Paul Fierlinger (born March 15, 1936 as Pavel Fierlinger) is a creator of animated films and shorts, especially animated documentaries. He is also a part-time lecturer at University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Early life Paul Fierlinger was born on March 15, 1936 in Ashiya, Japan, the son of Czechoslovak diplomats. His father, Jan Fierlinger, was a Czechoslovak diplomat, and his uncle Zdeněk Fierlinger was a prominent figure in the Czechoslovak communist regime from 1948 until 1968. He spent the WWII years in the United States. He studied at a boarding school in Poděbrady, where his schoolmates were Miloš Forman, Ivan Passer or Václav Havel. It is there where Fierlinger at age 12 created his first animated film by shooting drawings from his flipbook with a 16 mm Bolex camera. His experiences of youth and the difficulties of adapting to life in America and then returning to Czechoslovakia are documented in his biopic animated film Drawn From Memory. European career In 1955, he graduated from the School of Applied Arts in Bechyně. After two years of military service, he freelanced in Prague, as a book illustrator and gag cartoonist for cultural periodicals under the pen name Fala. Fierlinger established himself in 1958 as Czechoslovakia's first independent producer of animated films, providing 16 mm films from his home studio in Prague for Czechoslovak Television and the 16 mm division of Kratký Film. Fierlinger was one of the first animators in all of the communist countries across the Eastern Bloc to get away with privately producing animated films, which he sold it all to many state-run film and television studios across Czechoslovakia. Thus, he created approximately 200 films, ranging from 10-second station breaks to 10-minute theatrical releases and TV children’s shorts. In 1967, Fierlinger moved from communist Czechoslovakia to the Netherlands for freedom, where he pitched for a number of station breaks for Dutch television in Hilversum. He then went to Paris, France to work for a short stint as a spot animator for Radio Television France and ended up in Munich, West Germany for half a year, having been offered the job of key animator on a feature film at Linda Films, The Conference of the Animals. In West Germany, prior to his departure to the United States, he married a Czechoslovak compatriot and photographer named Helena Straková while living in Munich. AR&T Fierlinger formed AR&T|AR&T Associates Inc., his own animation