Savva Tsekmes Channels Gene Wilder’s Psychedelic Willy Wonka Boat Ride In Environmental Short ‘Home Again’

Australian animator and director Savva Tsekmes has released his second short, Home Again, a visual tone poem based on Gene Wilder’s ominous boat monologue in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

The project is entirely self-produced, and for Tsekmes it marks a natural progression from his 2019 debut, The Wanderer, which was also built around spoken-word performance.

“A friend who’d seen my first short reminded me of the boat scene in Willy Wonka,” Tsekmes tells Cartoon Brew. “I thought, oh I could do something with this.”

Tsekmes, whose title sequence work for Elastic Pictures and Antibody includes contributions to Westworld and True Detective, also works as a freelancer and artist. The shift between commercial assignments and personal films is something he approached deliberately. “I work on personal projects to fill my cup,” said Tsekmes, “and it’s a creative outlet where I’m not told what I can or can’t do.”

Home Again, which foreshadows dangerous environmental futures, was also inspired by a dream that unsettled Tsekmes for years. “It was very abrupt. I was in the mountains, and I was older. Everyone was running around wondering what the hell they were gonna do, and I knew in the dream that the water levels were rising,” said Tsekmes. “Then I saw a peacock, as if it were a film cut, and it stared at me and unfurled its tail. I can’t to this day get that visual out of my head.” Serving as both a warning and a potential, Tsekmes has worked to intricately recreate the peacock as he saw it in his dream.

His latest short combines rich, dreamy imagery with an interpolation of Gene Wilder’s legendary performance, but it didn’t come without difficulty. Securing permission to the audio from Willy Wonka was impossible, as the estate allowed only a recreated cover. “Looking back, that limitation helped,” said Tsekmes. “I’m glad we did a cover, even though recreating the performance felt daunting. The voice actor and sound designer worked hard to do the performance justice.”

Tsekmes animated the film on his own, and the personal focus finds its way into the details. Tarot cards, symbolic motifs, and environmental metaphors appear throughout the short. Tsekmes explained that these layers developed gradually. “I was hoping for people to rewatch because it’s hard to fully grapple with what’s going on at the very beginning,” He said. “The details help frame the short as a vision of what could happen, rather than an accusation about what is happening now.”

With this release, Tsekmes establishes his style: a visual poetic repose, filled with detail and demanding revisit. Home Again asks the viewer to come along on a ride of clairvoyance, to take a moment of pause to interpret the future. For Tsekmes, the goal was to create something that prompts viewers to imagine where they might be headed and how they might return home again. “I don’t want to be preachy, to be pointing fingers. But this is all a possibility.”