''The Monk and the Fish'' (french: Le Moine et le poisson) is a 1994

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

made by

Michaël Dudok de Wit Michaël Dudok de Wit (; born 15 July 1953) is a Dutch animator, director and illustrator based in London. He won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for '' Father and Daughter'' (2000) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best ...

at the studio

Folimage Folimage is a French animation studio, based in Bourg-lès-Valence, Drôme, France. It was founded in 1981 by Jacques-Rémy Girerd. The studio produces animation films for cinema and TV (short films, TV specials and series, feature films). In 199 ...

Plot

Standing next to a water reservoir in a monastery enclave, a monk sees a fish and goes to get his net to catch it. The fish eludes him and the monk gets rather agitated as he tries increasingly extreme ways of catching the fish. He gets into the pond himself, and enlists the help of other monks; he tries candles, and a bow and arrow to no avail. The more the fish manages to evade him, the more obsessed the monk gets. He follows the fish out of the pond into a canal, through different landscapes and out of the confines of the monastery. Eventually the chase gets less frantic and the monk and the fish move in harmony. They float through a door into the open space and drift off into the sky together.

Production

The film was made using a

Traditional animation Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until computer animation. Proce ...

technique; Nowadays, Hand-drawn animation is often assisted by computers with digital ink and paint or an graphics tablet, but this has been made in the traditional way using

brush A brush is a common tool with bristles, wire or other filaments. It generally consists of a handle or block to which filaments are affixed in either a parallel or perpendicular orientation, depending on the way the brush is to be gripped durin ...

, Indian ink, and

watercolour Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

. The specially created music score, by Serge Besset, is based on ''La Follia'' by

Arcangelo Corelli Arcangelo Corelli (, also , , ; 17 February 1653 – 8 January 1713) was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era. His music was key in the development of the modern genres of sonata and concerto, in establishing the preeminence of ...

Reception

It was nominated for the

Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year ...

at the

67th Academy Awards The 67th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) took place on March 27, 1995, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the cer ...

and Best Short Animated Film at the

48th British Academy Film Awards The 48th British Academy Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1995, honoured the best films of 1994. Mike Newell's ''Four Weddings and a Funeral'' won the award for Best Film. It also won the awards for Best D ...

. It was also one of seven short subjects shown in French cinemas and released on VHS as part of the package film ''

Le Petit Cirque et autres contes ''Le Petit Cirque et autres contes'' (''The Little Circus and Other Tales'') is a 1994 French package film. It is 50 minutes long and contains the following seven short films for young children and their families from the Folimage studio: # ''Au cl ...

''. It was also included in the Animation Show of Shows.The Animation Show Of Shows - The Monk and The Fish-YouTube
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References

External links

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Excerpt on Vimeo
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Monk and the Fish, The French animated short films Films directed by Michaël Dudok de Wit Animated films without speech French animated films 1994 films Folimage films 1994 animated films Films about religion Films about fishing 1990s French films