The Film Puppet – Research Perspectives. Reflections Based on Selected Puppet Productions Created at the “Se-Ma-For” Studio of Small Film Forms in Łódź

Abstract

This article on the film puppet builds a methodological bridge between the “production-oriented” approach in film studies and Howard Becker’s qualitative sociology of art. Examined through the lens of the film puppet, the social world of animated art emerges as a space of competing creative concepts, analyzed as philosophies of puppet creation reflected in individual directorial practices. Using terminology proposed by Paul Wells, a British historian of animation, the film puppet is explored in two “states of matter”: as a pre-film object (a three-dimensional material selected to construct or “perform” the puppet) and as a film object (the tangible puppet featured before the film camera).

The term puppet philosophy refers to a director’s effort to reveal the “inner life of the object” during the creative process. Through selected examples, the article demonstrates how significantly a director and their philosophy of puppet creation influence the final form of a stop-motion animated film. Puppet philosophies at the “Se-Ma-For” Studio of Small Film Forms reflected the economic, organizational, and technical conditions under which the film puppets were created and their makers worked.

The micro-scale of work on individual puppets provides insights into the production process of puppet animation films at the “Se-Ma-For” Studio of Small Film Forms from 1946 to the late 1960s.