Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– One of the centerpieces of tourism in Copenhagen, the statue of the Little Mermaid, was once again vandalised.

The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen after his love for a balletic version of the fairytale. The sculptor and creator of the statue was Edward Eriksen, which he unveiled in August 1913.
Eriksen used his wife as the model.

In April 1964 some politically motivated artists sawed off the head, and a new one had to be sculpted and attached. In 1984, an arm was sawn off and returned two days later by the vandals. In 1990 another attempt to cut off her head failed, and the statue ended with a deep cut in her neck.
In January 1998, her head was cut off again but was returned to a television station and was reattached to the sculpture.

This time varmints just poured red paint on her. This is the eighth time the statue has been doused with paint. It’s hard for a mermaid to survive above water.

- This is as good a place as any to note that I have two upcoming dvd releases available on the 19th of June. Each of the two will contain two programs of Han Christian Andersen tales we’d produced about ten years ago.

One will include The Red Shoes and The Little Match Girl; the second will contain The Emperor’s New Clothes and Nightingale. Both dvds will also feature galleries of additional art and storyboards, an animatic of a section of the films, and a documentary about the making of the films.

It’s a relatively full program for these films that hadn’t yet been released on dvd, and I’m proud of the final products. I am enormously grateful to the distributor, First Run Features, who are treating my work as if it’s a big deal not just another kiddie program.

There will also be an ASIFA East program on June 20th to highlight these dvds, and I hope to show a program of some of the material. Maybe we can put together something interesting.

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