ABSTRACT
Paul Fierlinger was born March 15, 1936, in Ashiya, Japan, where his parents were Czechoslovakian career diplomats. He spent the years of World War II in the United States, and at the age of 12, while living in a boarding school in Podebrady, Czechoslovakia, Fierlinger created his first animated film by shooting drawings from his flipbook with a 16mm Bolex. In 1955 he graduated from the Bechyne School of Applied Arts. After two years of military service he did freelance work in Prague as a book illustrator and gag cartoonist for cultural periodicals under the pen name Fala.
