Blood Tea and Red String

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Movie
German title Blood Tea and Red String
Original title Blood Tea and Red String
Country of production United States
Publishing year 2006
length 71 minutes
Rod
Director Christiane Cegavske
script Christiane Cegavske
production Christiane Cegavske
music Mark Growden
camera Christiane Cegavske
cut Christiane Cegavske

Blood Tea and Red String is an animated film by Christiane Cegavske from the year 2006 . It is set in a fairy tale land and is about a group of creatures who live under an oak tree and are given the task of making a puppet by three mice. However, the oak dwellers fall in love with the completed doll and deny it to the mice, whereupon the mice steal it. The oak dwellers then go on a journey to get the doll back.

The film was shot over a period of twelve years using stop-motion technology and does not require any dialogue; the soundtrack was created by Mark Growden .

action

The focus of the plot are four furry "creatures who dwell under the oak" ( Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak ) and one day three white mice in a turtle carriage visit them. The mice instruct them to make a puppet based on a portrait of a woman. However, when the oak dwellers have finished the doll, they can no longer part with it and reject the mice. They sew an egg into the doll that the stream washed ashore next to their home, then they fasten the doll over their front door. However, the mice steal the doll that night and kidnap it into their house. When the oak dwellers notice the theft, three of them set out to get them back.

On the way they come to an enchanted garden, from whose fruits they eat. They fall into a deep sleep and are devoured by carnivorous plants, but they are saved by a magic frog, who takes them to his hut and gives them to eat before they move on. While the oak dwellers roam the country, the mice dine with the puppet, drink blood-red tea and play cards. A bird-eating spider finally shows the oak dwellers the way to the house of the mice. There a bird with its face hatches out of the doll's belly and flees through the window. The oak inhabitants follow him and find him lifeless in the web of the spider, who exchanges him for one of the enchanted fruits. They bring him to the frog's hut, but the frog cannot do anything for the bird either. In the meantime, two of the mice have fallen asleep, the third looks for the spider with the doll and exchanges the mice's turtle for a few feathers from the bird. Then she makes her way to the oak.

There the fur animals bury the bird by letting it be carried away by the stream. In the meantime, the two mice wake up and go looking for their friend. However, they only find the turtle in the spider's threads and snatch the animal away from it. The third mouse arrives at the oak dweller's house and gives them the doll. But when the other two mice also reach the oak, there is an argument about the doll, which then breaks. The oak inhabitants give them back to the mice, who then return to their house.

production

Turn

Cegavske began filming Blood Tea and Red String after graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute in June 1993 . She financed the film without third-party funding and shot the shots with a Bolex camera in 16 mm format . She made the 30 cm tall figures by hand, expanding and changing the script with each additional figure. She recorded most of the scenes in her home at the time, a warehouse in San Francisco . In total, the work on the stop-motion production took around twelve years, although Cergavske also pursued other projects, such as working on Asia Argento's film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things . The folk musician Mark Growden from San Francisco was responsible for the soundtrack of Blood Tea and Red String , mainly using flutes with which the play of the film characters was underlaid.

publication

Blood Tea and Red String premiered on February 3, 2006 at the San Francisco Indiefest . As a result, it was shown at a number of other independent film festivals, such as Sitges 2006 and the Weekend of Fear 2007. In Germany, it was first shown on July 20, 2010 on television.

Reviews

In the reviews, the influence of the Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer on Cegavske's work was pointed out several times . The style of the film has been described as grotesque, fairytale-like and dark at the same time. Blood Tea and Red String received little attention, but the judgments were consistently positive:

"A wordless stop-motion-animated feature shot on 16-millimeter film, 'Blood Tea and Red String' is wondrously obsolete, a scruffy rebuttal to the digital suavity and celebrity shenanigans of the Pixar era."

"As a wordless 16-millimeter movie," Blood Tea and Red String "is miraculously unfashionable, an unadorned antithesis to digital artistry and the celebrity cult of the Pixar era ."

- Nathan Lee, New York Times

"Often grotesque, though never in the 'Sick and Twisted' juvenile gross-out mode, dreamlike feature is as lovingly crafted as it is unsettlingly sour-sweet, with Mark Growden's avant-garde folk score in perfect synch."

“This film is - often grotesque, if never on the sick and crazy pubescent disgust tour - made as lovable as it is at the same time disturbing in a bittersweet way. Mark Growden's avant-garde folk music moves in perfect harmony. "

- Dennis Harvey, Variety

Awards

Blood Tea and Red String won the audience award and the award for best animated film at the San Francisco Indiefest 2006. Christiane Cegavske received the award for best director at the Spudfest in the same year . At the 2006 Fantasia Film Fest in Montreal , Blood Tea and Red String came second in the audience rating.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Blood Tea and Red String. www.sfinide.com, 2006. Retrieved August 11, 2010.
  2. ↑ Mitch Davis: Blood Tea and Red String. www.fantasiafest.com, 2006. Retrieved August 11, 2010.
  3. ^ A b Christiane Cegavske: Blood Tea and Red String. www.christianecegavske.com. Retrieved August 10, 2010.
  4. ^ Nathan Lee: Blood Tea and Red String (2006). A Dark Tale of White Mice, Sylvan Creatures and a Stolen Goddess. New York Times , October 4, 2006.
  5. ↑ Dennis Harvey: SF Indie Fest: Blood Tea and Red String.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. www.variety.com, February 23, 2006. Retrieved August 12, 2010.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.variety.com