Madame Tutli-Putli boards a night train with her many belongings. She encounters a number of eccentric characters: two men playing chess while seated in their suitcases; a small, Asian boy and his sleeping grandfather; and a famous tennis player, whose crass sexual overtures Madame Tutli Putli rejects. She falls asleep and awakens to darkness. She quickly remembers two train robbers emitting a powerful sleeping gas into the air, then stealing the tennis player's kidneys. Frightened, she attempts to flee. While running through the train towards its conductor, she notices a moth. She follows the moth, perhaps hoping it will lead her to an escape route, but as she follows it, it leads her to a fluorescent light within the train. Her fate is left unknown.
Research and production
The filmmakers researched the film by traveling on The Canadian, north of Lake Superior, living on the train for two weeks, collecting stories. The stop motion animation took them more than five years.[1][2][3] Critics lauded the film for its groundbreaking stop-motion animation techniques. Portrait artist Jason Walker created the technique of adding composited human eyes to the stop motion puppets.[4][5][6] For the lead character, actress Laurie Maher was recorded acting out the motions, but only her eyes and eyebrows were ultimately visible in the final film.
Awards
Chris Lavis at the Prix Ars Electronica 2008
On May 28, 2007, the film won the Canal + Grand Prize for best short film along with the Petit Rail d'Or, chosen by a "group of 100 cinephile railwaymen," at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.[7][8] In June 2007, Madame Tutli-Putli won best animated short at the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto, qualifying it for Academy Award consideration.[9] It received an Oscar nomination in January 2008.
In early 2008, before the 80th Academy Awards, the NFB began a promotion campaign entitled "NFB at the Oscars", commemorating the 12 awards and 70 nominations that NFB productions have received. To celebrate the nomination of Madame Tutli-Putli for Best Animated Short Film, the NFB announced that it would make the film freely available for viewing online, but with a caveat—each of the 23,287 frames had to first be unlocked, one by each visitor from a unique IP address. Once the entire film was unlocked, it was made available for viewing at CBC.ca.[11]
References
^Howell, Peter (May 11, 2007). "Cannes at 60". The Star. Toronto. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
1 These two films were given honorable mentions rather than officially winning the award, but are included here as no other winner was named above them.
