Olga Šišková

“Mr. Deitch arrived here in 1959, and we began working on his orders. At first it was the Madlenka, this was very simple, but the following films were getting more and more difficult. And we did all this by hand, there were no computers.”

“Everyone had to start from the very beginning, just like in the Baťa factory. I spent half a year doing only colouring work. I could chose between colouring or contour drawing. Then I began with drawing individual frames. The animated film production was a large factory in those times…”

“Luboš Beneš, the one who made the film A je to!, worked with us, too. He later went to work in the puppet film department. He was a real prankster. For instance, he would sit on a big tin box from the film roll and ride on it down the marble staircase from the highest floor. What a noise he made! Or there was a party… People believed that aloe was good for your health, and so the girls grew aloe in a flower pot there. He gnawed on it and ate all of their aloe.”

“We were knitting little braids from straw and then making bags from them. Later they had us clean some rings for V2. When we received the boxes with the rings, we did this: we applied ash on them so that they would jam.”