Did you know there’s more to animation than Disney or anime?

Uzbudljiva ljubavna priča is an exciting love story of a man desperately searching for his lover, cleverly exploiting the limitations of the frames he’s animated in:

This and much more can be found at the Youtube channel Zagreb Film: The Art of Animation dedicated to showcasing the lost treasures of Yugoslavian animation, specifically the Zagreb School of Animation. As Animation Obsessive puts it:

Let’s back up. If you’re not familiar with the Zagreb School, it was a movement that remade this medium. Inspired by UPA, it built cartoons that were radically new and different. It started during the ‘50s in Yugoslavia, a communist country that no longer exists. Quickly, the influence of this animation spread across the globe.
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Basically, this stuff follows its own rules. It’s weird. It’s dogmatically anti-Disney. It often features stories never previously tackled in animation. The films don’t look normal, and they don’t even sound normal — as Vukotić once said, animation that doesn’t imitate real motion requires abstract sounds that “do not imitate real noise.”

In short, this is a tradition of animation inspired by post-war US animation’s turn towards the stylistic as opposed to the kinetic styles of Disney, Loony Tunes etc. Less emphasis on movement and making it smooth, more limited animation and design. The poster child for this new style of cartoon making in America was Gerald McBoing-Boing. These Yugoslavian animators went further, more experimental. And one of the things often cut out was dialogue. The cartoon above has no dialogue, except for the protagonist shouting his lovers name and she occasionally answering with his. This is a cartoon where the humour and appeal is almost entirely visual. Which, coincidently, also makes it a lot easier to sell abroad. If you’re interested in animation, the art of it and its history, this is a great channel to check out. Not just the former Yugoslavia, but much of Eastern Europe has a rich animation tradition that would be great to be made available again in the same way; this is a great start.