Foto: Daily Mail |
Drawn to God: Pope John Paul the cartoon
From Richard Owen in Rome
HE HAS been dead for a year and a half, but John Paul II, it seems, lives on as one of the Catholic Church’s greatest characters. Yesterday the Vatican launched an hour-long animated cartoon version of the life of the charismatic pontiff, aimed at children who may never have heard of him or the turbulent times he lived through.
A Spanish film company backed by the Vatican has transformed the extraordinary career of the Polish Pope who lived under Nazism and helped to bring down communism into a cartoon DVD.
The film includes his election as Pope in 1978, the attempt on his life three years later and his world travels. But to appeal to the young it focuses on his boyhood and humble origins, showing the young Karol Wojtyla — known to friends as Lolek — saving a penalty on the local football field, playing the guitar, acting and skiing before moving on to the stage of history as cardinal and then Pope.
“We wanted to speak to children in their own language,” said Father Feredico Lombardi, the head of Vatican Radio and the Vatican press office. He said rights to the DVD, produced in several languages including English, were being negotiated in 30 countries in time for Christmas.
The cartoon, John Paul II — Friend of all Humanity, is narrated by a pair of white doves — named Fiona and Piccolo — based on the real ones that regularly landed on the Pope’s windowsill while he was addressing crowds above St Peter’s Square.
On one memorable occasion the doves landed on his head. The film opens with animated characters representing his diary and fountain pen lamenting his death in April last year, before flashing back to his childhood. This week Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to his “great predecessor” in a message for Polish television marking the anniversary of his election, and recalled John Paul II’s long illness and public suffering before his death.
He has put John Paul II on the fast track to sainthood and frequently invokes his memory. Thousands of pilgrims still queue every day to file past John Paul II’s tomb in the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica.
The film is the brainchild of José Luis López-Guardia, a Spanish cartoon film producer who uses the name Cavin Cooper.
His most recent productions include Musical Mushrooms, about “tiny beings who live in the gardens of musical geniuses such as Handel and Mozart”, and The Amazing World of Leprechauns, in which three leprechauns go in search of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Father Lombardi said the Vatican had agreed to the project because López-Guardia’s gentle style was “a refreshing change from much of the violence you see in modern cartoons”.
López-Guardia said that he made the film partly as a tribute to his mother “who adored the late Pope”.
The film, however, lacks the pace of a cartoon strip produced a year ago by the Vatican with the Italian publisher Piemme, which showed the retreating Nazis blowing up churches in wartime Poland to the sound of “Ka Boom!” and “Crash!”
Asked why he had used characters such as the doves, López-Guardia said that John Paul’s life story “was so serious, grave and even sad that I needed some funny characters to appeal to children and to lighten the story”.
Źródło: The Times
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Komiksy o Janie Pawle II
"The Life of Pope John Paul II" - wydany przez Marvel Comics Group.
"Jan Paweł II. Papież trzeciego tysiąclecia" - wydany przez wydawnictwo Salwator w 2003 r. (tłumaczenie z języka włoskiego; napisany i zilustrowany przez Toniego Pagota i Sergia Topię).
"Z Wadowic do Rzymu. Dzieje życia Karola Wojtyły - Jana Pawła II" - autorami rysunków są Dominique Bar i Guy Lehideux, a scenariusz napisał Louis-Bernard Koch.
"El increíble HomoPater" (Kolumbia) - nie przetłumaczony na język polski; jego twórcą jest grafik Rodolfo León Sánchez.
Artykuł "Jan Paweł II superstar" | 
