Michel Ocelot's films: a Journey through Time and Space

Abstract

In the last decades, the animation movie protrudes more and more in the modern culture by a deep philosophical and aesthetic approach with a wide spectrum of inquiries. The multitude of techniques and modalities to realize allows it to dive in the area of the most different cultures. Amongst the directors-animators who uphold the multiculturalism in their creation enlists the Frenchman, Michel Ocelot, a significant figure in the art of European animation. His movies power themselves from the art and the culture of different European civilizations, and, first of all, from Greek myths. Even since his first short film – Les Trois Inventeurs (1980) – he imposes as original creator. The world recognition is achieved by the feature films about Kirikou: Kirikou et la sorcière (1998) and Kirikou et les bêtes souvages (2005), which anchor in the African mythological universe. A world full of symbols and metaphors profiled also in the movie Azur et Asmar (2006), where two different cultures – European and African, unite. Mr. Ocelot creates his movies as initial formulas by which the viewer understands better the complex universe of the man and human relations, showing that the conflicts may be overcome through communication and comprehension, kindness and tolerance. Princes et Princesses (2000), Les contes de la nuit (2011) și Ivan Tsarevitch et la Princesse changeante (2016) inscribe in the context of the multiculturalism, as they are true trips back in time and space, highlighting the fairy tales of the people from the three continents Africa, Asia and Europe. The French director conceives the world of these fairy tales by a long forgotten technique – the cut-out animation, making us thinking about the theatre of shadows. Analysing the movies of Michel Ocelot, we may qualify them as modern recitals, personal interpretations of the traditional fairy tales and myths, where the art and the culture of different spaces and times rank at the top.