Art Cartoons for Kids and Adults

'Little Mole' is perhaps one of the most beautiful cartoons ever made.  Watch a couple of these and you will feel all fluffy and happy inside.  The cartoons which Zdeněk Miler created should be mandatory viewing worldwide.  Note to MoMA:  don't you think these are worthy of an installation?  Unfortunately they were never shown in the USA.  Since these were made behind the former iron curtain, I guess the authorities were afraid American children would be brainwashed by this adorable little mole.  Very sad since these cartoons are super innocent and peaceful unlike anything we see nowadays.



The Mole (in the Czech original called Krtek, or Krteček little mole; Slovak Krtko; German der Maulwurf; Hungarian Kisvakond) is an animated character in a series of cartoons, created by Czech animator Zdeněk Miler. Music plays an important role in the cartoons, since the characters almost never utter more than emotional sounds. The original series' music uses acoustic and electric musical instruments, rather than synthesized ones.



It was first to be seen in 1956 in Prague, when Miler wanted to create a children's cartoon about how flax is processed. He wanted a strong Disney-influence to the cartoon by choosing an animal for the leading role, and decided to pick a mole after stumbling over a molehill during a walk. The first film called "Jak krtek ke kalhotkám přišel" ("How the mole got his pants") was released in 1956, and the cute main character won itself an enormous popularity in many Eastern European countries as well as Germany, Austria, India and China. Production for further episodes started in 1963 and since then, around 50 episodes have been created.



The first episode of the cartoon was narrated, but Miler wanted the cartoon to be understood in every country of the world, so he decided to use his daughters as voice actors, reducing the speech to short non-figurative exclamations in order to express the mole's feelings and world perception. They also became the bottleneck of the creation process as they were the ones who got to see the whole film first, thus Miler was able to decide whether the message of the movie was able to get to children or not.

Fans of the Zdeněk Miler will have a hard time to find his books and cartoons in the US.  Not to worry.  You can view them on YouTube (type one of the following words: maulwurf or zdenek miller).  Or, if you have an account with Amazon.com: visit the German sister site of Amazon which is http://www.amazon.de.  Amazon Germany is happy to ship to the US.  So do a search for "Maulwurf" and you will find plenty of German titled books and DVD's (just make sure you get a multi-region DVD player so you can play them in the US).  Example: http://www.amazon.de/Tag-Maulwurfs-Zdenek-Miler/dp/3896031309/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272854903&sr=1-1