Dec 2, 2024

2025 Oscar Short Film Candidates: Anna Samo - Wild Enhanced Clavier" Director

Cartoon Brew is putting the spotlight on an animated short film nominated for an Academy Award in 2025.

This article looks at the filmmaker Anna Samo's Wild Temper Kravier. This short film won the Best Animated Short at the Woodstock Film Festival and earned it an Academy Award qualification.

Animated with toilet paper, Samo tells the story of an artist struggling to cope with the uncertain and chaotic world around him. How do you play it or animate it as the war intensifies somewhere? Based on Bach's timeless music and a legacy of animation drawn directly on 35mm film, it depicts the unique approach of wild Clavier. The film is produced by Berlin-based Tiger Unterwegs Filmproduktion.

Cartoon Brew: As an artist living in a struggling world, what would you like to share with your fellow animators about how to "keep playing the piano" despite all the possibilities and challenges?

Anna Samo: For me, making a movie is the only way to see what's happening around me and try to understand it. I think it's worth the trouble to share our human experience the best way we can. I also love making animations, really because of the magic of it. Of course, like all long-term relationships, keeping emotions fresh is not always easy, so when I have my tips and doubts on how it will reconnect me with my love, I turn to other artists for inspiration.

I was stuck in this movie, so I read a requiem for a manual typewriter by Jonas Mekas. In this novel, the author finds a roll of dusty computer paper under his desk, stretches it to a typewriter and decides to enter the novel. He does not know how to start and how to end and he encounters many interruptions and challenges and breaks his own rules along the way. This novel is an ode to the creative process, and it was what forced me to end up animating the last roll of toilet paper, eventually editing the footage and ending the film

about this story and concept, connecting with you and directing the film.-

At first, I would paint a picture on toilet paper with a title in my head and, J.S.There was only the idea of combining the prelude to Bach's "Well-trained Clavier." I liked the juxtaposition of the most perishable everyday objects with music that has been around for three hundred years and will probably be around much longer.

The first animated test took place during a pandemic lockdown in New York City, where toilet paper suddenly became a valuable commodity. It was my reaction to everything that was in the air – uncertainty, unstable human behavior, and an overwhelming sense of being lost. I wanted to spend time with music and play with the material at hand while creating animation, retaining its beauty in the upheaval of momentary drama. This was the first impulse to make a film.

What did you learn through the experience of making this film, production wise, filmmaking wise, creative, or about the subject-

It has been hard to make I believe there is a movie in the end. I didn't have a storyboard or a clear message I wanted to convey. Instead, I followed a lot of the feeling that I needed to animate in this process. So it was often that I was panicking because time had passed and I still couldn't explain what my film was.

I started making movies out of a desire to play, but the world around me was getting darker and darker. I left Russia nearly two decades ago, but I still have family and friends who live there. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has become a painful place in my conversations with my parents, and I have seen many friends and fellow artists face difficult choices to leave their country or stay and adapt to new realities. And I was sitting in my studio and painting on toilet paper.

In retrospect, I know this was the right approach – somewhere in the background where I could wander myself and grow myself without forcing the story, the film was shaping itself in its own time. And when I felt I was ready to sit down and edit the footage, it took me less than 3 days to find the structure and meaning. For the first time in two years, I could say without twitch that I had a movie. Accepting uncertainty into the creative process was nerve-wracking, but it paid off in the end.

Can you explain how you developed a visual approach to cinema - why did you settle for this style/technique-

The movie has 2 animation layers. The first layer is the world of machines that carry the filmmakers' pixelated hands and toilet paper. Hands start the film strip, stop and rewind, actively edit the footage and operate the machine. They are in control of what is happening, or at least it is...I wanted to have a bright colorful element to the machine – to keep a sense of playfulness.

The 2nd layer is an animation drawn in watercolor that appears "magically" on toilet paper. I like the idea of uncertainty and the consequent loss of control. There is no way to check the animation, and the frames are never below each other and not always next to each other. Before you can see it, you have to create a significant amount of animation. And there is no "undo" button – you have to accept the possibility of making a mistake and avoid it.

I helped create a set of rules and mimic the process of animating directly in the film stock. The visual style here was determined in part by materials and technology. I wanted to brighten the colors, so I used Japanese watercolors developed for rice paper. The size of the image was small and there was no way to control how the watercolors dipped into the paper, so I couldn't make the image too detailed. It was amazing to see how far we can push the limits, how rough the separate images are, and how we can still recognize the movement.