Paul Fierlinger
Paul Fierlinger ( born March 15, 1936 in Ashiya, Japan) is an American animator, director and film producer of Czechoslovak origin.
Life
Fierlinger came as the son of Czechoslovak diplomats January Fierlinger in Ashiya, Japan to the world. His uncle was Zdeněk Fierlinger. Fierlinger fled with his family from the Nazis in 1939 in the United States, where he lived with foster families. His Jewish mother's parents were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
After the war Fierlinger returned with his parents to Czechoslovakia back, and visited in Poděbrady among others with Miloš Forman and Vaclav Havel an elite boarding school. He studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Bechyně, which he completed in 1955. After two years of military service Fierlinger worked as a producer for animated films in Prague as an illustrator and cartoonist, as well as from 1958. He went in 1967 in the Netherlands, then to Paris and worked for a short time in Munich as an animator on the animated film The Conference of the Animals, which was published in 1969. Fierlinger went in 1968 in the United States, where he worked in Philadelphia his animation studio Ar & T Associates founded in 1971. He produced mainly commercials for television, but also short animated films. It's So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House, in which Fierlinger directed and he produced, in 1980 for Best Animated Short Film was nominated for an Oscar in the category.
For the Sesame Street created Fierlinger 1982 series Teeny Little Super Guy. With his second wife, the painter Sandra Schuette, he designed 1997 Amby & Dexter series for Nickelodeon. Since 2004 Fierlinger teaches animation at the University of Pennsylvania 's Fine Arts School ( Penn Design).
Fierlinger was married in first marriage with photographer Helena Straková; the divorced couple had two sons.