Another short animation, a collage film from 1989 which concerns everyone’s favourite Biblical megastructure, the Tower of Babel. Jan Mimra’s film doesn’t recount the creation of the building but uses the tower as a symbol for the human world, its history and its culture. The building itself is a hybrid structure made of architectural elements from the whole of human history, with a pyramid at the base and a platform at the summit supporting a collection of modern tower blocks.
The narrative purpose of Mimra’s tower is never very clear; to judge by the soundtrack the fragmentation of a universal language has already occurred, even though the Biblical story has this taking place only after the tower has been destroyed. There’s further confusion in a flood which threatens the tower and its inhabitants, something which may be another Biblical reference but could equally be a metaphor for modern warfare (the sinister planes suggest as much) or even climate change. Mimra’s film was made at the Jiří Trnka Studio in Prague, and includes a reference to another Czech collage animator, Karel Zeman, in a brief glimpse of Jules Verne piloting the paddling submarine from Zeman’s The Invention for Destruction.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Babel details
• Athanasius Kircher’s Tower of Babel
• La Tour by Schuiten & Peeters