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Ludmila ZemanInterview with Ludmila Zeman The First Red Maple Leaf … is for me a symbol of peace and safety. An Interview with Ludmila ZemanBy Josiane Polidori You are a filmmaker, a children's book illustrator and a puppeteer. As a woman of many talents, can you tell us when you first felt this need to express yourself through art? As a child, I was surrounded with books and art. My father, Karel Zeman, was a famous animation cinematographer in Czechoslovakia, and many artists such as Jiri Trinka would often come to our family home. I was quite a shy child and did not do very well in school, except when the teacher asked us to write a story, then I would always write the best fairy tale. Of course, it was full of grammatical errors! As students in a small town, we would often attend a play, a concert or even the opera. I remember how I loved it, how I was filled with joy. The teacher would then ask us, the students, to draw a picture or to write a story inspired by the event we had just attended. I felt like I was in heaven; it was a revelation for me. Children need to be inspired; I think it is very good to expose children to art. It gives them an opening to the world and to new experiences. After high school, I attended a famous art school in Uh Earski Hradištne in the Czech Republic. You are currently working on the Sindbad book series, but are also very involved in the production of the animated film The Epic of Gilgamesh. How do you combine your various artistic passions? My passion is as strong for film as it is for picture books. I draw a storyboard for each film. The story starts with a series of small sketches, which are not perfect but they set the tone and indicate the sequence. I compose the story visually first. In a few weeks, I can have a whole story created; it is quite an intense process because the story comes out of my head. Then I need a lot of time to work on each sequence to reach the level of detail and perfection I am looking for. I use the same process to create picture books, but I learned the storyboard technique from animated film. When I visit a school, I show the children how to create a character, how to create a scene. Gilgamesh started as a film project, then I adapted it for a picture book trilogy. May Cutler, the founder of Tundra Books, pushed me to work on the book, which was published in 1992. I am still working on the movie. Your books and films have included various myths and legends such as Gilgamesh, Sindbad, and, in the National Film Board's Lord of the Sky, West Coast Aboriginal legends. Where does this interest in myths and legends come from? When I was very young, I pretended to be sick in order to stay in bed and look at picture books. It was at home that I learned to love books. My favourite books were the tales from Hans Christian Andersen, the Grimm brothers' fairy tales, Homer's Odyssey, and The Arabian Nights. I also loved the Gustave Doré engravings and work by Maurice Sendak and Jiri Trinka. Of course, our family home was filled with visiting artists and their works. As a child, I would play in my father's studio - the studio was five minutes away, and I helped him make puppets for his films. My childhood was magical. It was like a kingdom for a child. In The First Red Maple Leaf, you present the story of the creation of the seasons. Tell us how this idea came to you. At the back of the book, there is a photograph which was taken in Victoria, B.C. In the picture, my two daughters and I are holding gigantic maple leaves. The leaves have wonderful colours and seem to provide a perfect shelter for my daughters. I felt that those leaves represented the safety I felt in coming to Canada. As a child, I lived in a very safe place and I wanted to give that same feeling to my own children. I had to leave the country where I was born because, as an artist, I could not create freely. That picture triggered a story in my imagination, which became The First Red Maple Leaf. It is for me a symbol of peace and safety. Where do you find inspiration for your books? Every book is different; the Gilgamesh trilogy goes back to a memory from my childhood. One of my teachers told us that the first story ever written by human beings was written on clay tablets. Then my father told me the story of Gilgamesh, but there were no versions available for children, just very lengthy transcriptions. When my father passed away, I could not go back to the Czech Republic. I was devastated. I went to the library and borrowed a translation of Gilgamesh, the story that was written in Babylonia thousands of years ago. I fell in love with it. Gilgamesh's story is about human experience, friendship, pride and fear. It had to be told to children. I started rewriting the story for them. I was planning a storyboard for a film, but the books ended up being published first. It was important for me to have a very strong visual language, so I went to the Louvre Museum (Paris) with my two daughters to look at the wonderful Mesopotamian bas-reliefs. I have a picture of them standing in front of the Lions' Gate, which I used in the book. Gilgamesh's story is about the journey of a human being, and it touches us all, especially children. The cover illustration of The First Red Maple Leaf has been chosen for the cover of the 2001 edition of Read Up on It. Can you comment on this illustration? The First Red Maple Leaf is an important book for me. The cover is symbolic; it combines nature, birds, and children reading and playing safely under a tree. It is important for a child to feel safe: his mind is free to dream, he can read, he can play, he can learn everything. In my childhood after WW II, children were still afraid. The best place in the world is where you can have happy children. Children should be surrounded with books, with legends, with happiness, that way they too can create their own stories, their own legends. BiographyPlace of birth: Gottwaldov, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) Place of residence: Montreal, Quebec Ludmila Zeman's talent for painting, puppetry, and filmmaking was nurtured in her hometown of Gottwaldov, Czechoslovakia, where her father, a famous filmmaker, had his own studio. By the age of 10, she was already painting and taking pictures for his prize-winning films. By her early 20s, as she continued to work with her father, she also began to study art and design at university. Later, she published a best-selling picture book and, with her husband, developed a successful yet personal and unique style of filmmaking. Together, they created award-winning short films. An offer to teach at the Emily Carr College of Art in Vancouver led to the family's eventual emigration to Canada in 1985. Ludmila Zeman became a Canadian citizen in 1988. Since coming to this country, she and her husband have made a film about West Coast Aboriginal peoples, for the television program Sesame Street, and have prepared another film, based on legends of the Pacific North West, for the National Film Board. The husband and wife team is presently working on a full-length feature-film presentation based on her extensively researched, highly acclaimed picture-book trilogy about Gilgamesh, the mighty king of Uruk. The story takes place in Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilization. For Ludmila Zeman, film is the ultimate art form; it allows her to express her creativity in original and meaningful ways. Awards
BibliographyLa Dernière Quête de Gilgamesh. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman; translation by Michèle Boileau. Montreal: Livres Toundra, 2000, ©1995. La Dernière Quête de Gilgamesh. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman; translation by Michèle Boileau. Montreal: Livres Toundra, 1995. The First Red Maple Leaf. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Toronto: Tundra Books, 1997. Gilgamesh the King. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Montreal: Tundra Books, 1998, ©1992. Gilgamesh the King. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Montreal: Tundra Books, 1992. Gilgamesh the King. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. London: Heinemann, 1992. Girugamesh_o saigo no tabi. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995.
24 p.: col. ill.; 27 x 30 cm. The Last Quest of Gilgamesh. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Toronto: Tundra Books, 1996, ©1995. O rei Gilgamesh. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman; translation by Sérgio Capparelli. Pôrto Alegre, Brazil: Projeto, 1996, ©1992. La Revanche d'Ishtar. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Toronto: Livres Toundra, 2000, ©1993. The Revenge of Ishtar. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Toronto: Tundra Books, 1998, ©1993. Le Roi Gilgamesh. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Toronto: Livres Toundra , 2000, ©1993. Sindbad et les géants. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman; translation by Suzanne Lévesque. Toronto: Livres Toundra, 2000. Sindbad: From the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Toronto: Tundra Books, 1999. Sindbad [braille]: From the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Toronto: CNIB , 2001. Sindbad in the Land of Giants. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2001. Sindbad: un conte des Mille et une nuits. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman; translation by Suzanne Lévesque. Toronto: Livres Toundra , 1999. A última busca de Gilgamesh. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman; translation by Sérgio Capparelli. Pôrto Alegre, Brazil: Projeto, 1996, ©1995. A vingança de Ishtar. Text and illustrations by Ludmila Zeman; translation by Sérgio Capparelli. Pôrto Alegre, Brazil: Projeto, 1996, ©1993. FilmLord of the Sky. Conception, realization and animation, Ludmila Zeman and Eugen Spaleny; production, Eunice Macaulay, Marcy Page. Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1994. 1 videocassette (12 min., 57 sec.): sound, col.; 13 mm. (Available in French under the title Le Maître du ciel) |
