Contrary to my earlier mis-informed belief that
Pingu, the BAFTA award-winning stop-motion clay animated television
series, was Norwegian, it was actually conceived by Swiss creator Otmar
Gutmann.
Pingu was first presented at the Berlin
Film Festival in 1987 and soon became a worldwide phenomenon with the
simplest of plot lines and an indecipherable language consisting of
squeaks and grunts rather than words, which on the DVD and video
cases was sometimes dubbed 'Penguinese'. However, owing to the simple
plots and descriptive body language, viewers need no dialogue to see
what is going on. The family and home focused stories appeal as much
to adults as to children.
German born Gutmann, who died in 1993, first created Pingu
at his studio in Russikon, just down the road. There, he
brought Pingu to life by producing a different figure for each
individual movement sequence, with each scene constructed separately.
The production studio looked as if littered with numerous tiny dolls
strewn about haphazardly but the individual elements were gradually
pieced together to produce a natural looking scene. Gutmann immersed
himself completely in the world of Pingu and his team created the
different tiny props including furniture, crockery and food.
The first Pingu series was aired on
Swiss DRS TV station and soon experienced extraordinary success,
eventually being shown on at least 100 different television stations
throughout the world. Pingu also went on to win many prizes including
the Kleiner Baer at the Berlin Film Festival (1987), the Japanese
Maeda award (1991) and the French Prix Jeunesse (1991)
To this day, Pingu maintains a cult
following and enjoys regular reruns on Cbeebies in the UK. It
originally aired on the BBC between 1995 and 2005.
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