Imitation of Life

Directed by Mathias Poledna

The animated work Imitation of Life conflates past and present by using outdated production techniques in a contemporary context. Through a laborious process, Poledna produced 5,000 handmade sketches, layouts, animation drawings, watercolor backgrounds, and ink-rendered animation cells in order to create this three-minute film. He collaborated with members of the original Walt Disney animation team to design the cartoon, which stars an exuberant singing and dancing donkey in a fairy-tale forest and channels the early-20th-century animations of the so-called Golden Age of animation. Poledna also rearranged and re-recorded the 1935 song “I’ve Got a Feelin’ You’re Foolin’” with a full orchestra for the film’s soundtrack. Poledna’s painstakingly finished work is entirely convincing as an animation from the 1930s, yet the sense of nostalgia it induces is fundamentally and powerfully artificial.