Concordia graduate gets second animation Oscar nod

Matthew Hays

A meditation on fate has won Montreal-based animator Torill Kove her second Oscar nomination. The Best Animated Short nomination was for the Concordia graduate’s 15-minute film, The Danish Poet, inspired by her parents’ story of their own chance encounter.

“I don’t want to sound pretentious,” Kove says, from the NFB headquarters in Montreal, “but for me, the question hit me at one point: How did I get here? We all have our own personal narratives in life, and if you think about it, so many of the things that happen to us are coincidences through choices that we’ve made.”

Her original story was drawn from one her late father used to tell her, about his choice to go to architectural school over pursuing painting. If he hadn’t made this decision, Kove points out, he never would have met her mother.

In order for Kove to make this film, she would have to get permission from her mother. “My mom, who lives in Norway, is a very private person. I wasn’t sure that she’d be comfortable with this. I eventually just decided to not even ask.”

Kove chose instead to create a narrative about a Danish poet who suffers from writer’s block and travels to Norway to meet a famous writer as a way of breaking through it. The result is a charming short, told very much in the same quirky, humorous vein as Kove’s previous Oscar-nominated short, My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts (1999, also an NFB co-production).

“This is a film about the choices you make along the way, and the impact those choices can have on you.”

Another of the film’s charms is its exceptional narration, by famous Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. How did Kove get such a big name to do the voiceover? “We just asked. We sent her the script and she said yes immediately. I was so happy the day we got that news.”

Norwegian-born, Kove moved to Montreal in the ’80s to complete a BA in Urban Studies at Concordia University (she graduated in 1985). She was always fascinated by drawing and wanted to pursue animation as a career. She returned to Concordia’s film program in 1993 for one year, where she studied with Chris Hinton and Wendy Tilby.

“They were both incredible,” Kove said. “They showed me the basics of how to do an animated film.”

Kove has trouble describing what her main influences are. “Actually, I am quite unschooled in animated filmmaking. I haven’t seen that much of it. I think that most of my influences are quite unconscious, not something I think about as I’m making the film.

“I do really love the work of Chris Hinton [twice Oscar-nominated for Blackfly (1991) and Nibbles (2003)], Wendy Tilby [twice Oscar-nominated for Strings (1991) and When the Day Breaks (2000)] and Paul Driessen [Oscar-nominated for 3 Misses (2000)].”

What’s the best part about getting an Oscar nomination?

“The fact of the matter is, animated shorts only seem to have so much of a shelf life. They come and they go pretty quickly. An Oscar nomination means there is more interest, and that interest lasts quite a while. People are still asking and talking about My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts, for example.”

The nomination for The Danish Poet marks the 69th Oscar nomination for the NFB, which has won 11 Oscars. The Danish Poet is a Norwegian-Canadian co-production, produced by Mikrofilm AS (Norway) and the NFB. The Oscar winners will be announced on Feb. 25.