"Tintin and I" on PBS Tuesday 7/11/06
gel...@nyct.com
Click here for more info......unsure if available outside the USA
you can see trailers, interviews, pics and more on these pages...
enjoy
george
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/tintinandi/special_artists.html
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/tintinandi/special_tintinamerica.html
FILM SYNOPSIS
"Tintin and I" will be shown with the award-winning short film "Lawn"
by Monteith McCollum, director of "Hybrid" (P.O.V. 2002).
Who was Tintin? Indeed, who was his creator, Hergé? Tintin was the
determined and resilient hero of a comic book series that took him on
thrilling adventures around the world - and on some voyages not quite
of this world. Actually, though Tintin is not as well known in the U.S.
as in Europe, his distinctive tuft of ginger hair and Hergé's no less
distinctive drawing style will ring a bell with many Americans.
Appearing from 1929 to 1982, the series took Tintin to the planet's
most exotic places to confront all sorts of danger, treachery and
political machinations, with an emphasis on the fast-paced visuals of
trains, planes, cars, bombs and other new technologies.
Both character and creator were unambiguous. Tintin was literally and
emblematically a Boy Scout who always lived up to the Boy Scout code,
no matter how dire, dark, strange or adult the situation. Tintin was
the ideal with which Hergé totally identified. But, as revealed in
Anders Østergaard's "Tintin and I," it was the treacherous and
uncertain world around Tintin into which Hergé poured the reality of
his own life. Based on 14 hours of audio interviews recorded in 1971
- heard here for the first time - "Tintin and I" shows that Hergé,
while trying in life to live up to the idealized Tintin, ended up
creating in art a powerful graphic record of the 20th century's
tortured history.
In 1971, the French-born Numa Sadoul (later an actor as well as a
writer) was a young journalist doing a series of interviews with
comic-book artists. Drawn to Brussels, the center of European cartoon
art, Sadoul took a chance and knocked on the door of the artist he
wanted most to meet. He had no reason to expect a welcome from Hergé,
nom de plume of Georges Remi, whose creation, The Adventures of Tintin,
already had been captivating millions of European children and not a
few adults for over 40 years. Since World War II, Hergé had had to
face a blacklist for working under the German occupation, the
embarrassment of abandoning his Catholic marriage and a nervous
breakdown. The naturally reticent artist had grown even more reclusive.
But Sadoul wanted to ask what Hergé thought was so enthralling about
the Tintin series. Tintin, the forever-young art deco Boy Scout who
never shied from danger or from doing the right thing, seemed too
simple to explain the series' iconic status. To Sadoul's tremendous
surprise, Hergé not only welcomed him into his studio but also
consented to being interviewed on audiotape. The encounter turned into
14 hours of audio interviews, recorded over four days, in which Hergé,
despite protesting that he neither wanted to talk nor had anything
interesting to say, proceeded to open up with remarkable candor. Though
the interviews later became the basis for a book, they were so heavily
edited and rewritten by Hergé - perhaps recollecting the reasons for
his former reticence - that the book was far from a faithful
representation of his thoughts over those four days in 1971.
Now, 30 years after the fact, and with the full support of the Hergé
estate, Hergé's talks with Sadoul have formed the basis for "Tintin
and I." Hergé's own voice - gentle, prodding, laughing - takes us
through the twists and turns of a life he readily admits was written
into the adventures of the Boy Scout he once thought he was, or at
least strove to be, even as the European world was spinning violently
out of control. Director Østergaard, who has obvious affection for
Hergé's visual universe, does the master's art homage by animating
archival footage of Hergé to sync up with Sadoul's audio, lending
Hergé's voice an uncanny visual presence. He has also turned some of
the Tintin series' most famous panels into 3-D scenes through which
Østergaard's camera moves, yielding new insights into Hergé's art,
especially its detail and dramatic formal structures.
Sadoul is also on hand, still in awe as he recounts his fortuitous
meeting with Hergé. Scholars Harry Thompson (who died in 2005), Fanny
Rodwell and Gérard Valet add their appreciations and accounts of the
social and artistic circumstances under which Hergé worked. Even Andy
Warhol, in archival footage, turns up for at least 15 seconds in
appreciation of Hergé's popular - and just maybe Pop - art. But it
is the voice of Hergé himself, intertwined with his animated image,
striking family and public archival footage, that forms the drama of
"Tintin and I."
As recognizable in Europe as Superman or Mickey Mouse in the States,
Tintin had neither super powers nor an anthropomorphic fantasyland to
provide his fans with escape from a world of economic depression and
war. In fact, Tintin, a very proactive Boy Scout, flew right into the
face of predicaments that, in detailed visuals and ever more
complicated story lines, all too chillingly replicated the world's real
dangers. Colonialism, war, oppression, criminal conspiracies and the
promise and terrors of technology accelerated Tintin through the 20th
century - and his creator through an evolution of consciousness.
Given the use of comic art for realism in Europe (and Japan), as
distinct from the penchant for escapism in the U.S., it is no surprise
that Tintin began as a strip in a right-wing Catholic newspaper,
explicitly meant to teach political lessons. Norbert Wallez, a
charismatic if fanatical and odd Catholic abbot, first suggested such a
strip to Georges Remi, who adopted the pseudonym Hergé. Hergé
remained under the influence of the abbé Wallez and his reactionary
views for many years. He even married Wallez's secretary, Germaine
Kieckens, who - as Hergé later caricatured in Tintin - played the
role of mother hen.
A turning point came when a story set in colonial Africa featured
egregious racial and geographic stereotypes. Stinging from the
criticisms these drawings elicited, Hergé engaged the collaboration of
a Chinese artist, Tchang Chong-chen, to ensure that his next book, The
Blue Lotus (1934), did not portray Chinese culture as a Western
cliché. Working with Tchang provided Hergé with an artistic and moral
epiphany. He became absorbed with Tchang's - and Asian art's -
dedication to pictorial realism and accuracy of detail. This led Hergé
to exhaustive research on the settings and people of his succeeding
tales - and a greater respect, it would seem, for humanity's
diversity. (So great was Tchang's impact on Hergé that the latter
spent nearly 40 years famously trying to track Tchang down after
distance and war separated them. Their reunion, part genuine and part
marketing comeback for Hergé, is documented in "Tintin and I.")
By 1938, King Ottokar's Sceptre was widely seen as a damning parable of
Hitler's invasion of Austria. However, the most controversial part of
Hergé's career began when the German army occupied Belgium and Hergé
continued his strip in Le Soir. He jettisoned politics and real-world
scenarios during the occupation years to send Tintin off on more
traditional adventure fare involving buried treasure and sunken wrecks.
In "Tintin and I," Hergé tells Sadoul that, once Belgium had
surrendered, he saw continuing his work as no different from a baker
continuing to bake bread. Yet, throughout occupied Europe, the work of
artists, writers and even entertainers was not seen as equivalent to
ordinary work, and Hergé - along with other intellectuals who
claimed only to be doing their jobs - was quickly arrested after the
war.
Though he was just as quickly released, his reputation came under a
cloud and he faced a professional blacklist. It took a broken marriage,
a nervous breakdown, a new love and years of soul searching for Hergé
to rebuild his personal and professional lives. "Tintin and I" recounts
the crisis in his life in the late 1950s in part through an exploration
- literally entering 3-D animations - of the strip that many regard
as Hergé's masterpiece, Tintin in Tibet (1960).
Behind the Lens:
Read an interview with the filmmaker and submit a question of your own
»
"Millions of kids in many different countries have grown up with the
adventures of Tintin, which is reason enough to make a portrait of
Hergé," says director Anders Østergaard. "But Hergé's story, the
life of a dreamer whose inner clarity was so much in conflict with the
world outside him, was very moving itself. Can't you, especially if you
are an artist or other creative type, just remain inside the dream? You
can't. Not without paying a high price. It's a sad story, I guess, but
the result was Tintin, a visual icon of the 20th century."
"Tintin and I" is a production of Angel Production (Denmark) and
Moulinsart Production (Belgium) in co-production with Periscope
Productions (Belgium), Dune (France), Leapfrog (Switzerland), RTBF
(Belgium), Avro (Netherlands) in Association with France 2, VRT, DR TV,
France 5, Suisse Romande, SVT, NRK, YLE-FST and RUV.
Derek Janssen
>
> http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/tintinandi/special_artists.html
>
> http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/tintinandi/special_tintinamerica.html
>
> FILM SYNOPSIS
>
> "Tintin and I" will be shown with the award-winning short film "Lawn"
> by Monteith McCollum, director of "Hybrid" (P.O.V. 2002).
>
> Who was Tintin? Indeed, who was his creator, Hergé?
Meanwhile, the old 90's Nickelodeon cartoon has just resurfaced (with
English) on French-Canadian DVD:
http://www.dvdtoons.com/reviews/471
Derek Janssen (the POV Dr. Seuss documentary was pretty good, too)
eja...@comcast.net
leno...@yahoo.com
Do be careful when checking for your local listings - it's enough to
drive you crazy! That is, when I searched pbs.org, in one area of the
website, it suggested that it would be showing this Wednesday evening,
and then I slowly realized that this was a PBS channel (there are
apparently three in my area) that I'd never heard of, and the primary
channel said "nothing for the next two weeks," so I had only one
channel left to look at. In short, MY first opportunity will be between
Tuesday & Wednesday, at 4 a.m.
Lenona.
Barbara Needham
Yep.. that's our schedule also. 4 am.
Who watches tv at 4 am?
That's when they show the things for recording and watching later..
ok if you have TIVO or similar, I guess... we don't.
gel...@nyct.com
Just watched it and found it quite interesting Herge sure lived quite
an interesting life
that also coincides with Tintin....But also he had his struggles,
problems, obstacles
just like all the rest of us as the inteview/documentary traces for
us.......
I have to read some of my girlfriends books on Tintin especially since
I also travel the world (in real life) unlike Herge - yet he had the
gift of taking you right there with true details
George
leno...@yahoo.com
Saw it too. Yesterday's NY Times was probably correct in saying that
the documentary will not necessarily convince someone unfamiliar with
Tintin that the comic was anything special, but I enjoyed it anyway.
For those who don't already know these facts, I'd say the best parts of
the documentary (re the comic itself) were the background facts on
Chang, Wolff, and "The Castafiore Emerald." (That last was the only one
of the three I didn't already know - and I suspect they only told about
half of the story re the real Chang.) Oddly, there was very little
discussion of the Thompsons or Calculus - not even that Calculus was
based on Auguste Piccard. See here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Picard
(And Jean-Luc Picard is based on him too!)
Lenona.
leno...@yahoo.com
I found out today that "Tintin in the Congo" was translated into
English in 2002(?).
Well, I suppose it was inevitable, given the persistence of Tintin's
diehard fans. (For those unfamiliar with Tintin and the history of his
country (Belgium) - not to mention that most of the books were written
before 1960 - think twice before buying that volume, unread, for your
kids.)
Lenona.