Lost in the Stacks:

Yesterday I re-re-discovered Karel Zeman during my continued adventures in cataloging my animation collection. I first discovered Karel Zeman because of the Marshal Plan and Fred Ladd`s serialization of his Journey to the Beginning of Time. (thank you Fred, you made my childhood) I use to run home from the bus stop in order to get to the TV in time to see your next episode.

I re-discovered Zeman one magic Saturday afternoon when I was about 17 years old, and my local station played The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. It blew me away. And it still does all these years later.



If you have never seen this masterpiece of visual storytelling you have missed a real treat. The entire film looks like an engraving come to life. Sets and props were created with etching lines as part of their surface and the film was processed through lined filters to give everything a turn-of-the-century steal plate engraved look. Zeman makes Jules Verne come alive as if his stories jump right off the pages of a first edition.

It saddens me that almost nobody today knows about Karel Zeman. I make sure I always show his films to my Animation History classes. He did stop motion, crane and wire work, cut out animation, hand puppets, multicolor hand tinted black and white film, anything that would tell the story.

Amazon lists the following Zeman selections as available :

The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
On the Comet
Original Fabulous Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Karel Zeman

and

Journey to the Beginning of Time
Journey to the Beginning of Time

I have all of these films in my collection and I have a sneaking suspicion that the same is true for Terry Gilliam. He might lean a little more toward Munchausen but Fabulous World of Jules Verne is always my favorite,