No one tells Stephen and Timothy Key what to do.
“They don’t have the courage,” they told Variety. The Quay brothers, who received the Honorary Crystal Award at Annecy, are identical twins and always speak with the same voice.
“We need freedom, otherwise we wouldn’t do it. Christopher Nolan asked us to do it (‘Breath of a Doll’) because he liked what we did. His only condition was that it be shot in 35mm. Otherwise, he didn’t care.”
Still, even for them, such commissions are difficult to obtain.
“Maybe it’s not the right time for funding bodies to embrace literature as promising in terms of animation. Some students can’t believe what we’ve gotten away with,” they say.
“When we approached the BFI (British Film Institute) in 1985, they asked us to create a story using a literary work as a starting point.So we proposed Bruno Schulz’s “The Streets of Crocodiles,” which had no narrative at all,” they laugh.
They became known for films inspired by their favorite authors, including Robert Walser, Schulz, and Stanisław Lem.
“This is very intuitive. We translate it into a parallel visual realm, but we also recognize that lineage. If people are reading Bruno Schulz, which they aren’t, we become footnotes in his work. And we are good readers of footnotes.”
Their latest work, Sanatorium Under the Hourglass, was decades in the making.
“We wrote the script right after Crocodile City, but no one was interested. And at a certain point we said, ‘Let’s start making our own films.’ We worked on it off and on for 19 years until the BFI and the Polish Film Institute gave us the budget to finish it.”
Despite having its world premiere in Venice, it has not yet been widely released. But it’s okay.
“We realize that our work is very niche. It exists on the fringes and that’s the only place for it. If it became mainstream, I think we would have doubts. Sometimes young people like it for the wrong reasons. What scares us the most is when they say, ‘That’s Gothic.'”
They don’t like to be seen as “teacher”.
“Suddenly you’re expected to know everything about animation and guide people through complex spiritual realms. That’s not necessarily fun, because we’re very private people.”
“Animation is a solitary activity. It’s really just the two of us, and we follow our instincts. There’s also a musician, but we don’t even talk to him!”
They are never boring to work with.
“Sometimes students come to our studio and say, ‘We have to find a twin,'” they laugh.
“Even if you’re having a bad day, even if things aren’t going well, you just need to think harder. We know the value of working together. And we’re not divorcing each other.”
Furthermore, they added: “Every day at lunch, we sit down with a bottle of wine, take notes, and in the evening we talk. We don’t have any personalities that get in our way. We don’t have egos, and it’s also very humbling work. It takes hard work and discipline. It’s almost a form of prayer. We don’t become spoiled brats.”
Next, they will be presenting a project about the late director Krzysztof Kieślowski at the Homage a Kieślowski Festival in Poland.
“The Institute of Polish Culture in London asked us to make a short 10-minute film about Kieślowski to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death, which will be celebrated this summer. We had access to his archives,” they say.
New features may also be taking shape.
“We don’t have a script yet, but we’re heading there. We’re waiting for the music to inspire it,” they admit.
“I’m always looking for something that really inspires me, and sometimes it starts with music.[Composer]Carl Orff wrote ‘Musica Poetica’ and I discovered it in a library in London. It’s still early days, but I’ve been making animations with this music for about two or three months. Let’s see where it goes.”
