Educational Media Reviews Online

Internationally recognized digital graphics creator, writer and director, Anna Tchernakova, with designer and animator, Georgine Strathy have combined to create a flowing, fantasy of poetic beauty. In the storyline, a mai-mai fish falls in love with an ordinary fisherman. She breaks the water’s surface, follows his boat, sees his face, and falls in love. The fisherman, spending most of his life alone on his boat, fishes without being totally aware of his surroundings. The mai-mai must find a way to attract his attention to notice her. She discovers a piece of broken mirror on the ocean floor, and she swims up to just below the surface carrying it for him to see. The beautiful reflections of dazzling colors change the fisherman’s perception of his life. He starts to write in a journal about how the world looks and how he feels. These wonderful words of poetry are then published for all to read. The fisherman, seeing his everyday life in a completely transformed way, falls in love with a simple, fisherwoman.

The plot continues as both the fisherman and the fish do what they can to fulfill their love’s desires. This romantic fairy tale about unrequited love illustrates how beautiful the world can be when one looks at it with a different eye and change of heart.

Technically, the line drawings with tie-dyed colors come to life. The animators’ co-direction and artistic training provide natural expressions that yield a most captivating and eye-appealing film. Their ability to morph shapes and colors from one recognizable form into another is very mesmerizing. The animation is superior.

Gavin Bryars’ original music is the perfect match to the action in the film. The rhythm of the mostly string music is so integrated that when a fisherwoman picks up the fish she is scaling and it turns into a violin that she is playing, the flow and change seems unremarkable. That is, of course, what happens everyday on the fishing docks!

Narrator John Neville’s voice corresponds seamlessly into the cadence of the music and the animation to incorporate the total, creative package.

The subject and intellectual content is for children in middle school (grade 5 and up). Although this story can be simply called an animated fairy-tale, it has a message for adults as well. It is appropriate for children’s video collections, and for college or university collections with computer animation curriculum.

The inside of the video jacket has questions that can be used to start classroom discussions when working with children.

It seems rather unfair to call this amazing film an “animated short.” Highly recommended.