What better time to entice the kids with original cinematography? Like the playful dance of colour and movement in My mother is a plane? Or amazingly frolicking marbles that even roll across the ceiling? Or strange shadows that put your imagination to work? Well, for instance, when it's May holidays, you have to stay home a lot and online classes are on hold for a while. I took a look myself and was surprised.
Look, wonder and do
So flip open that laptop, go to Pie robbers at home and watch, marvel and do. The Tartrovers gang, as I call it, is usually active in movie theatres and schools with the Tartrovers Film Festival and associated educational activities.
As corona swirls around, Taartrovers recently went online. A couple of new short films every week, suitable for toddlers and pre-schoolers aged three and up. With craft suggestions and other hints (also for parents) to get started with each film.
Although I don't have the target audience over, I was still curious. I did not venture into folding aeroplanes with a drawing of mum or dad on them. But I enjoyed watching the films themselves. It proves once again that artistic quality and fantasy are not age-related.
Russian animation art
Like, for example, the TIFF-Kids (Toronto) award-winning My mother is a plane, by Russian animation artist Yulia Aronova. A feast of imagination, in which little Pyotr flies around the world at the hand of his airplane-shaped mother. Seemingly simple 2D animation, drawn in a loose but expressive picture-book style that really makes you want to do it yourself.
Shadow play
An even more direct invitation is the ultra-short Magic with light by Belgian filmmaker Vincent Bal (Minoes, Nono the Zigzag child). In this context, he calls himself a 'shadowologist'. In no more than 1 minute, he shows how to use everyday objects and light and shadow to create unexpected visual jokes and representations. A kind of shadow-doodles. Ball has many more, to be found on his instagram and youtube.
The Taartrovers site shows how little Taartrover Sieuwe suddenly saw an elephant in a tape roll.
And what about that strange, cube-shaped room in Sally, in which marbles mysteriously get rolling and even defy gravity. Tartrovers encourages children to use marbles, balls and cardboard to make their own rolling game. My suggestion: try thinking about how Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters made this little film. It is not difficult. If you get the hang of it, maybe you can do it yourself!
Charming and beautifully animated is also the animal adventure Picnic with cake, a free adaptation of Thé Tjong-Khing's picture book of the same name. Or see what you can do when you clear out the junk attic, as in Evi & Co. Parents beware! Before you know it, young viewers will have turned your books, CDs, videotapes and other household items into a fall-down job.
Good to knowOn 29 April, as another special surprise, Taartrovers is hosting the home premiere of Zwaantje treats. Children whose birthday is in the May holidays can have a treat.
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