Notes on the film
Inspirace (Inspiration) is a remarkable achievement in stop motion and replacement animation with glass. The film begins and ends with live-action scenes of a glass artist, who finds inspiration in the drizzling rain outside of his glass window. Glistening droplets become a portal into enchanting aquatic and snowy scenes animated with glass. An underwater landscape turns into a surreal icescape setting for a commedia dell’arte performance. The archetype characters of Columbine and Pierrot skate on ice – a courtship dance resulting in Pierrot’s spurning, the end of the fantasy, and a return to the artist in his studio. The cold and unapproachable Columbine, as well as the scene around her, are made of glass. The mortal and quivering Pierrot, in contrast, is the film’s sole outlier constructed from strings.
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Throughout Inspirace, glass is connected to the fluidity of water and the crystalline brilliance of ice.
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Throughout Inspirace, glass is connected to the fluidity of water and the crystalline brilliance of ice.
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Throughout Inspirace, glass is connected to the fluidity of water and the crystalline brilliance of ice.
The artist’s gaze through his window and through a raindrop into a fantasy world introduces the film’s playful approach to translucence and reflection. Glass ornaments populate the underwater world creating a strange sense of solidity to an aquatic landscape, a reminder of the fluid nature of glass during its manufacture. Moving to the surface of this watery stage, the film settles into a performance on ice with glass figurines acting as the story’s protagonists, elaborately choreographed and with a sophisticated interplay of light and reflection. The mise-en-scene is altered with warping images and shimmering backgrounds, likely achieved with the help of off-camera glass filters, lights, and mirrors.
Snapshots of the animation process from Inspirace, with animator Arnošt Kupčik on the left. Image from the film Film Adventurer Karel Zeman.
The film is a celebration of mid-century Czechoslovakian glass craftsmanship, championing the beauty of its famed Bohemian Crystal through a marriage with avant-garde animation. The glass figurines and their different animation poses were overseen by glassmaker Jaroslav Brychta and his students. Yet, produced under restrictive communist rule, landlocked and isolated from Western European neighbours, this film and its fantasy of a seaside winter wonderland is also a lament for a broader unrestricted horizon.
Snapshots of the animation process from Inspirace, with animator Arnošt Kupčik on the left. Image from the film Film Adventurer Karel Zeman.
Czech Glass-working
To read further on the topic of Czech glass-working, check out this article by Marta Filipová, Czech Glass or Bohemian Crystal? The Nationality of Design in the Czech Context.
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