Mummy Was A Nuclear Power Plant

Mums are great, and everyone wants to have one to love and to cherish, even if your mum was a nuclear power plant and you came out of her ‘womb’ with multiple sets of eyes, humongous legs or a twin growing out of the side of your neck. At least that’s what Supinfocom students Marion Petegnief, Matthieu Bernadat, Nils Boussuge, Florence Ciuccoli and Clément Deltour believe, and so they made this really unsettling but kind of brilliant animation about the kids caught up in the horrifying fallout from Chernobyl.

We caught up with one of those French mummy’s boys and had a chat.

VICE: So wtf is going on in the film?
Matthieu "Bernie" Bernadat: Hah ok. Where do I begin? Basically, it's about kids that have these severe malformations. They live in a really crappy orphanage in Belarus [break your own heart with Paul Fusco's photographs of the Novinski Asylum here].

Why did you choose to do your dissertation on the most depressing thing in the world? Shouldn't you be walking up and down the Champs Elysees with a traffic cone on your head?
I don't know really. We chose Chernobyl because it's something that's affected our generation – I was born a few weeks before the plant exploded. Culturally, as well as physically and geographically, it's a 'no man's land'. It's a place that's still hard to get images from – it's far away, gritty and dangerous.

You roll pretty deep. Whose idea was it, initially?
Marion was the girl who came up with the base concept of Chernokids. She saw one of Paul Fusco's photographs – the kid with the big leg – and from that came the initial sketches for the character called 'T-Rex'. You'll see some similarities between characters we've designed and Fusco's photos. But we also created characters that are exaggerated and even 'cute' because it's still a work of fiction. And OK, we'll admit there's no orphanage right next to the real plant, nor is there a big cooling tower like we showed.

"by Paul Fusco"

Was it tough to maintain or focus on that cuteness when your source material was an atrocity?
The whole process was pretty tough because we wanted to show that this was a) Chernobyl, b) surreal and c) kids playing without making it cheesy or carelessly joyful.

Are you planning to make a sequel called Fukukids?
I hope there won't be any source material to work from. Besides, there's already a great animation for that called Nuclear Boy.

OK. Back to Chernokids; Mother is an omnipresent character in the film. Why is the animation set on Mother's Day?
We tried to show the relationship between the deformed kids and the source of their deformity, the abandoned power plant next door. In their fantasy that they play out during the fight, 'Mother' – the *thing* that gave them those superpowers – is the one they are trying to protect.

So it's a little like Stockholm syndrome or something?
I suppose.. Or the concept of 'resilience'. Maybe it's a dark return to reality, that the walls are indeed radioactive and harmful, and that the kid at the end who gets his teeth knocked out is the one who speaks the truth. We really had a hard time deciding whether the other kids would punch his face like a piñata or if they'd all be sad.

And what made you decide to smash his face? What did you want to express?
The other kids see Mother as the reliever of their pain and their reason to be alive. Their need to have a relationship with a figure like that is stronger than the fact it's a deathly area to live in.

So, we all just want to be loved basically.
Yes!

"The French students who made the film"

Also, what happened to their real mums?
I wouldn't know. It's the 'Children of Chernobyl' story. Also, orphans have a bigger 'baawww' value, let's be honest. Dickens did it, why shouldn't we?

Will you be getting your mum a dead fish for Mother’s Day, too?
Haha. Nah, but at least a phone call or flower if I'm close by.

What has the response been like? Both from the school and the internet community?
We had average grades I guess. We got more feedback from the internet. The YouTubers are definitely a different crowd from the Vimeoers.

Really? What's the difference?
Some of the YouTubers were angry. We got an awesome email let me find it…

http://www.chernokids.fr/ --- wat the fuck is this???

you are fucking bastard? wat do u mean wen u make this ''film.''

All of u is a “infâme français de porcs”.

You are French pigs?
'We are horrible French pigs'.

Why do you think they reacted this way?
I have no idea, perhaps he thought we were making fun of real diseases and handicaps. It's YouTube, I won't lose any sleep over it tonight. It's also entertaining to watch. It's the internets! We were just happy that a few more people than our friends and relatives saw it.

Which brings me to my final question; You made the film like a year ago, but you only posted it online now. Did that decision have anything to do with what's happened at Fukushima?
No, we were unaware of the scale of Fukishima when we released it. Originally we waited because we wanted to get it shown at a festival. But that didn't happen, so we put it online. I hope you don't see it as us piggybacking a disaster =/

I don't, I promise.

ELEKTRA KOTSONI