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Priit Pärn

Priit Pärn

Directing

Biography

Priit Pärn (born August 26, 1946 in Tallinn) is an Estonian cartoonist and animation director whose films have enjoyed success among critics as well as the public at various film festivals. Pärn formerly worked as a plant ecologist; his career in animation began when he accepted Rein Raamat's proposal to make a design for Kilplased (1974). After a brief apprenticeship in Joonisfilm, he directed his first film Is the Earth Round? in 1977. Pärn's most important films are considered to be Triangle (1982), Breakfast on the Grass (1987), Hotel E (1992), 1895 (co-directed by Janno Põldma, 1995) and Night of the Carrots (1998). Pärn's style is characterized by black humour, playful surrealism and a unique graphic style. His somewhat crude style marked the departure from both Rein Raamat's overtly serious and moralizing films as well as the Disneyesque style propagated by the directors of Soyuzmultfilm. In his footsteps (and occasionally copying his style to a large degree) have followed numerous new generation Estonian film makers, most notably Ülo Pikkov and Priit Tender. Influences of Pärn's graphical style can also be seen in such commercial animated series as Rugrats and AAAHH!!! Real Monsters! directed by Igor Kovalyov. In 2002 Pärn was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Animated Film Association, and he received Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Festival of Animated Film - Animafest Zagreb in 2008. Divers in the Rain (2010), co-directed with his wife Olga Pärn, became the most successful Estonian animated film of all time with its 18th award at KROK International Animated Film Festival in Ukraine. Pärn had taught animation at the Arts Academy of the Turku University of Applied Sciences in Turku, Finland since 1994 and now he is teaching at Estonian Academy of Arts.

Known For

Rugrats Go Wild
6.3

When the Rugrats find themselves stranded on a deserted island, they meet the Thornberrys, a family who agrees to help them escape.

Rugrats Go Wild

2003
The Last Relic
6.4

A medieval love story with lots of adventures. The times are troubled - there's a revolt of peasants going on. To secure its safety a monastery chases for a relics of a holy Brigitte. A nobleman promises to get it if he gets beautiful Agnes as a reward. But she fells in love with a handsome adventurer. The monastery has to act shrewd now and play double game.

The Last Relic

1970
Visions of Europe
5.2

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Visions of Europe

2004
Animated Self-Portraits
6.1

An animated film compiled by David Ehrlich consisting of 27 animators from different countries all explaining themselves through their animation.

Animated Self-Portraits

1989
The Pearlman
3.0

A smart leader can keep the culture of his nation homogeneous for a long time, but he is helpless against the interchange of genes.

The Pearlman

2006
Hotel E
4.8

A confrontation of two worlds-- Two rooms, one of which is full of light and colors, the other a monotonous gray.

Hotel E

1992
No image
N/A

A Japanese-produced animated film using Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons as its soundtrack. The four seasons all have separate animation directors. Its production was partly crowdfunded. The film premiered in Kitakyushu in 2017 along with a live performance of the Four Seasons and this performance was recorded and distributed to supporters of the project.

四季

2017
Divers in the Rain
8.0

He, the early riser, and she, the early worker, meet only for a kiss goodbye. It's raining. The great ship sinks slowly but surely. The men do their work, the kind of work where there is no room for haste and only one mistake is made. In such a life, the last cigarette is part of an unbroken chain. Temake, the night dentist, falls asleep and dreams that he will not. It is raining. The evening kiss of farewell approaches.

Divers in the Rain

2009
Night of the Carrots
7.1

Diego the bicyclist waits to check into the PGI hotel, where each room's inhabitant seems more bizarre than the last, and the rabbits on the top floor have discovered the secret of voodoo, using electronics and carrots. Can the rare and unpredictable night of the carrots save everyone, or will their connections to the room's electrical sockets restrain them too much? Will Diego find love with an egg that speaks incessantly in German? Will the cellist, who is actually a room full of a gelatinous substance, affected in some way by buttons labeled K, G, and B, have dreams that explain everything? Or will the audience just leave scratching their heads? Not all questions get answered.

Night of the Carrots

1998
Marathon
N/A

In a marathon running, a criminal hides among the runners, after blowing up a statue in the central square.

Marathon

2006
Arabella, the Pirate's Daughter
7.0

Arabella is a daughter of the world's most terrifying pirate captain. She loves her father but also dreams about a life of a usual girl. One day a weird stranger is saved from the sea who will be the only friend of Arabella. At the same time a rival pirate called Raudpats plans to kidnap the girl. Will she be safe and can she ever live a normal life?

Arabella, the Pirate's Daughter

1983
A Romper
7.0

When a young man literally crosses the line, he pays the price and is transformed into the little piggy wiggy he truly is.

A Romper

1975
Black Ceiling
N/A

Seven leading animation artists chose one poem from each Estonian poet according to their own taste and illustrated it with a two- to three-minute cartoon. Leading actors of the Estonian theater and cinema, as well as the authors of the poems themselves, took part in the dubbing.

Black Ceiling

2007
Life Without Gabriella Ferri
5.2

A man and a woman lead a complicated love life, filled with erotic tension and despotic passion. Their son is an involuntary witness to all this, cooped up despondently in his room banging his head against the wall. To get away from the situation, he escapes into a virtual world. But when the man finds himself inopportunely stuck out on the balcony of the apartment, a burglar gets into the building. At the same time, in a neighbouring apartment, spies are getting ready to listen in on a group of scientists.

Life Without Gabriella Ferri

2008
1895
6.9

1895 is a picture about the life of brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere, who have immortalized their names as inventors of cinematography. What inspired them?

1895

1995
Some Exercises in Preparation for Independent Life
4.7

A sometimes harsh, sometimes goofy look at the routines that give our lives form.

Some Exercises in Preparation for Independent Life

1981
Fly Mill
N/A

The protagonist is a Miller living in a watermill. He bakes daily bread and raises ducklings whom he wishes one day to set free. But on the field next to his home, hunters go to shoot birds.

Fly Mill

2011
Sunday
N/A

Dedicated to the contradictions of scientific and technical progress, warning against one-sided technical developments that turn a person into an involuntary consumer.

Sunday

1977
No image
N/A

The nameless man, left alone in a sterile office environment, rethinks his existence. He hears the Alentejo song, a traditional Portuguese chant that shows him a different world from the meaningless everyday existence of work and society that he knows.

Cante

2019
Breakfast on the Grass
5.9

Several episodes, each focusing on a different figure. Towards the end they all come together to replicate the famous painting by Édouard Manet that provides the title.

Breakfast on the Grass

1987