Priit Pärn

Pärn's post-independence films still contain healthy doses of absurdism and symbolism, but their tone is significantly lighter and wittier. His most recent films, "1895" (co-directed with Janno Poldma in 1995) and "Night of the Carrots," move beyond examinations of individuals within specific ideological systems toward larger political-technological infrastructures.

In "1895," Pärn used the centenary of cinema as an opportunity to deconstruct it. (The film opens with the statement "The cinema, it is a lie.") The structure of the film is straightforward: The protagonist, Jean-Paul, does not know who he is and decides to travel around the world in search of his identity. (It turns out he's the co-creator of cinema, Louis Lumière.)

Pärn uses Jean-Paul's journey to analyze the cinema and its influence on our perceptions of the world. He argues that our ideas of nationality and history are constructed by cinema. (For example, footage from Sergei Eisenstein's fictional film "October" was often used as documentary footage of the Russian Revolution.) During Jean-Paul's travels, each country is reduced to a stereotype -- Italy is red wine and the Mafia; Switzerland is clocks and Swiss Army knives.

Cinema, Pärn seems to argue, has become so ingrained in our lives that we often allow it to replace our own perspective of the past. In a sense, "1895" is an anti-cinema film. It reminds us that there was a time when motion pictures did not exist and suggests that perhaps a movieless world was not such a bad thing. In a world without films, cinema aficionados might have done something more beneficial for humanity. (At one point we learn that François Truffaut was working on the invention of synthetic rain clouds before giving it all up to become a film critic and director.)

As with all of Pärn's work, there is an autobiographical element to the films. In "1895" he acknowledges his own complicity in propagating the evils of cinema through the character of Louis' brother Auguste Lumière, who disappears at the beginning of the film to become a biologist (like Pärn) before returning at the end to invent cinema with Louis/Jean-Paul. Pärn reverses cinema's role as an instigator of a generic memory and instead uses it to explore his personal memories of both his life and his films.

Influential as he is, not everyone loves Pärn's work. As with Godard, his live-action equivalent, some find his films ugly, sexist and illogical. ("It is not my problem what some people call my works," Pärn responds.) Pärn has fashioned a body of work that, through its very uncertainty, irony and rejection of accessible solutions, succinctly reflects our own complex, absurd and trivial condition. "Pärn is difficult to characterize," says his friend and colleague Janno Poldma. "He is like a big rock. He has his own unique logic and his will can take him through a brick wall."

As Priit Pärn begins his next film, which he says will involve Karl Marx and Marilyn Monroe, it's time to celebrate him as an artist whose work brilliantly and uniquely challenges the sociopolitical structures we take for granted, ranging from communism to cinema to the Internet. Each of his films asks us to consider how these systems are subtly (and not so subtly) shifting and molding our actions, thoughts and beliefs. As we become lost in an ever-expanding maze of technology that is turning us away from the outside world, Pärn aspires to show us who we are and where we've come from -- while reminding us that it doesn't have to be this way. In so doing, he escapes the constrictions of conventional animation and cartoon storytelling and takes his place as an international citizen in the kingdom of art.

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