration, perhaps. When you are listening to great music, what you are really doing is enjoying a good conversation with a great man, and this is bound to be fascinating. We watch a film to know the filmmaker. It's his company we're after, not his skill."

I agree with Renoir's viewpoint. There are relatively few animation filmmakers I choose to keep company with, and Børge is certainly one of them. If you are unfamiliar with his films, take a look at Anna and Bella, Oh My Darling and Run of the Mill. And will someone PLEASE collect these films and the documentary on Børge and release them on DVD?

Kaj Pindal's 80th Birthday Celebration

Left to right: Kaj Pindal, Ellen Besen, Marc Glassman
(Click any image to enlarge.)

Last night I had the pleasure of attending an 80th birthday celebration for Kaj Pindal held at the Toronto office of the National Film Board of Canada. The evening was hosted by animator Ellen Bessen and cultural impresario Marc Glassman and started out with a retrospective of Kaj's work, showing clips from many of his films with Kaj constantly being invited to the microphone to provide background information for each piece.

The retrospective included work from Kaj's early days in Europe, including Inkwell Fantasy, a pastiche of Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell, and Stentoft, a film made in Sweden for a bank that could have passed for a '40's Walter Lantz cartoon directed by Dick Lundy. It also included some of Kaj's home movies of his trolley and visits with Ward Kimball.

Of course, many of Kaj's films for the NFB were featured as well as work he did with Derek Lamb in and out of the NFB.

Friends were invited to speak about their memories of working with Kaj on many projects. Børge Ring sent the following letter.

My name is Børge Ring. I am 6 years older than Pindal . I am a lifelong friend of Kaj and of the girl from Copenhagen named Annie who chose to join him in living a life and raising a family.

At Midnight tomorrow Kaj will be 80 years old. I have written a Birthday speech to be held at his birthday party. But somebody in Washington leaked my script to Ellen Besen, and I hear that she is mean enough to divulge the contents prematurely.

My speech says:

Friends.....There once was a man at the National Film Board of Canada. who was awful...... ......He was dictatorial. He was ponderous and abrasive. People said about him: "Nobody at National Film Board can get along with him....not even Kaj Pindal."

So now you know.

Kaj,

You and I are fellow animators and we are lifelong friends.We are buddies and we are soulbrothers. We have been that ever since you and Simon and Bjørn and I sat at the feet of David Hand back in 1949 asking his ears off: How do you do this and how did you do that?

Dave had supervised the production of Disney's BAMBI and he had kept some of the animation from the film. But he would never let us see the drawings. You asked him "why not?" He said: "Because when you guys start flipping the stuff you are going to get entranced by little things like the graceful movement of a hoof.. And what you need to learn right now, is How to tell a story properly."

Dave saw our previous films and ripped them apart. "Look..Your animation is not the worst part of it. It's all the rest.. Don't be so anxious to animate. There is SOOO much to be done before you go into that"......

Do you rermember we didn't call him Dave or Mister Hand? He preferred to be DH to us. He called you "Junior". Simon stayed Simon and I got named "Yakkie."

Years later we were spread in all directions. David Hand had gone to Alexander Films in the USA. Bjørn and I went to Amsterdam and you and Simon had moved to Sweden.

National Film Board invited you to come to Canada and make a technical film about combustion engines, something you were also good at. You accepted the invitation,performed well and National Film Board decided to keep you in Canada as their Animator Laureate in combusting rnachinery, hot water and steam locomotives.

But you combusted heftily in protest. "I am a fun animator, I am good at pixies. Let me at it, let me at it."

Your persistence wore them down, and they let you at it.

Their faces changed when they saw the first results, and The National Film Board of Canada added the inventive aspects of Kaj Pindal's talents to their already formidable palette of film makers.

You are a truly authentic artist and over the years your very original work has so often been described and praised in words and writing and I am not going to revisit all the applause. We all know and rejoice.

You and I have kept in contact all these many years. Being animation nuts we talked about the craft all the time whenever we were together.

We disagree, (and do so to this day) about certain production procedures but on the whole we see things the same way.

During the early 70es both of us worked at Richard Williams' London studio because you had talked Dick into hiring me.

You were very much against the Disney studio system with its love of perfection through specialisation. Being a Disney chauvinist at the time I was all for the system. To me it was one of the charms of the Richard Williams studio on Soho Square.

Dick ,as we know, loved perfection in all things. At one time Ken Harris had animated a scene of the Pink Panther The famous oid feline was seen from behind with tophat and a walking cane. It's tail posed vertically with a small curl at the end. Animated on twos it moved ever so slightly up and down to the rhythm of Mancini's music. Nothing else moved and the body was on a hold.

Williams secretly abducted Ken's celluloids of the scene and was busy inbetweening the panther tails to make them animate on ones. I asked him why he did that. With Ken working in the next room Dick whispered: "Ken is a Warner Brothers man and they do everything on twos."

Dick had discarded Ken's sensible hold of the body and personally transported it as trace backs onto all the tail cells in order to have the scene on one single cell level.He said he didn't trust his inkers to make the tracebacks perfect.

Next morning we all saw the scene projected. The Panther's body never flinched. Turning to his inkers Disk said quietly: "This was a traceback on ones". Kaj winced at the remark and I couldn't resist the temptation to tease him later that morning. On the way upstairs I stopped briefly at his open door and asked him sweetly: "Did you see those tracebacks this morning?" feigning that they somehow confirmed the studio system.

Film Board's friendly Pindal took the bait, grabbed his desk with white knuckled hands and sputtered towards the doorway and me: "Yaa-aah..him ferry goot animator. Him a drawing can let stand still on ones."

Kaj, you loved pranks and occasionally the two of us behaved like the Katzenjammer Kids. A certain group in the studio were fervent vegetarians and used to take their lunch in a vegetarian restaurant with glasswalls. Kaj and I went over to the Danish shop in Conduit street and bought ten meatballs in a tall paperbag. We ate them standing outside the glass wall near the inside table of the sectarian health seekers..

During the 80es we sometimes had occasion to work together on feature films in Paris and Cologne or Copenhagen .Early on we had made a pact to try and meet once a year either in Europe or in Canada festival or work situation Derek Lamb had Kaj lure me over to Toronto for 3 days to pick up homework animation of some of Kaj's designs for a UNICEF production named "Karate Kids".

Derek Lamb was a gifted, somewhat paternal man of great sensitivity Like many artists before and after him, he felt insecure about his real values. Kaj and I hadn't met for some while and we spoke Danish together all the time and laughed a lot,

Derek became uneasy."They are probably talking about me in their damned mother -tongue."

When we sensed that, we switched back to English..

I drew a small comicstrip of Kaj and me lifting Derek Lamb up on a throne carrying the inscription "Agnus Dei" (God's Lamb) while we sing "For he is a jolly good fellow".

On the second frame Derek looks relieved."Maybe they weren't talking about me after all". On the third frame he walks along smiling. Then he stops abruptly and demands: "WHY NOT?"

Kaj, your mother came from a dynasty of railway people Your father was a fine arts painter. You inherited from her a love of steam trains and railroads, a passion you shared with your friend and fan Ward Kimball. But like Ward you opted for the thing you do best, which is: Being an authentic comic animator with keen intelligence and several strings to his bow.

Happy Birthday,Kaj.

Several presentations were made to Kaj, including a card from the students and faculty of Sheridan College's animation program, which featured a caricature of Kaj by Peter Emslie. Another presentation was made by student Allesandro Piedimonte of a sculpture of Kaj that he'd made.

Allesandro and Kaj

The reception afterwards gave everyone a chance to talk to Kaj and Annie as well as catch up with old friends and compare notes on animation happenings around Toronto.

Some of Kaj's artwork was on display in the reception area and two TV monitors ran his work continuously.

Annie and Kaj Pindal

Borge Ring's Oh My Darling

Thanks to Borge Ring and Hans Perk, here is Ring's 1978 Oscar-nominated short Oh My Darling.

This film predates Anna and Bella, but there are many strong similarities. Once again, Ring concentrates on family dynamics. Instead of siblings, this film is about the relationship between parents and children. And again, Ring uses visual metaphors to find animated ways of expressing things. Birds are one of the key metaphors here, to suggest empy nest syndrome and the creation of new romantic couples. As in Anna and Bella, there are ambivalent relationships, though in this film they don't quite get worked out.

I'm utterly amazed that Ring hasn't been more influential in terms of his design style, his subject matter and his direction. His films are just gems.

Anna and Bella

If you haven't seen this film by Borge Ring, please watch it before you read what's below. I'd hate to spoil it for anybody.

This is one of my favorite animated films. I'm going to end up writing about it in somewhat technical terms, but what makes the film great are the feelings that it evokes.

The design hits the sweet spot between realism and caricature. The designs are realistic enough to support the emotions and events in the story, but still caricatured enough to allow for cartoonyness in the acting and the timing.

One of the things that make shapes appealing in animation is their pliability. Flesh yields. We hug things whose surfaces are pliable, whether it's other humans, pets or stuffed toys. We don't hug rocks. There's a softness to how these characters are drawn and move that's enormously appealing.

I'm especially impressed by this film's use of visual metaphor. You've got blooming flowers tied to puberty and boys as bees flying towards the flowers as a way of communicating sexual attraction. You've got floating and flying to the moon as metaphors for romance. One sister shatters like glass as an expression of shock and pain. The jealous sister transforms into an ape, a jackal, a pterodactyl and a shark to show the animal rage she feels towards her sibling.

We've all seen cartoons where a character's spirit separates from its body and somebody stuffs it back in. Usually it's played for comedy, but here it's played for desperation. This and the shattering glass take could easily fit into a Tex Avery cartoon with very different results, which shows how flexible the idea of visual metaphor can be and how powerful animation really is as a medium. We've got tools, but we tend to do the same things with them over and over again. This film shows us that the tools are more versatile than we know.

Which leads me to what I admire most about this film: its emotional range. Animated shorts have a tendency to be all one thing. They're humorous or satirical or political or tragic. Often, an entire short is a build-up to a single ending gag. This film manages to encompass many moods and emotions in less than 8 minutes. Furthermore, they're emotions that are universally understood. This film talks to everyone, not just animation fans.

The time and effort required to make a cartoon forces independent animators to be miniaturists. They're stuck putting their stories on a small canvas. Anna and Bella shows how much is possible to fit on that canvas and I wonder why we so often settle for less.