Home
sign up| features / film interview |
 content by: editor |
 jojo in the stars interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Director Marc Craste on his BAFTA-winning short. “It all stems from a harmless obsession with sideshows,” explains Marc Craste, creator of the BAFTA-winning short, JoJo In The Stars, currently showing at onedotzero08. “I made three one-minute films for the [Studio AKA] website - little sketches with gratuitous violence in them. They then asked me to make a longer film using the same characters, but without any murders. And that took me back to the whole circus thing and doing a love story with freaks.” Those stark little films, which “partly came about as a reaction to 15 years of making commercials”, were set in Pica Towers. A nightmarish monochrome world of robot-like figures with bunny ears, featuring the likes of dominatrix Madame Pica, who also appears in JoJo In The Stars.  JoJo herself is a silver-plated trapeze artist, worshipped from afar by an unnamed figure who learns that love rarely ends happily. It’s a very dark and tragic piece, well deserving of its BAFTA. “I’ve read things that say, ‘Oh he’s been influenced by German Expressionism and Fellini’s La Strada,’” laughs Craste. “But I haven’t. It actually only goes as far back as the early 80s, to Eraserhead and Wings Of Desire.”  Animation is everywhere at the moment, from TV comedy to Japanese anime on big store DVD racks. Does he think its popularity is opening the door to strange new worlds and ways of relating a story? “Suddenly a lot of the software is hands on and affordable,” says Craste. “Even 10 years ago you had to approach people for money to make something. And to get that money you had to have a reasonably solid story that would appeal to lots of people. A lot of that’ now been gotten rid of because of the accessibility of the equipment. If I’d made JoJo 20 years ago it would have been done traditionally and, frankly, I doubt whether I’d have been able to do it.”
Jonathan Carter
onedotzero08 is at the ICA, London, until 06 June 04.
 conversations
Read members' comments.
If you register you can discuss this article with other users. |
 |
related info
 useful linksonedotzero08
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
 onedotzero08film page  onedotzero08preview  onedotzero08discussions books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
access 1000s of articles
