Tatia Rosenthal is a niche filmmaker par excellence. The 38-year-old Israeli specializes in puppet animation films for adults.
Tatia Rosenthal
Her first feature, $9.99, a surreal, existential story about the meaning of life that critics have compared to Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, was screened at the International Animation Festival in Ottawa recently and at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.
Bought by distributors in the United States, France, Australia and Canada, $9.99 is due to open in Canadian theatres in the near future.
Seven years in the making, and the first Australian-Israeli co-production, $9.99 is based on the magic realist short stories of Israeli writer Etgar Keret, and was adapted for the screen by the novelist and Rosenthal.
Chronicling the lives of a rich cast of characters in an apartment building, including a magician in debt and a bewitching woman who has a yen for a certain kind of man, it features voiceovers from actors Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia, among others.
Rosenthal, a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts majoring in animation, was delighted to make $9.99.
“It was a fantastic experience,” she said in an interview from Ottawa last week. “I got to make my absolute dream film. The only restraints were financial, not creative, which is a very rare experience in this business.”
Although their script garnered grants and fellowships, they were unable to find a producer. “A week before we finally found financing, I was ready to give up,” she admitted.
Emile Sherman, an Australian producer, agreed to come on board, and he joined forces with Amir Harel, a producer in Israel whose credits include Walking on Water and Jellyfish.
It was shot on a budget of $3.5 million, with filming taking place in Sydney, Australia, in 2007. Post-production began in Tel Aviv in 2008.
To the best of Rosenthal’s knowledge, $9.99 is only the second co-Israeli puppet animation film in about 40 years.
Puppet animation is a time-consuming craft in which an animator can usually produce only five seconds of finished film per day, due in part to the fact that puppets constantly have to be moved into various positions.
And to convey genuine emotions, the body language must be evocative and the lighting and music must be just right, Rosenthal added. “It’s quite a challenging process.”
Considering the built-in difficulties of puppet animation, it is not surprising that there are so few such animators. Rosenthal knows of two or three in Israel and thinks there may be a few hundred in the United States.
“I’m not sure how many Canadians work in it, but Canada has been very supportive of animation through the National Film Board.”
As might be expected, most puppet animation films are expressly made for children, with only a handful for grownups. “The audience for adult puppet animation films, though limited, is growing and becoming more mainstream,” she said. “It probably started with The Simpsons, which is drawn animation.”
Rosenthal, an only child, grew up in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Her father, Rico, was a hotel manager until he retired, and her mother, Yolanda, is in business.
“My love for film and animation started in high school. I was interested in all sorts of things, but it was only when I watched The World According to Garp, which combined live action with wonderful animation, that I was first drawn to film and animation as a dream career.”
After completing her obligatory army service, working as a computer operator in the civil defence corps, she went abroad, like many Israelis.
At film school in New York City, Rosenthal made her first animated short, Crazy Glue (1998), and followed it up with a longer short, A Buck’s Worth (2005), which cost around $90,000.
From 1998 to 2006, Rosenthal was an animator for two children’s shows on the Nickelodeon TV channel, Blue’s Clues and The Wonder Pets.
Since $9.99, Rosenthal, who is single, has been a freelancer and a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
In the not too distant future, she hopes to adapt another adult book into an animated feature film. “I want to work with material I love.”
Rosenthal does not know whether she will ever return to her homeland to live, but she would be thrilled to make a film in Israel.
