Short Film Corner: Madame Tutli-Putli

In art there is no boundary. In artists there are no limits. Such has proven the case for Chris Lavis and Maciek Szcerbowski as the award winning pair brings their first professional film to life in Madame Tutli-Putli, a brilliant stop action short. The 17 minute short tells the tale of Madame Tutli-Putli as she boards the night train into an abyss of worlds that merge between reality and illusion. The trip progresses from day to night, drawing her deeper into the metaphysical world where all is not as it appears, and what is unseen is just as important as what is there.

Lavis and Szcerbowski founded Clyde Henry Productions, a Montreal-based film and production company in 1997. The company primarily functions as a multimedia, stop-motion animation and visual effects company, garnering awards and acclaim for their work in music videos and their serial comic The Untold Tales of Yuri Gagarin, which has found its niche and a major cult following through Vice magazine. In Madame Tutli-Putli the pair not only helmed the project, but also pulled duty on the screenplay, animation, sculpting, art direction and collage artists. The menagerie of skills, along with the dedication of a team of artists and musicians, along with production backing from the The National Film Board of Canada brought the project to life, winning two film awards at Cannes including the Canal Plus Award for Best Short Film.

Through brilliant storytelling and eerily surreal animation, Madame Tutli-Putli follows a path of mystery and suspense that reminisces the early days of film making, when the celluloid, not the actors, told the tale. The original score worked to complete the immersion of the film; expect more awards to come for this artistic wonder.

I was fortunate enough to have the creators of the film take the time to answer a few questions about the development and future of the project, along with their thoughts on being featured at TFF.

Larry L. Peel: I understand that the film began with a train trip across Canada in 2002, was the trip solely for the purpose of this particular film, or was it a general inspirational trek, from which Madame Tutli-Putli came to be?
Chris & Maciek: The inspiration, script, and even storyboards for Madame Tutli Putli were created between 1999 and 2003, in whatever spare time we could find between odd jobs, amateurish commercials, and poster gigs. The train trip actually began the production process, when we realized that most of our ideas were horribly clichéd, based on other people’s films, and lacking the benefit of research or thirsty personal experience of the First Kind.

LLP: Was the film inspired by other influences of film and television?
I saw traces of Hitchcock and Serling in the plot and characterizations? If so, how much did your predecessors influence you?
C&M: At the risk of great personal embarrassment, we will assume you mean Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame, rather then some obscure German eroticist of the Silent Era. If we are talking about Rod, then no, frankly, we never until now thought of that, though it's not the most unsensible analogy. Hitchcock is there, absolutely, as well as Chaplin, Kubrick, and of course the masters of stop motion, Starewicz, Svankmajer, and even modern masters like Phil Tippet should not be forgotten, nor their influence on our generation understated.

 
LLP: What influenced you to pursue such a time consuming variation on traditional stop motion filmmaking? Are you satisfied with the results or do you see flaws that can be corrected in future projects?
C&M: Every aspect of the project was treated with the same degree of experimentation and eye towards innovation, from the puppets, cinematography, to the eye effect achieved by our collaborator Jason Walker, and the animation itself. In every way it was exhausting, and thus a one-off. It was our particular challenge to create such a high level of naturalism that we would never have to go there again, and could advance onto more abstract, looser forms of art.

LLP: Do you hope to take this form of production into a grander scale for future projects?
C&M: Firstly, Madame Tutli Putli had no form of production; it was ad hoc, with every mistake possible made at every step, month after month, year after year. We dodged no bullets, avoided not a single land mine. As for grander projects, we let the method flow from the idea and, since we must live in the real world, the particular constraints of the production; budget, schedule, etc. We have never had, and will likely never have, anything like a method.

LLP: Do you have any other projects in the works or on the table?
C&M: We are developing a feature film, a fantastic re-imagining of the twentieth century, where Germany is ruled by the Kaiser's talking monkey. It is a Christmas fable designed to remind us that life is short and meaningless.

LLP: How do you feel about having the film presented at TIFF? Do you expect to garner any awards? What do you think of your competition?
C&M: It is a great honour to be included at the Toronto Film Festival. We have many friends and colleagues in the city and we hope to drink and feast with them.

LLP: Would you care to add anything else regarding yourselves, your project, TIFF or future works?
C&M: Well, not particularly. We thank you very much for your interest in the film. It was very, very hard to make and the reception the film has gotten thus far is well beyond our expectations. At this point the film has developed its own life outside of its creators and so we wish Madame Tutli Putli well in all her future endeavors.

Madame Tutli-Putli will next be featured at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday the 13th at 7:45 P.M at the Royal Ontario Museum.

We've included a link to the trailer – click here.