A Painter Film-Maker
Homage to Raoul Servais
The internationally renowned Flemish maker of animated films, Raoul Servais (1928-), can look back on a glittering career. With a relatively small number of animated films, only twelve over forty years, he has won prizes at all the world's major film festivals. In October 2000, to mark its 27th anniversary, the International Film Festival of Flanders organised an exhibition in honour of the man who is known as the father of Flemish and Belgian animated film. Entitled A Painter Film-Maker's Journey, the exhibition had already been a success in Annecy and Montreal.
Through the use of films, drawings, paintings, photographs and digital images, the viewer was drawn into the fantasy-rich world of ideas of an artist who time and again has astonished the world with innovative screenplays; not least by the combination of live action with animation, the so-called ‘Servaisgraphy’, which he developed himself. In short, the exhibition portrayed his whole evolution from experimental autodidact to grandmaster of the animated film.
To mark this exhibition a catalogue was published, written in both French and English, which took the form of an extensive and beautifully illustrated biographical essay about the artist. Its author was Philippe Moins, art historian and co-director of the Brussels Animated Film Festival.
Moins' account of the life and work of the Ostend painter and film-maker is both meticulous and absorbing. He relates how, as a five-year-old, Servais was already fascinated by the cartoons of Felix the Cat that his father projected for him; how he then attempted to animate his own childish drawings; how he made his own camera out of a cigar-box; in short, how his driving enthusiasm for the moving picture was rooted in his childhood. Some time later he came into contact with the late Henri Storck, the father of the Belgian Documentary School, who before the war ran his own ‘Ciné Club d'Ostende’. Later on, together with the Ostend painter Maurice Boel, Servais breathed new life into the film club. Of particular importance is that Moins places Servais' development in its socio-cultural context, which is fascinating for those with an interest in the Flanders of the time and more especially in ‘old’ Ostend, ‘terminus of the continent’, queen of the seaside resorts and the town of James Ensor.
In the end, Servais received a formal artistic education at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, where he studied in the department of decorative arts. He drew, painted and designed posters, made designs for murals, carpets and stained-glass windows... all with great enthusiasm. But his passion for the animated film remained.
In 1953 he helped René Magritte to transpose the latter's Le Domaine Enchanté on to the circular ‘Salon des Lustres’ at the Knokke casino. According to Moins, it was Magritte's work that introduced Servais to surrealism, which, together with the expressionism of such artists as Constant Permeke, remained a permanent influence on his work. It was only in 1957 that Servais had the means to take his first steps in the world of the animated film. He worked for three years on Harbour Lights (Havenlichten, 1960) which, although barely completed, promptly won the first prize for animation at the Antwerp Festival. Harbour Lights is full of imperfections but, according to Philippe Moins, contains all the hallmarks of the ‘Servais touch’. In the first place, there is the international accessibility of the film. Beneath the ‘childlike surface’ there lurks a metaphorical layering that is the result of a lengthy thought process: ‘To bring his ideas to life he deliberately takes a distance from what is, at the specific point, the canon of animation film, and turns to the plastic arts.’ Indeed, from the beginning Servais distanced himself from the conventional animated film. His background as a painter enabled him to adapt his style to any subject, constantly making references to the artistic trends of the time. This anti-Disney style perfectly suited his basic theme: the struggle for individual freedom and creativity.
Harbour Lights is about a small streetlight which the larger lights are always making fun of. However, it wins everyone's respect after going to the help of a faulty lighthouse. Servais uses animation for functions that lie beyond the scope of live action: ‘the heroes of the film being a lantern, a lighthouse and above all... the light, used as a narrative and dramatic element.’ His humanist message is serious, but it is packaged in a humorous and playful style with more than a touch of
