The Last Matador
Despite the practical problems and quarantines of the corona spring, our Prague-based team managed to create a new puppet animation for adult and adolescent audiences. The Last Matador is now in the final stage of postproduction, estimated to be ready in September 2020.
Michal Kubicek, who worked for the first time with Katariina Lillqvist during her previous film Radio Dolores, was the animator; our warmly welcomed colleague Alan Soural was the new photographer and the postproduction was in the professional hands of Signal Generator´s Jan Turek. We also established a new cooperation with the Prague-based Kreus Film, who was our technical supplier as well as the landlord of the wider studio shots. Warm thanks also for Lama Lights!
Our puppet team senior was the Prague armature magician Ondrej Zika, who created the special props too. Puppet artist Erja Mikkola from Tampere, Finland, sculptured the surreal and witty, almost photorealistic heads of our heroes. Sonja Markova and Eva Jirsova acted this time as visiting puppet makers, creating the Sad Mouse. And Helena Zikova made all the costumes, including the Matador´s real costume in miniature scale. Thanks to Polish Momakin studio also for the latex hands with their five fingers- a small but important change, which may surprise the old-school puppet film connoisseurs in the beginning a bit.
From the deep archives of Jerzy Podolka´s music company Pohodli we received our unique mariachi sounds as well as the Soviet schlagers of the Thirties, and last but not least, some great accordion solos of our long-term film musician Alec Kopyt. The solos were edited from his new album " Poza" produced by Pohodli studio, and our plan is also to have a series of live performances with Alec´s orchestra together with our film screenings in the future, thus celebrating our 25 years of artistic cooperation together. We hope also to have Suistamon Sähkö onboard on the tour some day- a fantastic new etnotechno ensemble from Finland who gave us their kind permission to use their avantgardish sounds during our space pictures.
New film is the 20th animation written and directed by Katariina Lillqvist, with Film Cooperative Cagliostro as a main producer and three indie companies from Sweden, Czech and Spain as co-producers: Zigedaire Animations, studio Mamiwata and FilmsIFotos. Production support was also received from AVEK, SES and Finnish Cultural Foundation.
The Last Matador is also an experimental art project. Beside of the animation, we are developing a street-theatre version of the script with bunraku-puppets, and with the legendary Finnish graphic artist Juho Juntunen an cartoon album is on it´s way too.
We also send our best greetings to our Barcelonian-based producer Agusti Argelich, thus remembering his warm support through this extraordinary production. Which in fact happens in his Catalonian hometown!
But all this would not have been possible without our major source of inspiration. So the final bow belongs to...The Last Matador.
Contact
katariina.lillqvist(a)gmail.com
