“Puppet Film and Its Connection with Children World” Workshop Held at 33rd ICCFF; Lee Thompson: A Puppet Show is the Best Medium to Express Children’s Emotions

The “Puppet Film and Its Connection with Children World” workshop was held with the British puppeteer and puppet show director, Lee Thompson and the Indian actor, director and theatre instructor, Ramanjit Kaur, the 33rd ICFF Public Relations Office reports.

To begin with, Ramanjit Kaur focused on different types of puppet drama, distinguishing them from other types of art, including animated movies. She also pointed out that having puppets in a film could be a great thing, as puppet shows and puppetry are fabulous traditional art forms and cinema is an amusing modern phenomenon, and this mixture is amazing.

Lee Thompson compared a good puppeteer to a professional actor and emphasized that being a puppeteer is not innate, but it requires a lot of practice and planning. ‘Even acting in a play is easier than puppetry, since by getting angry, excited or happy your face and body automatically show these emotions, but for a puppet, you need to show the same thing through position design and moving separate parts of its body’.

Ramanjit Kaur presented a background of puppet films, explaining that the first puppet film was made by a German director in 1926, in which shadow puppetry was used.

Referring to the art of puppetry as the work of ballerinas, actors, comedians and magicians, Thompson said that, ‘the main question is whether we choose our art or our art chooses us; and that is something going back to our childhood’. He also referred to puppetry as a great medium to express children’s emotions, stressing that children are very well-aware of this. ‘They like to tell their stories in any way possible; and puppets are the best for this purpose. Children should be free to choose their way of storytelling. Anything can work as a puppet for them. They can make the scene using cardboard boxes and tell their story using puppets or other similar things’, he said.

Due to the outbreak of the new Corona Virus, based on the multilateral agreement made by the Iranian Cinema Organization, Farabi Cinematic Foundation and Isfahan Municipality, this edition of the festival is being held virtually from October 18 to 23, 2020 under the supervision of Alireza Tabesh.

The Festival is organized in a competitive format in two different sections; Iranian Cinema Competition and International Cinema Competition.