Study of adaptation from surrealist poetry into the short animations of “Tant Mieux Production” in France

The adaptation of literature in form of poetry to animation film is the main concern of this research. The purpose of this study is at first, to identify the concept of poetry and subsequently to examine the movement of surrealism poetry and its four outstanding poets, in the early 20th century in France to analyze how their words are translated into the image in the works of the Tant Mieux Prod company. France Télévisions and Tant Mieux Prod have invested in this project by focusing on the work of Jacques Prévert, Robert Desnos, Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Éluard. An ode to poetry, the aim of the series En Sortant de l’École is to celebrate the prose of French poets who made an impact during their lifetime. Launching the first season with a tribute to the free and pioneering spirit of Jacques Prévert, En Sortant de l’École associated thirteen of his poems with the talents of young filmmakers, fresh out of French animation schools that generated short films embodying Prévert’s verses with their widely different approaches to the medium and with their own graphic creations. Like other forms of literature, poetry may seek to tell a story, enact a drama, convey ideas, offer vivid, unique description or express our inward spiritual, emotional, or psychological states. Yet, poetry pays particularly close attention to words themselves: their sounds, textures, patterns, and meanings. As a result, it would be difficult to analyze a poem’s words regardless of the poet’s period and life. That is necessary for the director to have a good understanding of this matter to be able to direct a movie in a way that would be comprehensible for the audience too. In this research, with a library-based study in the theory of adaptation and film-making, and also the translation of poems and interviews from French to Persian, it has been attempted to find the relationship between animation and poetry. According to the original assumption, animation medium is preferred to represent poetry, which is due to the power of imagination in the creation of narratives which pursue a structure different than the usual use of language. The other major discussions, are the director’s role and the process of adaptation in the cinema in order to make the readers able to understand this process better which will prepare a basis for the final section of this research. To the purpose of analysis of the short animations of each collections, it would be quite inevitable to study and understand the period, life and background of the poet. Therefore, after reading the translation of the poem, one can adequately understand the atmosphere of the poem and its meaning. Consequently, with these knowledges it would be less complicated to watch the final short animations and having an opinion about the successfulness of the works. The results would give us a clearer picture of how the adaptation process in animation from poetry could be done and what would be the real problems that should be taken into account.