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In STILL LIFE WITH ANIMATED DOGS, Paul Ferlinger's touching autobiographical stories are sprinkled with sly humor and philosophical musings.
On nature, dogs and communication:Read some excerpts from the film and the filmmaker's proposal in "Paul's Prose" or "Arrf Imitates Life." I think that we are all born with a pre- disposition to become connected with nature. In that case, we humans should have the same ability as animals do - to communicate with each other through our senses alone. It's just that somewhere along the line, we lost the practice. It seems to me that we all go through life naively imagining that everyone's mind works the same way as ours. In this manner, everyone is creating relationships with each other, which are based purely on imagination. I had to go through several dogs before I realized that to better understand their behavior, I had to first curb my own imagination. On observation: To understand almost anything, be it the seeming complexities of art or the subtleties of nature, one must begin by acquiring a keen sense of observation. Therein lies the message of my film. On animals, animation and Elmer's Glue: If the waves upon waves of Disney-esque films flooding the minds of huge audiences since the early '30s have caused the anthropomorphizing of animals, these films have caused an equal amount of damage to the public's perception of the arts - namely the art of animation. The onslaught of commercial television's talking animals and dancing teapots has molded the viewer's senses into the pliability and sparkle of Elmer's Glue. I'm reverberating with frustration and dying to counteract, because I've been trying to animate real dogs and real people for close to 40 years. Many of my own renderings of dogs have been bent towards the "cute" by the relentless demands of commercial clients and unpaid bills. An animated film should be as refreshing a sight as matching, on a wall, a Paul Klee painting with a Francisco de Goya drawing. The humor in detailing a life with a dog can be both simple yet elegant and as truthful as a story written and illustrated by James Thurber. |
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 Story | Animation | Wag The Dog | Fido Facts | Postcards | Dog Tales |
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