I meet 98yo master of stop-motion animation!

This week I had the opportunity to film an interview and the reveal of a memory star in our city in honor of Mr. Witold Giersz - Polish stop-motion animator

Mr. Witold is 98 years old! And he is still working on creating his animated works using an oil painting technique.

First, he sketches his animations on paper, and then he paints them on glass! He doesn't use any computer techniques; the only electronics he uses are to take pictures of the animation frames and then combine them into a single sequence.

I recommend checking out his works, especially "Mały Western" ("A Little Western"). They are absolutely stunning. Mr. Witold's first works appeared in cinemas as early as 1956!
And of course the movie "Signum” painted on a stone blocks so it will imitate prehistoric animation!

Mr. Giersz is still creating animations and has announced that his next film should be finished right when he turns a perfect 100 years old!

I talked with Mr. Witold for a moment, and he is an incredibly nice man :P I thought you might want to hear about him, because I only learned about him a week ago myself, and it's hard for me to grasp the immense amount of work and sweat he has put into his works.

Here is the film "A Little Western":

Film "Little Western"

And small fragment from „Signum” i found on the internet

Film Signum (short fragment)

And here is a photo from the discussion panel. I didn't manage to get a picture with the star because I was working behind the camera xD

But I have a picture from the local newspaper.

Witold Giersz at the editing table, 1960s, photo: Roman Sumik/Film/Forum archive