Ian Lumsden

Café is a stylish short revealing the imaginative interplay in a bar where a lone girl sips her drink and eyes up the talent. She has her gaze and aspirations set on the quiet guy diligently reading his book. Meanwhile the (buxom) bar girl tidies up the tables much to the delight of the (diminutive) customer who is unable to take his eyes from her undulating figure.

28-year old Marta Mackova is from the Czech Republic though she graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2006. Café was her graduation capstone. Marta has an eye for the etiquette that governs such manoeuvres between the sexes and the skill to suggest a yearning with the merest shift in the shoulder line, —though subtle, is not a word to describe the reaction of the little man to the large woman.

There is a well-tuned sense of timing in her work- —the comedy of the situation unravels at its own pace. She has worked with some skilled people in Prague, obviously learning her craft well prior to her arrival in the fine city of Edinburgh (my grandfather’s birthplace). Café is coupled with a collection of movies by other young Scottish animators that are well worth a look. Marta has her new website up and running and Café is featured there as well.