Nassos Vakalis, an esteemed Hollywood-based Greek-American animator ventured out to make “Dinner for Few,” a short film inspired by the Greek crisis.
Emmy winner Nassos Vakalis, who was born and raised in Athens, has come a long way since he began his work as a cartoon and graphics artist at a small studio in Greece’s capital city. Now an animator for DreamWorks Studios in Los Angeles, Calif., his talents have also been recognized by other major Hollywood studios including Warner Bros. and Paramount, among others, where he’s worked on films like “Quest for Camelot (Warner Bros.),” “Joseph: King of Dreams (DreamWorks),” “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (DreamWorks),” “Rugrats Go Wild (Paramount),” and “Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (Paramount),” to name a few.
With his latest — and more personal project — Vakalis ventured out to make an animated short film inspired by the Greek crisis. The short, “Dinner For Few,” which is described as “a sociopolitical metaphor of the world,” tells a story with no dialogue and uses various metaphors, even animals as a way to get the message of the film across to its audience.
Why did you decide to depict the characters as animals — specifically, pigs, cats, the tiger — and only include one human?
The film has some inspiration taken from the book Animal Farm, which was also produced as an animated film in 1954. Like the story in the book, it is the pigs who elevated themselves to positions of leadership. I think, since that book, the pig has become synonymous with greed and corruption. The idea of the cats came from the Greek tavernas. Anyone who has been in an open space taverna in a Greek countryside knows of the street cats wandering around the tables asking for food. The tiger is a manifestation of the cats as they rebel, and become an unstoppable force. The human, or the butcher as I call him, is the only character that has a human but brutal form. It was a creative decision that I felt suited the story well. He is also the character that most of the viewers question while they are trying to figure out what he is all about.
http://hollywood.greekreporter.com/2014/07/03/dinner-for-few-greek-crisis-animated-in-hollywood/
= new reply since forum marked as read