Blinky & Me

The untold story of Australian animator Yoram Gross comes to life in this new film that follows the artist and his family through his childhood in Nazi-occupied Poland, to Israel, where he began creating animated art films, all the way to Australia, where he found his fortune and happiness through animated features for children and the popular film series Blinky Bill, for which he received the highest honor in Australia. Gross continues to create even today, with his 85-year-old youthful enthusiasm. The film is told with the participation of his teenage grandchildren.

AWARDS
Jewish Motifs Film Festival, Warsaw May 2012 – Bronze Phoenix and Audience Award
Provincjonalia Film Festival, Wrzesnia Feb 2012 – The Best Film Audience Award

Review by Mary Northrup:

For fans of “the story behind the story,” this film will appeal. Yoram
Gross, the creator of the popular Australian animated series Blinky
Bill, relates the story of his life, especially the horrors of World
War II. As a young Jewish boy in Poland during the war, he experienced
relentless loss and deprivation. The film combines scenes in his
present-day home Australia, and in Poland, where he travels to trace
his past. His five grandchildren accompany him on his trip; their
questions to him are natural in bringing out some of the details of
his experiences. The obvious affection between grandfather and
grandchildren brings an added dimension to the film.

Effective use is made of old photos and archival footage, interspersed
with live action shots. Moving on to post-war, scenes from some of
Gross’s first films provide a primer on beginning animation: with
matches, newspaper, and wood puppets. All of these visual elements
combine to keep the film moving and the viewer engaged.

Background music by Guy Gross, the son of Yoram, is an added plus. The
sound quality is professional. Much of the film is in Polish, with
English subtitles, as Gross is being interviewed or speaking to people
in Poland. This adds much to the authenticity of the film and the
feeling of being there with him in a foreign country.

As Gross relates his childhood experiences – his narrow escapes, how
he had to hide, the loss of family members, the unspeakable cruelties
of war – his spirit shines through. He is revisiting for himself, but
also to share with his grandchildren. How he took these life
experiences and used them in the Blinky series is fascinating. It is
telling that he and his wife, who had settled in Israel after the war,
decided to leave in the mid-1960s when conflicts broke out so that
their two-year-old son would not have to experience war.

The moving story, the family involvement, the personal development of
an artist: all come together in this film. Even if American audiences
are not familiar with Blinky or Yoram Gross, this film is an
opportunity to meet them and to marvel at the triumph of art and
family over war. An excellent choice for a public library DVD
collection, Blinky & Me would also be an effective learning experience
for high school or college students studying the Holocaust or art,
especially animation.


It’s rare that we get a chance to see a film that takes us through
those horribly destructive years and leaves us feeling good. Yours is
a particularly life-affirming work, and will bring pleasure to all who
are fortunate enough to see it.

- A. Adelson, Executive Director, The Jewish Heritage Project


Beautiful and moving. It was a great idea of involving children in the
narration of the film. Thanks to that, this film can be appreciated on
many different levels. Now it is not only a story of a man who
survived the hell of war, found his happiness in Australia, and after
many years goes back to the country of his childhood. Even for our
generation, brought up in Poland (and brought up with stories of the
war and martyrdom) what's was going on during WW2 is hard to
comprehend. When one looks at the same reality through the eyes of
children raised somewhere in remote Australia, the senselessness and
absurdity of war is even more clear and difficult to imagine. A
concentration camp or verdict because someone is Jewish or may have
helped a Jew becomes such an abstraction that after watching this
film, the saddest story you remember is the story of Yoram’s
friendship with the mouse…

- B. Zalot, Journalist


The film is wonderful, wonderful from the very beginning, like a
fairytale for children. If you don’t know who it is about, that is how
you feel. Then suddenly I realized that it is about that filmmaker
that I read about, but hardly anyone knows him here. Maybe in Poland
he is better known- he should be! He is incredible, as a personality;
a certain naiveté, kindness, it’s almost as if he’s from a different
world… After what he had survived, you would think that he would be
full of hatred…

- A. Leifel


I really enjoyed your character. He very much uplifted me in spirit.
His amazing combination of talent and fortitude enabled him to
transform his traumatic experiences into an art-form of wonderful
stories about the things that matter most in life. The benefit of
these stories is already evident in his children and grandchildren and
undoubtedly in thousands of the film’s viewers. And his sense of humor
and kindness, oh wouldn’t it be nice if we all could be that way.

- A. Ferens, Filmmaker