''The Treasure of Bird Island'' ( cs, Poklad ptačího ostrova) is a 1953 Czechoslovak animated film directed by

Karel Zeman Karel Zeman (3 November 1910 – 5 April 1989) was a Czech film director, artist, production designer and animator, best known for directing fantasy films combining live-action footage with animation. Because of his creative use of special effec ...

in his feature length debut. The film, based on a Persian fairy tale, was Zeman's first feature-length work. The soundtrack includes verses by

František Hrubín František Hrubín (17 September 1910 – 1 March 1971) was a Czech poet and writer. Frantisek Hrubín was born into the family of a builder at Prague. His family lived in Lešany near Prague during World War I, and Hrubín visited his home ...

, read by children, as well as an original

film score A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...

Zdeněk Liška Zdeněk Liška (16 March 1922 – 13 August 1983) was a Czech composer who produced a large number of film scores across a prolific career that started in the 1950s. He was revelatory in his contribution to the development of electronic music. Hi ...

. The film's style is an experiment in combining two- and three-dimensional animation, including hand-drawn backgrounds and figures animated in

relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the ...

. The production design is based on the traditional manuscript-illustration style of

Persian miniature A Persian miniature (Persian: نگارگری ایرانی ''negârgari Irâni'') is a small Persian painting on paper, whether a book illustration or a separate work of art intended to be kept in an album of such works called a ''muraqqa''. The ...

References

External links

* 1953 animated films 1953 films Films directed by Karel Zeman Czechoslovak animated films Czech animated films Treasure hunt films Films with screenplays by Karel Zeman 1950s Czech-language films 1950s Czech films {{1950s-animation-film-stub