Introduction movie to the VOD screenings during the Netherlands Film Festival by Robin Noorda
Tropism interviews filmmaker Robin Noorda on his the stop-motion animation Rebirth of Venus
How did you come up with the idea for the film?
In the waste bin in our multi-company building Loods 6, where the Tropisme studio is located, I sometimes browse for something useful. People sometimes throw valuable things away. But also worthless things that can be interesting. So it all started with a few pieces of styrofoam packing material.
One piece of Styrofoam contained a series of arch shapes, which immediately reminded me of the Roman Forum. And then I found more of those Piranesi-like shapes. Then a piece of polystyrene, in which I saw the construction tower of a V2 rocket by the Nazi architect Albert Speer.
Then the idea began to crystallise further. That kind of grand architecture is often associated with totalitarian systems. Architecture is all too easily used to anchor a dictatorship as manifestly as possible, and preferably forever, in society. I saw the similarity between the Romans and the Nazis, just to name two of the great European dictatorships. We still think disapprovingly about fascism and the Nazi era. It is still fairly recent. There are still witnesses. But we do not think of the Romans, Napoleon, Charlemagne, Gengis Kahn and others in the context of the immense violence that they unleashed on the world. We only admire the architectural remains, which through the gnawing of time have lost their charge of totalitarian oppression.
The similarity between regimes and the largest multinationals is absolute power.
That power leads to oppression. That connection is intrinsic. Perhaps a bit obscurely hidden and less visible these days, such as at Shell, located in London and Rotterdam, but what happened in Nigeria is still far from my bed for many. The link between oil and oppression is widespread. For example, look at the 6500 dead migrant workers (slaves) in Qatar.
The consequence of absolute power is oppression and exploitation of the fertile and the feminine. Those two symbolise the giving, ultimate, the giving of life. In the form of ecocide from mother earth to the oppression of women. The least serious form of this is inequality. And there is a common cause. The opposite of giving is taking.
In Dutch we have a saying: it is a matter of give and take. This includes the principle of equivalence. But all things considered, on closer examination, there is no equality. True equality would be giving and receiving. Not the feudal giving that gives the right to then take involuntarily. This is based on an authoritarian relationship. To take is to actively appropriate something. Statistically, men do this overwhelmingly above women and use often violence to do so.
I tried to capture those things in the poem.
It is special that as a filmmaker you also wrote the poem for the film. How would you characterise its essence?
The poem mentions the common denominator in the exploitation of mother earth and the oppression of women.
Where does that commitment come from?
I fight against ecocide and am a male feminist.
Probably because I grew up in a red artist family in the right-wing rich Blaricum where money, power and corruption were sealed on the 'Gooise mattress'.
I am convinced that the world would look a lot nicer and there would be less exploitation if there were more women at the helm.
The movie poster shows a dark naked lady, but in the film she is only in the picture for a few seconds. Isn't that disproportionate and will it not be condemned as: sex sells?
That indeed seems to be daring and a risk, but I think it is relevant to choose a dark lady. Globally you can say that of the oppressed women, the women of colour are the worst off. The whole 'me too' thing is mainly a white and western phenomenon. Women's oppression is happening elsewhere in the world on an even more serious scale. So serious, that speaking up (resisting) is immediately a death sentence. There are a growing number of countries where the raped victim is blamed and punished for the abuse she suffered, while the rapist goes free. As an illustration, just when my film was finished, the Taliban took over Afghanistan again.
The fact that she is naked has, of course, everything to do with the undulating acceptance of nudity in art and specifically with Botticelli's iconic image of the Birth of Venus. And also for the sake of the naked truth. The bottom line is that I think as a male feminist, nudity is functional as the film has messages for both women and men. If I can lure the latter with a little nudity while getting the message across, it is in my view justifiable and functional nudity. The women appear only very briefly as they free themselves from the man made statue. Stepping aside, away from the moulded cast, is a brave act, a process of rebirth.
I always think of a phrase from Eric Idle's song from The Live of Brian: "You know, you come from nothing. You're going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!" (from "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"). That is the highest attainable for me: Humour meets Buddhism.
About the technique in the film. You pride yourself on the fact that it was all done optically, not through computer animation.
Yes, except for the fish and the warping 'Slit Scan' effect on the statues, everything is physically and realistically created, including the effects. As a pioneer and first animator in the Netherlands, who started working with computer animation in 1984, my switch around 2000 is back to the most basic form of animation: stop-motion, proverbial for the essence of the authenticity of my idiom. I still find the hyper-realistic visual effects of CGI fascinating, but rarely relevant within my own films. I pursue a wysiwyg; what you see is what you get. Everything is shot optically with a (photo) camera and nothing is computer generated. The computer is used for compositing effects and cleanplate retouching to remove rigs, but everything is captured in view with the camera.
I read somewhere about the Thunderbird feeling, what do you mean by that?
Every now and then you recognise the structure of the polystyrene balls pressed together. That may, or is even the intention, to subtly tap into a different message in a deeper layer.
You may sometimes see that it is a model. I call it the 'Thunderbirds' feeling; convincing sets, but the water drops are too big or a palm tree collapses too quickly...
I find that charming. It is the kind of illusion that you as a viewer also have to give a boost in your own fantasy. And when you do that, you really get into it and I think the experience becomes more personal and more intense. That experience is then between the ears and when that happens you have the spectator more involved.
What is improvisation animation?
With the wysiwyg philosophy I also try to approach as much as possible improvisation animation, an production attitude that I introduced earlier; Normally animation means that after the creative phase of the scenario and storyboard, you are a slave to that once, by then long ago, laid down plan. The enthusiasm of spontaneity, improvisation and intuition are hard to find in the method of the animator, due to the meticulous craft. However, I strive to keep the enthusiasm of the conception of the idea and the realisation as close as possible, so that that enthusiasm is expressed as much as possible in the realisation. This requires a flexible attitude to the plan where spontaneous enrichment in the story is allowed and even desirable. This mainly concerns the image, though the poem also evolved continously during the whole shooting period. In my opinion, improvisation animation is, as it were, the continuous application of the Immersive Design principle.
You call it a zero budget movie. Was that the intention?
Well, when we moved into our new studio with the Tropisme in 2018 in Loods 6, for which I was registered for 20 years, I was so enthusiastic that I immediately started building the model after the renovation, because I found the inspiration in polystyrene foam. had found. I also started writing the plan for the subsidy application and looking for a producer. Richard Valk liked the plan as a producer and by now I had already started filming. But then came a no from the Film Fund twice. It would be too much of an art film and had no storyline with cuddly characters and dialogues. The Mondriaan fund also gave me zero because it would be too much of a cinematic film. Moreover, they also stated that I had no visual language.
The fact was that I was already well on my way by then. Quitting was no longer an option. So keep going until it's done. The film has therefore become somewhat shorter and smaller.
The voice over is an artificial voice. Why did you choose that?
The artificial voice was initially intended as a sketch. Initially I wanted to have a real voice. But there was also something sober about the absolute neutrality of the artificial voice. Something I thought would fit well with the text. Like a newsreader.
Moreover, it was pragmatically very useful as the text was constantly changed right up to the last. Had it been a real voice, it would have meant that many recording sessions that would never have the same timbre. Emma TTS (that's the name of the voice) is, however, absolutely stable and consistent. Plus, it's a zero budget movie.
What is it with that Jacobs-Shell
The scallop shell stands for a number of things. Mythologically, it is the shell from which Venus is born and brought ashore. In Christian iconography, the scallop shell is the attribute of James the Great. The shell owes its name to this. The shell is the emblem of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (Santiago means Saint James) and is generally a symbol for pilgrims. Visibly wearing the shell, with the point upwards, sewn onto the hat or onto the coat, provided protection against brigands, who left the wearers of a code of honour alone.
Furthermore, the scallop shell is used as the logo of an oil company, but the other way around, pointing downwards. As if they themselves indicate that protection and the code of honour no longer apply. It even resembles an explosion and, as used in the poster, I already heard an interpretation that it symbolises the rape of mother earth.
BTW, any resemblance to real logo's, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
I have to admit, because of the zero budget situation I had to skip some scenes.
In the original longer layout, there would be many scallops on a beach, some with a Venus figure. Through those shells we would end up between the underwater ruins.
Then back to the dry world where Venus is born again.
At the end, the shell would come back again, but now empty after Venus stepped away. The shell then turns out to be a fossil with more shells in a sandstone matrix in a display case of a natural history museum. In that museum the wet preserved specimen of the title sequence would also be on display.
How dit you came up with those 'Photors' as you call them?
The darkroom enlargers idea came from a drawing made by Jakop Slegt in 1969. I bought that picture as a 10 year old kid and it hang on the wall of my bedroom for years. Slegt made drawings of fantastic worlds combining industrial- and kind of medieval technology with insects or objects placed out of context and scale. Besides Escher, Dali, Toonder, Moebius and Willink, Slegt was a great inspiration. The Rebirth of Venus film is an hommage to this artist that died without the recognition he deserved. I promised myself as a kid to once set those insect like photo enlargers into motion. So a few years ago I started collecting those Czechoslovakian Meopta Opemus enlagers made between 1940-1945 in order to build them into industrial, insect-like monsters that moved around in my polystyreen Piranesi world. In the 'Developing Machine' as his drawing is titled, the enlargers act like a 3D scanning and printing factory avant la lettre. I tried to do something similar.
What is your next project?
A collection of short stories that together result in the film Spur. Rebirth of Venus is a chapter of Spur. The next chapter is called l'Encorché Combattant about a long-lost children's drawing that links the concept of panspermia to pandemic. Only the subsidy application has just been rejected... So it will also be a shorter short film. Two other Spur film-projects are 'The Last Iceberg' and 'Requiem for a Forest' on the Portugese composer Victor Gama and a forest in Sintra that talks to the locals trough mushrooms.
How did you come up with the idea for the film?
In the waste bin in our multi-company building Loods 6, where the Tropisme studio is located, I sometimes browse for something useful. People sometimes throw valuable things away. But also worthless things that can be interesting. So it all started with a few pieces of styrofoam packing material.
One piece of Styrofoam contained a series of arch shapes, which immediately reminded me of the Roman Forum. And then I found more of those Piranesi-like shapes. Then a piece of polystyrene, in which I saw the construction tower of a V2 rocket by the Nazi architect Albert Speer.
Then the idea began to crystallise further. That kind of grand architecture is often associated with totalitarian systems. Architecture is all too easily used to anchor a dictatorship as manifestly as possible, and preferably forever, in society. I saw the similarity between the Romans and the Nazis, just to name two of the great European dictatorships. We still think disapprovingly about fascism and the Nazi era. It is still fairly recent. There are still witnesses. But we do not think of the Romans, Napoleon, Charlemagne, Gengis Kahn and others in the context of the immense violence that they unleashed on the world. We only admire the architectural remains, which through the gnawing of time have lost their charge of totalitarian oppression.
The similarity between regimes and the largest multinationals is absolute power.
That power leads to oppression. That connection is intrinsic. Perhaps a bit obscurely hidden and less visible these days, such as at Shell, located in London and Rotterdam, but what happened in Nigeria is still far from my bed for many. The link between oil and oppression is widespread. For example, look at the 6500 dead migrant workers (slaves) in Qatar.
The consequence of absolute power is oppression and exploitation of the fertile and the feminine. Those two symbolise the giving, ultimate, the giving of life. In the form of ecocide from mother earth to the oppression of women. The least serious form of this is inequality. And there is a common cause. The opposite of giving is taking.
In Dutch we have a saying: it is a matter of give and take. This includes the principle of equivalence. But all things considered, on closer examination, there is no equality. True equality would be giving and receiving. Not the feudal giving that gives the right to then take involuntarily. This is based on an authoritarian relationship. To take is to actively appropriate something. Statistically, men do this overwhelmingly above women and use often violence to do so.
I tried to capture those things in the poem.
It is special that as a filmmaker you also wrote the poem for the film. How would you characterise its essence?
The poem mentions the common denominator in the exploitation of mother earth and the oppression of women.
Where does that commitment come from?
I fight against ecocide and am a male feminist.
Probably because I grew up in a red artist family in the right-wing rich Blaricum where money, power and corruption were sealed on the 'Gooise mattress'.
I am convinced that the world would look a lot nicer and there would be less exploitation if there were more women at the helm.
The movie poster shows a dark naked lady, but in the film she is only in the picture for a few seconds. Isn't that disproportionate and will it not be condemned as: sex sells?
That indeed seems to be daring and a risk, but I think it is relevant to choose a dark lady. Globally you can say that of the oppressed women, the women of colour are the worst off. The whole 'me too' thing is mainly a white and western phenomenon. Women's oppression is happening elsewhere in the world on an even more serious scale. So serious, that speaking up (resisting) is immediately a death sentence. There are a growing number of countries where the raped victim is blamed and punished for the abuse she suffered, while the rapist goes free. As an illustration, just when my film was finished, the Taliban took over Afghanistan again.
The fact that she is naked has, of course, everything to do with the undulating acceptance of nudity in art and specifically with Botticelli's iconic image of the Birth of Venus. And also for the sake of the naked truth. The bottom line is that I think as a male feminist, nudity is functional as the film has messages for both women and men. If I can lure the latter with a little nudity while getting the message across, it is in my view justifiable and functional nudity. The women appear only very briefly as they free themselves from the man made statue. Stepping aside, away from the moulded cast, is a brave act, a process of rebirth.
I always think of a phrase from Eric Idle's song from The Live of Brian: "You know, you come from nothing. You're going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!" (from "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"). That is the highest attainable for me: Humour meets Buddhism.
About the technique in the film. You pride yourself on the fact that it was all done optically, not through computer animation.
Yes, except for the fish and the warping 'Slit Scan' effect on the statues, everything is physically and realistically created, including the effects. As a pioneer and first animator in the Netherlands, who started working with computer animation in 1984, my switch around 2000 is back to the most basic form of animation: stop-motion, proverbial for the essence of the authenticity of my idiom. I still find the hyper-realistic visual effects of CGI fascinating, but rarely relevant within my own films. I pursue a wysiwyg; what you see is what you get. Everything is shot optically with a (photo) camera and nothing is computer generated. The computer is used for compositing effects and cleanplate retouching to remove rigs, but everything is captured in view with the camera.
I read somewhere about the Thunderbird feeling, what do you mean by that?
Every now and then you recognise the structure of the polystyrene balls pressed together. That may, or is even the intention, to subtly tap into a different message in a deeper layer.
You may sometimes see that it is a model. I call it the 'Thunderbirds' feeling; convincing sets, but the water drops are too big or a palm tree collapses too quickly...
I find that charming. It is the kind of illusion that you as a viewer also have to give a boost in your own fantasy. And when you do that, you really get into it and I think the experience becomes more personal and more intense. That experience is then between the ears and when that happens you have the spectator more involved.
What is improvisation animation?
With the wysiwyg philosophy I also try to approach as much as possible improvisation animation, an production attitude that I introduced earlier; Normally animation means that after the creative phase of the scenario and storyboard, you are a slave to that once, by then long ago, laid down plan. The enthusiasm of spontaneity, improvisation and intuition are hard to find in the method of the animator, due to the meticulous craft. However, I strive to keep the enthusiasm of the conception of the idea and the realisation as close as possible, so that that enthusiasm is expressed as much as possible in the realisation. This requires a flexible attitude to the plan where spontaneous enrichment in the story is allowed and even desirable. This mainly concerns the image, though the poem also evolved continously during the whole shooting period. In my opinion, improvisation animation is, as it were, the continuous application of the Immersive Design principle.
You call it a zero budget movie. Was that the intention?
Well, when we moved into our new studio with the Tropisme in 2018 in Loods 6, for which I was registered for 20 years, I was so enthusiastic that I immediately started building the model after the renovation, because I found the inspiration in polystyrene foam. had found. I also started writing the plan for the subsidy application and looking for a producer. Richard Valk liked the plan as a producer and by now I had already started filming. But then came a no from the Film Fund twice. It would be too much of an art film and had no storyline with cuddly characters and dialogues. The Mondriaan fund also gave me zero because it would be too much of a cinematic film. Moreover, they also stated that I had no visual language.
The fact was that I was already well on my way by then. Quitting was no longer an option. So keep going until it's done. The film has therefore become somewhat shorter and smaller.
The voice over is an artificial voice. Why did you choose that?
The artificial voice was initially intended as a sketch. Initially I wanted to have a real voice. But there was also something sober about the absolute neutrality of the artificial voice. Something I thought would fit well with the text. Like a newsreader.
Moreover, it was pragmatically very useful as the text was constantly changed right up to the last. Had it been a real voice, it would have meant that many recording sessions that would never have the same timbre. Emma TTS (that's the name of the voice) is, however, absolutely stable and consistent. Plus, it's a zero budget movie.
What is it with that Jacobs-Shell
The scallop shell stands for a number of things. Mythologically, it is the shell from which Venus is born and brought ashore. In Christian iconography, the scallop shell is the attribute of James the Great. The shell owes its name to this. The shell is the emblem of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (Santiago means Saint James) and is generally a symbol for pilgrims. Visibly wearing the shell, with the point upwards, sewn onto the hat or onto the coat, provided protection against brigands, who left the wearers of a code of honour alone.
Furthermore, the scallop shell is used as the logo of an oil company, but the other way around, pointing downwards. As if they themselves indicate that protection and the code of honour no longer apply. It even resembles an explosion and, as used in the poster, I already heard an interpretation that it symbolises the rape of mother earth.
BTW, any resemblance to real logo's, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
I have to admit, because of the zero budget situation I had to skip some scenes.
In the original longer layout, there would be many scallops on a beach, some with a Venus figure. Through those shells we would end up between the underwater ruins.
Then back to the dry world where Venus is born again.
At the end, the shell would come back again, but now empty after Venus stepped away. The shell then turns out to be a fossil with more shells in a sandstone matrix in a display case of a natural history museum. In that museum the wet preserved specimen of the title sequence would also be on display.
How dit you came up with those 'Photors' as you call them?
The darkroom enlargers idea came from a drawing made by Jakop Slegt in 1969. I bought that picture as a 10 year old kid and it hang on the wall of my bedroom for years. Slegt made drawings of fantastic worlds combining industrial- and kind of medieval technology with insects or objects placed out of context and scale. Besides Escher, Dali, Toonder, Moebius and Willink, Slegt was a great inspiration. The Rebirth of Venus film is an hommage to this artist that died without the recognition he deserved. I promised myself as a kid to once set those insect like photo enlargers into motion. So a few years ago I started collecting those Czechoslovakian Meopta Opemus enlagers made between 1940-1945 in order to build them into industrial, insect-like monsters that moved around in my polystyreen Piranesi world. In the 'Developing Machine' as his drawing is titled, the enlargers act like a 3D scanning and printing factory avant la lettre. I tried to do something similar.
What is your next project?
A collection of short stories that together result in the film Spur. Rebirth of Venus is a chapter of Spur. The next chapter is called l'Encorché Combattant about a long-lost children's drawing that links the concept of panspermia to pandemic. Only the subsidy application has just been rejected... So it will also be a shorter short film. Two other Spur film-projects are 'The Last Iceberg' and 'Requiem for a Forest' on the Portugese composer Victor Gama and a forest in Sintra that talks to the locals trough mushrooms.
