Frédéric Back, Filmmaker
By Charles Solomon

Charles Solomon is an internationally respected critic and historian of animation.


"You don't count money or time or anything else when you make a film," says Frédéric Back. "Animation is a folie amoureuse, something that comes from your heart."

Back's belief in that "folie" has translated into a purity of vision, a grace of motion and a gentle but unflinching honesty that have made him one of the artists most admired by other animators. "Back's films are a tonic against the smarmy cynicism that has taken over many of today's animated films," comments Monsters, Inc. director Pete Docter. "His work demonstrates how emotionally powerful animation can be. Back reminds us of the essential but often forgotten need for a simple connection with the natural world and the people around us."

Pres Romanillos, whose work includes Shan Yu in Disney's Mulan, adds, "Frédéric's work is masterful, beautiful and, more importantly, inspires others to do better. That inspiration is a challenge we cannot afford to ignore." Hungarian animator Marcell Jankovics summed up the consensus within the animation community when he called Back, "one of the few poets our medium has produced."

Back's interest in animation was sparked by a screening of Walt Disney's Fantasia shortly after World War II. "The 'Rite of Spring' sequence gave me the impetus to discover what animation can do," he recalls. "That was the least Disneyesque section of the film-it wasn't so cute and caricature-y. The drama of the music was so well expressed that it made me want to get into animation.'' In 1963-64 he received a Canada Council grant to study film and animation in Europe, and in 1968 Hubert Tison invited Back to join the newly created film animation studio at the CBC/Radio-Canada.

Back's early films, which combine cels, cut-outs and drawings on paper, reveal his initial explorations of ideas and visual styles he would develop more fully in his mature works. Abracadabra (1970), made in collaboration with Graeme Ross, tells the story of an evil wizard who steals the sun but is defeated by a group of children. He would express his belief in the honesty and perception of children more fully in Illusion? and Taratata!

Back drew on Native American legends for his first solo efforts. En effet, Inon or The Conquest of Fire (Inon ou La Conquête du feu, 1971) depicts the Algonquin tale of how Hawk and Beaver stole fire from the Thunder God, Inon, to alleviate mankind's suffering. In The Creation of Birds (La Création des oiseaux, 1973), the Mi'kmaq god Glooscap fashions birds from fallen autumn leaves: a miracle that recurs each spring when the birds return to the branches of the trees where they were fledged. Both films showcase Back's graceful drawing style and celebrate the beauties of nature. The elegant deer in Creation are the graphic ancestors of the forest creatures in All Nothing (Tout-rien) and Crac!.

In Illusion? (1975) and Taratata! (1977), Back began to explore the theme of the false seductions and unsatisfying overabundance of modern industrialized society. In both films, children reject an artificial urban environment for the unsullied world of nature. Illusion? was the first film composer Norman Roger scored for Back: Their collaboration would continue through nearly two decades and six films.

Back found his artistic voice in animation when he began drawing in coloured pencil on frosted cels, a technique that enabled him to transfer the grace and elegance of his personal drawing style to the screen. This simple yet demanding technique produced a shimmering world of delicate pastels, rather than the hard outlines and areas of flat color of traditional 2-D animation. All Nothing (Tout-rien, 1980), a moving plea for ecological sanity done on frosted cels, earned Back his first Oscar® nomination. Bill Scott, a veteran of the Warner Bros., UPA and Jay Ward studios, called All Nothing "the one animated film everyone should be required to see."

"All Frédéric's animation is done on frosted cels, and the drawings are very, very small, but the detail's in them; they're not minimalist," adds award-winning director Bob Kurtz. "When they appear on the screen, everything's there. Each individual drawing is beautiful, yet they animate. Obviously he's a magical artist, but you just can't believe one man can do all this. There are so few one-man filmmakers, and he's at the top."

Crac! (1981) was inspired by an essay his daughter wrote about an old rocking chair. In the film, a farmer carves the rocker as a gift for his fiancée at the beginning of the 20th century. They sit in the chair at their wedding, and rock their newborn children in it. As the children grow, the chair becomes an indoor playground, and a resting place for the farmer as he ages. It provides a place for the farmer and the audience to watch the changes the century brings to life in rural Quebec-not all of them for the better. Crac! won the Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film in 1982, along with two dozen festival prizes.

For his next film, Back returned to an idea he had been nurturing for nearly 15 years. When he became active in ecological causes during the late '60s, he was moved by The Man Who Planted Trees (L'Homme qui plantait des arbres), Jean Giono's account of Elzéard Bouffier, a shepherd who transformed a barren region of Provence into a fertile countryside by planting hundreds of thousands of oak trees over the course of decades.

"I felt The Man Who Planted Trees was a story everyone should know," Back explains. "It's not just about trees, but about a way of understanding our role in life and in nature. We are born into beauty and riches. We should preserve or replace that legacy so that the generations to come will receive something at least as beautiful, if not more beautiful, than what we found. The film is about the power each of us has to improve or to destroy."

Back drew the first storyboards for the film in 1979, and continued to develop them while he made All Nothingv and Crac! Working with a single assistant, he began the film in 1982, and describes its creation as "a five-year rush." In contrast to the frantic pace of recent animated films, The Man Who Planted Trees (1987) unfolds at a measured pace, supported by Roger's subtle score. "I deliberately went against the usual pace of animation to emphasize the mood, rather than the movement," Back explains. "It's very difficult to sustain, as the tempo seems almost like slow motion. But the speed is actually very close to the rate of real movement."

Widely acclaimed as Back's masterpiece, The Man Who Planted Trees won an Academy Award® and forty prizes from film festivals. Screenings of the film have inspired tree-planting campaigns around the world. John Lasseter, the Oscar®-winning director of the Toy Story films, says, "The Man Who Planted Trees is one of greatest motion pictures ever made, regardless of technique or length. I've showed it so many times to people, and every time, the audience cries. And I look forward to seeing it every single time. When the movie industry has ended, that film will stand as one of finest motion pictures ever made at any time and in any technique."

Back's last film, The Mighty River (Le Fleuve aux grandes eaux, 1992), traces the interaction of humans with the St. Lawrence River over the course of the centuries. By the time it was completed, the CBC/Radio-Canada animation studio had closed, a victim of budget cutbacks. The Mighty River brought Back his fourth Oscar® nomination and a score of festival prizes.

Since retiring from Radio-Canada after completing The Mighty River, Back has remained active, illustrating books, planting trees and working for ecological causes.

Reflecting on his animation career, Back comments with characteristic modesty, "It was a privilege to be able to address such important themes with the help of fabulous technology, the cooperation of the talented musician Norman Roger, and the support and advice of Hubert Tison. I only regret not having more talent, not being a Picasso or a Braque, not for myself, but to show more people the potential beauty of the art of animation and its power as a teaching tool. I hope that my success offers encouragement to others. The world needs their creations."

As Back suggests, animation may be a "folie amoureuse," but his love for the animated film is something he shares with the hearts of artists and audiences all over the world. Ultimately, it is his love that elevates an often denigrated form of filmmaking to the level of art, in the truest sense of the term.
 

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