Facing new creative freedoms following the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Czech animation director Jiri Barta set out on a mission to produce a stop-motion masterpiece, “Na pude.” Enduring new challenges of independent film financing in a capitalist world, Barta and his team successfully organized a patchwork of foreign partners, government subsidies and service deferrals to set the stage for this ambitious film. With animation occurring on a frame-by-frame basis, and with dozens of characters to articulate, the production of this film took many years before audiences in America would ultimately see the final film, titled as “Toys in the Attic.”