I saw this film on Saturday - the SBS channel on TV here in Australia shows short films every Sat night, and I enjoy watching it. They usually have some pretty weird and wonderful shorts, but also, they show stuff from around the world. I haven’t kept up with the show lately, but happened to catch a bit of it this past weekend. I’m so glad I did.

Because I saw Madame Tutli-Putli. The story is of a woman who gets on a train, and how she has a frightening experience on it. It’s done practically without language. At first I thought it was stop-motion (a la Wallace and Gromit), but then I started thinking it was just too refined, too enigmatic, too emotional (her eyes, her eyes… they convey so much emotion, and do so much!) to be real. It has to be CGI. The story, music, and characters were all really fascinating to watch, and unfortunately I missed the opening credits so I had to figure out what the name of the short was… So I went online and found the site… and what do you know: it is stop motion!

This is a Cannes award-winning film, so do check it out, it’s worth your time. It’s so hard to believe that this stuff was all hand made (for insight, check out the info at the above website under ‘The Film’ section, in particular the ‘Special Effects’ page too, where they discuss their innovative work on the eyes, which is in actual fact, a combination of human performance and puppetry… wow, no wonder the eyes are so expressive!), with months of hard work going into building everything, and then two years spent on filming. The Madame herself is wire and feathers according to the website! The photo gallery itself is worth a visit too.

Here’s the trailer… I wish it had more, but there’s a whole bunch of videos on Youtube about the animation, with interviews and behind the scenes stuff. 

Want more? Help build a puppet!