Portland! It's finally your chance to see the debut feature-length film Tito on Ice by world-famous cartoonist and filmmaker Max Andersson!
After rave screenings in Seattle, Ottawa, and Vancouver, you can see how fantastic this is for yourself at the 37th Annual Portland International Film Festival this weekend!
Screenings are scheduled for Sunday, February 9th at 3:00 PM at Cinemagic, and on Sunday, February 16th at 1:00 PM at Cinema 21 (small theaters).
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.