Aug 17, 2016

Ottawa Animation Festival 40th Anniversary Screening: "Hen, His Wife

The Ottawa International Animation Festival, North America's largest and most important animation event, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

To celebrate, the festival has commissioned international animation historians, programmers, and critics to write an essay about each of the grand prize winning films. In partnership with the festival, Cartoon Brew will present one essay each week from September 21-25, 2016, through the festival. Last week, we started with the 1998 award-winning film, The Man Who Planted Trees. Today we continue with the 1990 award-winning film, "Hen, His Wife," directed by Igor Kovalyov.

For more information on participating in Ottawa, visit animationfestival.ca.

The man, his wife, and their pets appear to have a relatively peaceful home life. However, upon closer examination, one is not sure if all is well. Things are beginning to break down. The "peaceful family life" part of this family scene seems a bit off. First, the wife is a giant hen. The pet is a centipede/slug with a human head. The men are blue and lumbering. They all seem a little nervous about something.

And so it goes. A visitor shows up and reacts with surprise that his wife is a hen. He marches through the apartment and whispers to the man. The man seems surprised that his wife is indeed a hen. Perhaps he did not realize this - perhaps he had felt that everything was good enough up to this point.

The stranger walks away. The man is clearly troubled by this news and enters a dream state, perhaps rethinking his life. The hen leaves. Things do not improve and the man is clearly lonely.

The hen returns to her apartment. Shockingly, the man has the same chicken feet as her. That is not what she wanted, and she is gone again.

Perhaps the film was meant to remind you that all might be well in your life until someone shows up and says otherwise. And then everything falls apart.

In 1990, I was immersed in writing my master's thesis on independent short animation. I was focusing on animation from four countries, including Russia, which at the time was still part of the Soviet Union. I had seen enough Russian films to know that most Eastern European films received state funding. Thus, virtually all Russian films had to be some sort of allegory to make their point. I remember thinking that Hen, His Wife must be a political film with a deeper meaning. I waited for a brief explanation of the story. But there was no explanation.

When I first saw the film, I was a relative newcomer to the animation industry, developing one of the earliest animated series at Nickelodeon. My goal was to make Nickelodeon the intersection of Looney Tunes and independent shorts. Is it cartoon, is it funny, can this director make a show for Nickelodeon--

"Hen, His Wife" stumped me. It was clearly an "important film" and an absurd parable. But without understanding its deeper meaning, all I could think about was how detailed and cartoonish the film was. This was not the dreamy 20-minute film, like paint on glass, that we had become accustomed to in Russian cinema. The film was like a cross between the surrealist Pritt Perun and Yellow Submarine. Its visuals and timing were like watching a funny cartoon. The elusive story and palpable anger made it clear that the film was something else entirely.

Some of the movements in Hen, His Wife were fast and cartoonish, and the timing was clearly deliberate, occasionally accelerating like a typical cartoon. In the graphic style, everything was given black outlines. Objects slid and vanished, moved without the aid of characters, visitors stomped on tables instead of around them, and recordings were played on a wind-up bus. At the time, I remember being obsessed with simply trying to figure out if the film was interesting or not. Or I was preoccupied with trying to figure out exactly what the theme of the story was. It was not interesting to see domestic life disintegrate. At this time, "Rugrats" was set to be made into a series by Nickelodeon. One of the creators/producers of "Rugrats," Gabor Csupo of Klasky Csupo, was clearly inspired by the cartoonish qualities of "Hen, Wife" as well; Csupo invited Kovalyov to come work at Klasky Csupo, and Kovalyov was very interested in the idea. Shortly after Kovalyov completed his next film, Andrei Svislotsky, Kovalyov moved from Moscow to Los Angeles to direct Rugrats, then Aaahh. Real Monsters. He then co-directed "The Rugrats Movie" in 1998. [Hen, His Wife], which helped introduce the animation audience to the acclaimed Moscow pilot studio of which Kovalyov was a co-founder. At a time when times were beginning to change in Eastern Europe, Pilot was one of the first animation studios that was not state-owned, and the work coming out of Pilot was not all serious or overtly political. It was a game changer in the world of Russian animated film. [Hen, His Wife] won the Grand Prix at the 1990 Ottawa International Animated Film Festival, which may have confused some at the time. After all, Nick Park had entered "Creature Comforts" and "A Grand Day Out" in competition. My personal favorite that year was a film by Sweden's Filmtecknarna called Exit. Filmtecknarna would later go on to win acclaim for other films.

"Kovalyov and His Wife," on the other hand, made a huge impact. This film undoubtedly triggered a change in our impression of Russian animated films. Indeed, "Klasky Csupo," "Rugrats," and "Aaahh. Real Monsters" brought a new aesthetic to American animation. Soon the Russian film industry will no longer be state-owned. If Ottawa's award-winning films were chosen with an awareness of their potential influence, "Hen, His Wife" was prescient.

Years later, I was invited to speak at the BFI about the early days of Nickelodeon Animation and was asked to screen some of my favorite short films that had influenced me. At that time, the person responsible for the screening made a special request: the BFI had just purchased the film and wanted an excuse to show it. Could you talk about why this film is one of my favorite films and how it has affected me?

Approaching Kovalyov through Nickelodeon led to some interesting conversations, but no further explanation of his films. But perhaps that was all right, because 25 years later I can still watch the films and contemplate them with pleasure, not knowing if I have come close to understanding them or not. It was another reminder that some films leave room for interpretation.

Kovalyov continues to make short films. His latest film, "Before Love," premiered at the 2016 Dutch Animation Film Festival and won the Grand Prix in the Short Scenario category. Apparently, ambiguity is alive and well at animation film festivals.