The Cartoon d’Or evening is
sponsored by:
Breakout
Directed by: Arnaud Demuynck
Co-directed by: Gilles Cuvelier and Gabriel Jacquel
Belgium, 2007, 9’
Original title: “L’Evasion”
Traditional drawing / Computer 2D
Prod.: La Boîte,… Productions / Les Films du Nord / Frits GCV / CRRAV
A man is in prison. His cell companion is tortured to death. When the guards come for him, he manages to escape them. By this desperate attempt, he reaches the roof of the building. From the watchtowers, a soldier threatens him: then the prisoner expresses all the measurement of his freedom.
Arnaud Demuynck
After having written several original scenarios for fiction and animated films, in 2000 with L’Ecluse (The Lock) Arnaud Demuynck set out to direct a “choreographic fiction”. In 2001 he decided to focus exclusively on animation and directed his “choreographic trilogy”: Signs of Life (2004), The Shadow of the Veil (2006) and Breakout (2007). While also pursuing his career as a producer of short films, which he considers as a vital genre for animation (see his catalogue at www.euroanima.net), he began, in 2007, to develop a series, Par les fenêtres (Through the windows), inspired by 19th century poets. In 2008, he co-writes his first full-length film Le Vilain Petit Chartreux (The Naughty Little Chartreux), with director Fabrice Luang-Vija. It was again with this other animation enthusiast that he set up www.toondra.com in 2006, the first website entirely devoted to selling short animated films on line.
«Breakout is the last film in my “Choreographic Trilogy” begun four years ago with Signs of Life. In this first short animated film, I recounted the story of a young woman who rediscovered her love for life after a bereavement. I used dance to express intensely several emotive states that need to be experienced in order to overcome the confrontation with death: depression, abandonment, revolt, before finally coming to terms with life and being released from her morbid state. Freedom or the freeing of the spirit is the theme central to what was to become my “Choreographic Trilogy”. In Breakout, it is from a state of incarceration that the prisoner needs to “escape”, thus toying with the limits of my exploration of freedom. It is the story of a man condemned by a military regime. He knows he can no longer physically escape from prison. I have always admired the moral strength that political prisoners need to have in order to resist and uphold their convictions. This film is a tribute to the spiritual strength of these men whose freedom to think cannot be constrained, even when behind bars. Dance could also express here the vital power of a man experiencing an absolute existential test. He defies power by means of a symbolic gesture that freezes his enemies in their rigidity. The soldiers, whose spiritual impotence is exposed, have no alternative but to gun down and release this bird who cannot be caged.»