Mole (Zdeněk Miler character)

The Little Mole (Czech: ''Krtek'', ''Krteček'') is a series of cartoons as well as the name of their title character, created by Czech animator Zdeněk Miler between 1957 and 2002. The first short film premiered at the 1957 Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for the best directing achievement.

History

Little Mole was first seen in 1956 in Prague, when Miler wanted to create a children's cartoon about how flax is processed. He wanted a strong Disney influence to the cartoon by choosing an animal for the leading role, and decided to pick a mole after stumbling over a molehill during a walk. The first film, called ''Jak krtek ke kalhotkám přišel'', had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 1957, where it was awarded two Golden Lions. Production of further episodes started in 1963 and since then, around fifty episodes have been created.

The first episode of the cartoon was narrated, but Miler wanted the cartoon to be understood in every country of the world, so he decided to use his daughters as voice actors, reducing the speech to short non-figurative exclamations in order to express the mole's feelings and world perception. Miler's daughters also became the bottleneck of the creation process as they were the ones who got to see the whole film first, thus Miler was able to decide whether the message of the movie was able to get to children or not.

The only episode where the mole talks is the first one. In the United Kingdom, the cartoons were transmitted by BBC with English narration by Colin Jeavons. Book adaptations were also published in English.

Developments

Space travels

On 16 May 2011, a plush toy of Little Mole was present on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour, where it accompanied the U.S. astronaut Andrew J. Feustel, whose wife is of Czech ancestry, on the STS-134 mission. It is the first animated character sent into space.

Several years later, Little Mole flew into space with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

US toy market plans

In May 2012, Bloomberg announced that Apple Inc. planned to help Little Mole enter the $21 billion U.S. toy market for the first time.

Mascot

Mole was the mascot for the 2015 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Prague, and was subsequently used to promote the Federation's Athletics for Children programme.

3D adaptation

In 2016, China Central Television Animation and Little Mole a.s. (founded by Zdeněk Miler's granddaughter, Karolína Milerová) created a remake version called '. Two series were filmed in 2016–2017; the project was cancelled in 2019.

Alfa Romeo Racing partnership

On 23 May 2019, Alfa Romeo Racing, a Formula One team, announced Little Mole as the new team partner. Frédéric Vasseur, principal of the team, said that the goal of the partnership is to capture the imagination of hundreds of thousands of children and get them closer to the sport using Little Mole's big follower base all over the world. Mole's iconic figure is appearing on the sidepods of the cars for the rest of the 2019 season.

Filmography

* In 2000, a DVD collection was published under the English title ''The Adventures of the Mole''.
* From 2002 to 2004, a set of 60 DVDs entitled ''Nejlepších večerníčků'' () was released, some of which included Little Mole animations. Included in the list below are the DVD numbers for films in this set.

Short films

Feature films

Clips

See also

* Czech animation
* Cinema of the Czech Republic

References

External links

*

Big Cartoon Database – Krtek episode info

{{DEFAULTSORT:Little Mole
Animal characters in films
Animated characters introduced in 1956
Film characters introduced in 1956
Film series introduced in 1957
Czech animation
Culture of the Czech Republic
Retro style
Fictional moles
Czech mascots
Mammal mascots
Anthropomorphic moles
Animated film series