Cinema
Kutsu-Juku seiklusi
Voldemar Päts · 1931
Synopsis
A little black dog with an elastic body does whatever comes into its head: it rides a pig, fights a frog, then descends into hell, where a skeleton and a fire-breathing dragon await it. Intertitles in verse, each more absurd than the last, announce every episode, and we follow Juku from one invention to the next in a drawn world where nothing stays in place for long.
Context
The film was shot during the winter of 1930 in the studio of the photographer Aleksander Teppor, on Suur-Karja Street in Tallinn, from drawings by the caricaturist Elmar Jaanimägi: about five thousand drawings for six minutes, of which four survive. It was released at the Modern cinema in Tallinn on 30 April 1931. A sequel was announced, of which nothing has survived. Forgotten to the point that the filmmakers of the period do not mention it in their memoirs, it was found in the autumn of 1986 in the holdings of the Estonian Temperance Society, in the historical archives in Tartu, and restored in 2001. The dog openly borrows from Disney's mouse, and one sequence from his skeleton dance.
Who it is for
Four silent minutes, viewable online on the archives' website. You should know that the ending is missing, and that the intertitles in verse are in Estonian.
Prizes and reception
The first Estonian animated film, which left no descendants: animation in the country only really began in the late fifties.