Thursday, July 07, 2005
Rare Mexican Animation to be Preserved
The Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood, by a unanimous vote, agreed last night to undertake the first phase of the preservation of a one of a kind Mexican animation. ASIFA will be funding the copying of the elements from a rare deteriorating nitrate print while it is still in a condition to be copied.
ASIFA may be a lot of hard work but times like these make me really proud to be a part of the Executive Board of this origination.
The film, "Las Abejas" (The Bees), is the only known color print of a two-color 1930s Mexican sound animation and is currently part of Mark Kausler collection. I found out about this endangered work while talking to Mark about his upcoming program at Comic Con. Here is Mark`s statement about The Bees.
Hi Larry,
Here is the story in a nutshell about "Las Abejas" (The Bees). I have a nitrate print of this Mexican cartoon in an early two-color process (1930s) that I first showed to Jere Guldin at UCLA archives about 3 years ago.
Jere contacted Mexican film archives and they only held a b/w print of the film, the color print being extremely rare. The print is brittle and old, but got through Jere's Steenbeck OK.
The story is a little like the bee section of Jean Image's feature cartoon: "Johnny the Giant Killer" (Jeannot L'intrepide). The nursery section of the hive is shown with wax cradles and baby bees inside. The villain was a wasp.
I think Jere was awaiting word of possible funding for the preservation of this cartoon from the Mexican State Film Archives. There was talk of combining the b/w footage with the color, as there were frames missing here and there. So far, nothing further has happened.
It would be great to see this subject preserved, as it seems to be one of the few surviving examples extant of an early Mexican cartoon in sound and color. I would give you more information about the filmmakers, but the print is in storage right now.
Best Regards,
Mark
It makes me very proud to have had a small hand in helping to save this rare bit of animation history.
