- Kinostarts 30.11.2023 - 29. November 2023
- „Die Sirene“ (2023) - 28. November 2023
- 57. Internationale Hofer Filmtage 2023 - 27. November 2023
The original english language interview is also available.
Erzähl mir bitte mehr zum Ursprung Deines Kurzfilms „Oldboy’s Apples“ – schon der Titel ist mysteriös!
„Oldboy’s Apples“ ist aus einer Kombination von persönlichen Erfahrungen und meinem Interesse an den okkulten Symbolen entstanden, die in alten Mythen und Märchen hinterlassen wurden und mit denen ich gerne spiele, um eine Art Volkstradition fortzuführen. In gewisser Weise kann man sagen, dass ich diese alten Symbole mit den banaleren Aspekten des täglichen Lebens verschmelze und die magischen oder spirituellen Ursprünge einiger unserer einfacheren Rituale, die wir in unserem täglichen Leben ausführen, aufzeige.
Möchtest Du Interpretationshilfe geben? Welche Botschaft steckt in dem Film?
Was lag Dir bei der Figurenausgestaltung am Herzen?
Als ich diesen Film drehte, hatten meine Partnerin Sami Graf und ich drei Hausratten, die die Inspiration für Duddle, die Rattenfigur, waren. Der Hund basiert auf einem echten Hund namens Luna, dem Familienhund von Sami, der auf der Farm ihrer Mutter in Nordkalifornien lebt, und der Teufel oder Oldboy bin ich, oder allgemeiner gesagt, eine Darstellung der Menschheit. Ich habe ihre Skelette aus Kugelpfannen-Armaturen gebaut, und Sami hat sie mit Filz und Fell überzogen, man könnte also sagen, dass die Figuren aus einer Kombination unserer beiden Welten stammen.
Großartig ist auch die Musik – erzähl mir bitte mehr dazu!
Kannst Du mir noch ein bisschen von dir erzählen und wie Du zum Film gekommen bist?
Sind bereits neue Projekte geplant?
Die Fragen stellte Doreen Matthei
Übersetzung von Michael Kaltenecker
Lies auch die Rezension des Kurzfilms „Oldboy’s Apples“
Interview: In our conversation with American director Brad Hock, we were able to learn more about his stop-motion film “Oldboy’s Apples“, which screened at the 28th Slamdance Film Festival, why he included which characters, and what interpretive guidance he gives viewers for this wonderful animated film.
Please tell me more about the origin of your short film “Oldboy’s Apples” – even the title is mysterious!
“Oldboy’s Apples” has emerged through a combination of personal experiences and my interest in the occult symbols left behind in ancient myths and fairy tales that I like to play around with as a continuation of a sort of folk tradition. In a way you can say I am fusing these old symbols with the more mundane aspects of everyday life, showing the magical or spiritual origins of some of our more simple rituals we perform in our daily lives.
Would you like to give some interpretation help? What is the message of the film?
There are a few levels of interpretation in this story. Some are designed to give individual meaning to the viewer based on their relationship with the symbols being used that are derived from the oldest of tales. I won’t say much about that because I feel it is for the viewer to discover on their own, but I will say the history and origin of the word apple along with the number seven are a good place to start. However, on the surface there is also a simple message that can get across to anyone. That message is to treasure the life around us, and to embrace the others we share our spaces with. Whether it is through a meal or the sharing of some tea, these seemingly simple acts can create or bring to light important bonds we share with each other, even if they come from a Rat or a Devil.
What was close to your heart when creating the characters?
During the time I made this film my partner Sami Graf and I had three pet rats that were the inspiration for Duddle who is the Rat character. As for the Dog, she is based on a real dog named Luna, which is Sami’s family dog that lives on her mothers farm in Northern California, and the Devil or Oldboy is me, or more broadly a representation of humanity. I built their skeletons from ball socket armatures, and Sami covered them in felt and fur, so you could say the characters come from a combination of both our worlds.
The music is also great – please tell me more about it!
Originally I was working on a much longer version of this film when my good friend and former roommate Zach Johnston, also known as Sonntag, sent me a copy of a new album “Songs For Little John” that he had recently finished. It was cold and raining outside and I sat there and listened to the album all the way through, and was immediately inspired to take the pieces of that story I was working on and form them around some of the songs in the album. I finished the storyboard roughly a week later, so in a way you could say the music was what formed the structure of the film. Later on there were some changes made and new parts of the score were needed so ‘Pep Magic’ which is the score composing team of Zach Johnston and Matteo Roberts completed an original track to open up the film. People really seem to respond to the music in this piece, and I have to say it almost feels like a character in the film at times with the level of interplay it has with the other characters.
Can you tell me a bit more about yourself and how you got into film?
I’ve always loved animation, and in particular stop motion. I grew up watching Ray Harryhausen films and was always blown away by the unique sensibilities that his monsters brought to the screen. I was also hugely inspired by the film “Triplets of Belleville” by Sylvain Chomet that was shown to me by an art teacher in high school and was the first film that really opened up my mind to the possibilities of what animation can do in regards to silent storytelling and breaking the language barrier. That film was probably what got me started studying hand drawn animation and storyboarding in college. For a long time I mainly produced boards, and a few years after I got out of college I began to move my interest back towards stop motion and started slowly teaching myself. I wanted to make something that felt like magic and to me stop motion is the perfect medium to get that across. I think I have the inspirations of Yuri Norstein, Jan Svankmajer, and more recently Emma De Swaef to thank for my obsession with the craft. Also wanting to work with my partner Sami Graf who is an incredible miniature artist and printmaker now turned herbalist who deeply inspired this film and helped teach me many of the miniature effects I used to make it.
Are there any new projects already planned?
I am currently working on a story that I only recently finished writing in its rough form. I tend to work things out as a short story written as a first person singular narrative, and then later convert that into a storyboard that I use to work out the details of the animation. I feel this technique allows me to keep the workflow in a more poetic state as I figure out how to visualize it leaving a few things up to chance so the story can grow while it’s in production. I’m calling it “Cayuga” and it’s a story in the genre of magical realism about a farmer who finds himself on a barren farm covered by a dense fog with an unfamiliar iridescent duck living among his chickens that sets him off on a journey through many strange and unsettling experiences. My hope is to use this story to dive deeper into the realm of stop motion.
Questions asked by Doreen Matthei
Read on the german review of the short film “Oldboy’s Apples“