Earlier this year, world-famous cartoonist and filmmaker Max Andersson screened his first feature-length film Tito on Ice at the Seattle International Film Festival. And now, Tito on Ice is taking on Canada with screenings at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in September!
Catch this inventive documentary on Thursday, September 19th and Sunday, September 22nd at the Empire Theatres in the World Exchange Plaza [ 111 Albert Street ].
To promote their Fantagraphics book Bosnian Flat Dog, Andersson and fellow Swedish artist Lars Sjunnesson toured the countries of former Yugoslavia with a mummified Marshal Tito in a refrigerator.
Now comes the documentary, Tito on Ice, which takes Super 8 footage of their tour and animates it with cardboard cutouts and garbage and other recycled materials. The result is a surreal trip through the Balkans that is part promotion, part performance art, and part history of Marshal Tito and the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. It’s also about the underground arts and music venues that popped up when the country split apart.
Through it all there is a comics creator’s eye at work: live-action interviews suddenly switch to animation, and more than 50 sets were built for the film, all shot and animated on Super 8 film. Tito on Ice is a joyous trip through the war torn subconscious of an underground artist.