Interview about the film Cryptozoo
The open-air cinema Rehberge is filling up more and more. The director of the film „Cryptozoo“ Dash Shaw is invited on stage to receive the honorable mention for the best feature film from the international jury. After he says a few words about his film and leaves the stage, it gets quiet and the film starts. We walk out of the film with Dash Shaw to ask him a few questions:
fGR (free generation reporter): The whole movie is really incredibly special animated. So first of all, I wanted to ask how was the process of the animation?
Dash Shaw (director): It was first storyboarded. So then the storyboards kind of become the division of labor of how everything is organized. And then there’s a casting process of casting different artists to do different backgrounds. Then it kind of becomes a collage process where you’re taking different things painted by different people and trying to arranging it to make it. They look different from each other. But you try to have it be cohesive.
fGR: Does the time in which the film takes place, have a special meaning? The time of the 1960s with the Vietnam war and the history of California.
Dash Shaw got a fellowship at the New York Public Library, where a couple of other fellows were researching countercultural newspapers from the 1960s. They had an archive at the library, where they had old free weekly newspapers from 1967 from Brazil and Chicago. Dash goes on to tell how these old magazines inspired him:
fGR: The film is very violent. Why did you choose that? And why was that important to you?
Dash Shaw: I wonder about that, because I’m not a horror movie guy. So when I watch it, I’m a little surprised how violent it is. Also Jane (animator) animated a lot of those key things because she painted the cryptids. And so she’s the one who figured out how to animate some of this violence. And she animates quite realistically, even though they’re unusual creatures, anyway.
If the beings are somehow allegorical for imagination, or have kind of radical ideas, how do you introduce radical ideas? In my experience, even if it’s unusual artwork, when they’re put in an exhibit, somehow something about it kills it and these things have to roam free, to be exciting. I definitely didn’t wanted it to be a joke and I wanted it to be kind of painful. So I think that’s maybe why.
fGR: When did you get the idea for the film? Or a moment when you realized that you wanted to make this film.
Dash Shaw: I draw comics too. So when I heard of the Baku and a dream meeting creature, it seemed like a movie idea and not a comic idea. Because movies and art can be dreamlike. I hadn’t seen a Baku in a movie before. So I think that was the moment when I decided to make the movie.
fGR: What was the target audience? Was it planned to be for young people or more for an older generation?
Dash Shaw: I didn’t really think about the age very much. There’s things about it that are mature and then things about it that are immature. But I know lots of immature older people but also mature younger people.
fGR: How long did the realization of the film take, from the idea to it was finished?
Dash Shaw: I started it in 2016. Finishing around the beginning of 2020. So four or five years.
fGR: How did animation and story come together? Did the story come first? Or did the animation also inspire the story?
Dash Shaw: I’d say the story comes first. And then I’m figuring out how to draw it. I know people who doodle and then they get ideas from the drawing. But I usually write things and then figure out how to draw.
During our interview the sky was already turning dark. We thank him for the interview and go back to the film together, because Dash wants to see how the mood is among the audience during his film. We say goodbye and sit down on our seats and enjoy our first time Berlinale this year with audience.
