Where is Mama
About Where is Mama
A frog lays her eggs and leaves. The eggs grow tails and become tadpoles. After they see a chick with its mother, they ask a shrimp, who describes their mother as having two big eyes. They set off and mistake a goldfish, a crab, a turtle, and a catfish for her. The catfish nearly catches them. They find the frog at last and recognize her.
Cast & crew
More about Where is Mama
Te Wei, Qian Jiajun, and Tang Cheng directed the studio's first ink-wash short, from a story by Fang Huizhen and Sheng Lude. The animals are drawn from Qi Baishi's fish and shrimp. Wu Yingju wrote the music. Duan Xiaoyu, You Yong, and Wang Shirong photographed the paintings. The narration is in Mandarin.
Themes
Background
Shanghai Animation Film Studio released the short in 1960, between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, when the studio was still able to experiment with ink-wash, paper-cut, and folded-paper films.
In film history
It is the studio's first ink-wash cartoon. The Cowboy's Flute (1963), from the same workshop, continued the technique.
Making
Te Wei used the short to move the studio off Western cartoon drawing and onto brushwork taken from Qi Baishi. The figures sit in blank space the way they do in his album leaves.
Look
Duan Xiaoyu, You Yong, and Wang Shirong photographed ink paintings rather than opaque cels. The tadpoles are a few black strokes, set against empty paper.
Technique
The ink-wash process lets a wet brush stroke, photographed a frame at a time, stand in for the hard ink outline used in the studio's earlier cartoons.
Music
Wu Yingju composed the score. A narrator carries the story; the tadpoles do not speak in dialogue.
Preservation
The Shanghai studio's picture survives in color. In 2021 Xigua Video and Volcano Engine included it in a year-long repair of 100 older Chinese cartoons.
Notes
- The Chinese title is 小蝌蚪找妈妈.
- Readers of Popular Cinema chose it Best Fine Arts Film in the first Hundred Flowers poll. The ceremony was held in Beijing on 22 May 1962, with Guo Moruo presenting the prizes.
- The same 1962 list gave the feature prize to The Red Detachment of Women.
- A chick with its mother is what starts the tadpoles asking questions.
- The shrimp who describes the mother is played as an elder, a father-in-law figure, not as another tadpole.
- In October 2021 Xigua Video and Volcano Engine named the short among 100 cartoons they planned to repair over a year.
Awards
- Hundred Flowers Award for Best Fine Arts Film (1962)
Scenes
- The shrimp tells the tadpoles their mother has two large eyes.
- They follow a goldfish, then a crab, then a turtle, and each one is wrong.
- A catfish lunges at them before they reach the frog.
Influenced by
- paintings by Qi Baishi
- the fairy tale by Fang Huizhen and Sheng Lude
Influenced
- The Cowboy's Flute (1963)