scientist child animated with an ivisible backround

Unlike Boaz, however, Ari has hardly any memories of the Lebanon war, and none whatsoever of the massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. For this, the latent, the unconscious must become manifest. The film serves as a treatment of the trauma. ‘Can’t films be therapeutic?’ says Boaz to Ari in the middle of the night in a gloomy pub, ‘You dealt with dozen of issues in your films’. The film reveals its agenda in the first dialogue. But in his dreams the dogs come back every night, stealing Boaz his sleep. When Israeli soldiers invaded Lebanon, Boaz had to shoot 26 dogs with a gun silencer, so that their barking would not wake up the villagers. Indeed, it begins with a dream sequence in which a pack of wild dogs hunts through a city, only to stop under the window of Boaz Rein-Buskila, a friend of the protagonist, and it shakes him out of his sleep by means of their loud barking. The film is nothing other than a psychotherapeutic session, the aim of which is to treat the traumatic disorder of the protagonist and alter ego of the director, resulting from his experiences during the Lebanon war. Waltz with Bashir is about coming to terms with such a trauma. The only memory Ari has of the Lebanon War: naked soldiers approaching Beirut from the sea. The invisible is associated with a taboo and it can only be represented by passing through a certain pain threshold. The invisible is not the supernatural or the transcendental, but what cannot be imagined and expressed, not in a creative or technical sense, but in a psychological one. Yet, films such as Folman’s Waltz with Bashir show us that the invisible is also present in a genre whose techniques can apparently make anything visible. Although today the realistically animated film is well established especially in Asia, many worldwide box office hits are animated films with fantastic, fairytale stories, with animals or monster-like protagonists. It is no coincidence that two early classics of the genre are Fantasmagorie (1908, by Èmile Cohl) and Walt Disney Studios’ Fantasia (1940). Since its beginnings, talking animals, ghosts, demons, and fairies have populated animation.

Even more, the invisible, the fantastic, what exceeds our perception is the real domain of the animated film. Ghosts, fantastic beings, past or future things, images of feelings or thoughts, everything can be created with animation. And, indeed, it seems that there is nothing animated films are not capable of visualizing. This is what director Ari Folman says in the extras of his award-winning animated film Vals Im Bashir ( Waltz with Bashir, 2008). They drive around Mars, taking pictures and measurements.‘With animation you can do everything’. And Mars is the only planet we have sent rovers to. Mars has been known since ancient times because it can be seen without advanced telescopes.That means Earth and Jupiter are Mars’ neighboring planets. Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun.It is almost twice as long as one year on Earth. It is just a little longer than a day on Earth. Mars has an active atmosphere, but the surface of the planet is not active.They also want to know if Mars could support life now or in the future.

Scientists want to know if Mars may have had living things in the past. On some Martian hillsides, there is evidence of liquid salty water in the ground. There are signs of ancient floods on Mars, but now water mostly exists in icy dirt and thin clouds. It has a very thin atmosphere made of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon. Like Earth, Mars has seasons, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and weather. Credit: NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development (VTAD) Explore Mars! Click and drag to rotate the planet.

Scientist child animated with an ivisible backround