Chinese cartoon movie flutters its wings for Oscar
The short film has no lyrics and uses ancient instruments to create the background music thatruns throughout the movie. Composed of gongbi-style Chinese paintings, which usually depictbirds and flowers - symbols of beauty and joy - in an artistic manner with intense colors, thefilm brings these paintings alive, China Daily reports.
The first half of the movie shows birds perching and preying on other animals and in the lasthalf a gun is pointed at a bird and then a gunshot is heard. The movie ends with the screenshowing a hole in a gongbi painting.
Some of the famous ancient Chinese paintings referenced in the film include GoldenPheasant and Peony by Emperor Huizong (1082-1135) of Song Dynasty (1127-1279), andBird and Perch by Lin Chun.
Director Yang Chun, who is also the scriptwriter and painter, said that in an effort to revivethese ancient paintings, each move, including twisting of head and spreading of wings,needed to be done by freehand sketching. In the end, Yang painted tens of thousands ofpaintings for the film.
Apart from that, the color modulation was also quite complicated, andhad to spend hours just to get the right tone on a leaf.
The film has been screened in an art cinema in Los Angeles and will contend for the Oscar'sBest Animated Short Film in January next year.
