Wladyslaw Starewicz(1882-1965)
- Director
- Writer
- Cinematographer
Although his name nowadays means very little except to animation buffs
(and even they have to be pretty well informed), Wladyslaw Starewicz ranks
alongside Walt Disney, as one of the great animation pioneers, and his
career started nearly a decade before Disney's. He became an animator
by accident - fascinated by insects, he bought a camera and attempted
to film them, but they kept dying under the hot lights. Stop-motion
animation provided an instant (if slow) solution, and Starewicz
discovered that he had a natural talent for it. He subsequently made
dozens of short films, mostly featuring his trademark stop-motion
puppets, but also live action films (some blending live action and
animation), moving to France after the Russian Revolution to continue
his career. His longest and most ambitious film was the feature-length
'Tale of the Fox', which took ten years to plan and eighteen months to
shoot. Starewicz' films were virtually one-man shows
(writer/director/cameraman/designer/animator), though other important
contributions (in front of and behind the camera) were made by his
daughters.
