'Fuji' At 50: Discussing Robert Breer's Masterwork With Lizzy Hobbs

"Breer is showing us almost everything that is exciting about animation."

A train, a mountain, a man looking closely. The ingredients in Robert Breer’s Fuji (1974) are deceptively simple. Freeze on a frame at random, and you’re likely to see simple line drawings on a plain background or semi-abstract zones of colour. Yet like the volcano at its heart, the short film stands very tall, still a landmark of experimental cinema half a century after it was made.

Fuji translates a train ride the late Breer took past Mount Fuji into a kind of meditation on formal aspects of animation and cinema, and how these make us perceive shape and movement. But that description is too dry: the film is playful and light of touch. So it’s little surprise that I first learnt about it from Lizzy Hobbs, a British director skilled at stretching and examining the forms of animation filmmaking with spirit and wit.

Fuji

Working with traditional materials and a rostrum camera—the subheading on her website just reads: “Animation, old school”—Hobbs often takes historical events and legends as a starting point for her films, then retells them via techniques that riff on the subject matter. G-AAAH (2016) uses a typewriter to depict the record-breaking solo flight from England to Australia made by Amy Johnson, a former typist. The images in Imperial Provisor Frombald (2013) were printed directly onto 35mm film with rubber stamps—a fitting tool for the tale of a bureaucrat overseeing the exhumation of a suspected vampire. (Yes, this is historical too.) I’m OK (2018), her delirious homage to Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka, was nominated for a BAFTA, and her latest short The Debutante (2022) recently debuted online after being named Best Short Film at the British Animation Awards.

When I speak with Hobbs, references to her favourite animation auteurs always crop up: she got me into bold, idiosyncratic directors like Julian Antonisz and Hoji Tsuchiya. But Fuji comes up regularly as a—or even the—key influence on her work: her beacon, as she puts it. I wanted to know more about how Breer’s film has shaped Hobbs’s approach to filmmaking. Here, then, is the very first interview on Move Madly, which we conducted by email. My big thanks to Hobbs for taking the time to answer my questions.

So much of the film is in its rhythm and motion, as Hobbs says—so I’d urge you to watch the (unembeddable) film here before reading on…

Fuji

ADdW: When did you first see Fuji? How did it make you feel?

LH: I was in Canada in 2004 making my film The True Story of Sawney Beane with the National Film Board of Canada. There was a studio trip to hear Robert Breer talk about his work, and following that I went away and researched all his films straightaway. Fuji slightly blew my mind: the visual rhythm, the simple graphic approach, the structure, the exploration of the 3D space, the illusion of motion, and the romance of an artist clickety-clacking on a train past Mount Fuji. As with all Breer’s films, there is a direct connection with the senses. Just hearing the first few seconds of Fuji (and his film Recreation too), I can feel an anticipation of the pleasure of watching the film. I love the energy that comes from the experience of watching Fuji, and I try to do it as often as I can.

How has the film influenced you?

Fuji is a kind of beacon and I try not to travel too far from it. In this film I think that Breer is showing us almost everything that is exciting about animation, and I take inspiration from it in many ways. For instance, I usually try to create the conditions where accidents can happen, and there is a surprise and joy for me in the results. I also like to try and see if I can use a minimal amount of information to achieve the result that I want, which means few lines, little or no background and simple colour. I also love experimenting with flicker and I try to use simple materials (Breer used index cards, cardboard and felt-tip pens). My films aren’t abstract or wholly experimental, but I do like those aspects of filmmaking to inform the way that I tell stories using animation.

Varying visions of Fuji

How do you go about creating conditions where accidents can happen?

There are quite a few aspects of my production process that might increase the likelihood of accidents. I use traditional materials including dipping pens and ink combined with paper reused from my printmaking days, or for the back of previous frames. I also use a rostrum to “trace” from frame to frame rather than the lightbox, so there is a greater discrepancy between images, and then I go quite fast too! I tend to shoot each shot a number of times, and I’ll usually end up using the one that best captures the essence of the character or motion with the least fuss or detail, mistake or not.

Fuji opens and closes with snippets of the live-action footage from which Breer works.

Fuji uses rotoscoping: live-action footage serves as the basis for the animation. You have used rotoscoping in The Debutante. Was your use of the technique in any way informed by Breer’s?

For The Debutante, I used a lot of reference footage and rotoscoping to conjure up details of the British society in 1938 when the story is set. Those details in the dress and food are a big part of why the debutante’s experience was so restrictive, and helps to explain her dramatic actions! Having the reference footage also meant that I could also reduce the line and colour to a minimum, and I was a bit more free to be playful with the frames.

I also used rotoscoping in a film for the singer KT Tunstall in 2010, and again in 2017 with a community project called Speak Out. In the collaborative films with young people, it’s a very useful technique for getting a visual sense of them whilst respecting their need to remain anonymous.

Above and below: frames from The Debutante, published with Hobbs’s permission.

You’re sensitive to the use of music and sound in your own films, and I’m curious to know what you think the soundtrack in Fuji—which, unlike the images, is quite regular—adds to the film.

Breer starts the soundtrack of Fuji with a bell, and for the rest of the film we hear the recorded sound of the train in motion, slowing down, speeding up, and fading in and out. The sound has a rhythm of its own, and sometimes connects with the rhythm of the animation. It has the effect of keeping us contained within the space of the train carriage, even if we see people on a platform, the graphic shape of Mount Fuji outside or his cup rolling on the floor. We are continually reminded of the original journey that the artist took past Mount Fuji.

Did you ever meet Breer?

No, I didn’t meet Breer, but I saw him talk again. He visited Norwich in 2007 for the brilliant Aurora festival run by Adam Pugh. Breer was a really good storyteller. He was quite deaf by 2007, so his stories were unrelated to the questions asked, but it didn’t make any difference—everyone loved hearing what he had to say! His work was also celebrated in 2011 at a great exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art [in Gateshead], and in 2021 at the London International Animation Festival, when the artist Edwin Rostron put together a great programme of work and a panel discussion around Breer’s practice. It was clear from those screenings that Breer’s unique work still has a lot to contribute to current filmmaking practice.

Follow Hobbs’s work on her Instagram and website.