Logo_hovers_2024
Title
World Festival of Animated Film /
1972.
World Festival of Animated Film / 1972.
hr | en

ANIMAFEST TUESDAY: EXHIBITIONS, VR COMPETITION AND THE FIRST PAKISTANI FILM IN COMPETITION
06/08/2021

After yesterday’s official opening of the 31st World Festival of Animated Film, Tuesday at Animafest brings the first day completely filled with films and side events at all cinemas and exhibition spaces.

At the SC Cinema, the projectors light up at 11 am with World Panorama 1. World Panorama is a traditional non-competitive programme with bold and thrilling films that equally include the works by famous filmmakers and new voices of animation – suffices to say that new films by Georges Schwizgebel, Sasha Svirsky and Reinhold Bidner, as well as films from Martinique, Egypt and Qatar can be seen this year. Often unconventional and explicit, films in World Panorama are an invitation to watch with a different pair of eyes. In this first segment, in addition to Alan Bidard’s Reflection from the Antilles, we can also see the German-Syrian co-production Have a Nice Dog! and the Brazilian Magnetica, as well as new works by some of Animafest’s old acquaintances.

From 1 pm, the seventh segment of the theme programme about love called “Lust” will follow. It includes erotic films that also cover historical curiosities like Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure – American humorous pornographic miniature from 1928 by anonymous authors created in honour of Winsor McCay, classic titles like The Joy of Life from 1934, pearls of the 1990s such as Removed and Achilles, to newer titles like The Banquet of the Concubine, The Clitoris, Des câlins dans les cuisines and Moms on Fire.

Up next is a retrospective of the School of Art and Design in Lucerne (15:30) with 11 works, some of which were made by already established authors such as Aline Schoch, Kilian Vilim and Samuel Patthey. Loyal Animafest visitors will also already be familiar with some titles like Travelogue Tel Aviv and Ooze. The school will be presented by its founder Otto Alder. Admission to this screening is free, but as with all free screenings, for epidemiological reasons it is necessary to pick up a free ticket at the box office.

The Student Film Competition 1 from 17:30 brings, among others, the original, visually lavish and touching French emigrant film La Bestia about a girl and a smuggler on the infamous freight train, formally innovative Chinese Tatata created by mapping classic animation to stop motion-driven plaster sculptures, the Israeli Yet the Sea Is Not Full created at the crossroads of the painting triptych with Bosch’s influences and Hebrew tradition, the Singaporean comic ‘documentary’ horror film Strange Occurrences: Bukit Bulabu, etc. After the screening, Višnja Vukašinović will host a Q&A with Clémentine Poeymiroo (Chronic), YiYang Sun (Tatata), Yael Honig (Yet the Sea Is Not Full) and Chaerin Im (Eyes and Horns).

The elite evening slot at SC from 8pm brings the Grand Competition Short Film, also followed by a Q&A with the authors. Here you can see a witty stop motion job interview (Selection Process), a Chinese parable in tableaux Gold Is Eating People, a new film by animation celebrity Tomasz Popakul (The Moon), a Pakistani film about the intersection of theocracy and the digital economy Swipe, the erotic animal eye candy Hold Me Tight, Awkward about clumsiness in public and the shocking animated-documentary ‘radio drama’ Orders. Alexis Hunot will host Carla Pereira, Tomasz Popakul, Mélanie Robert-Tourneur and Aleix Pitarch after the screening.

The SC Cinema programme concludes at 10 pm with a poetic documentary essay The Archipelago by Félix Dufour-Laperrière, an intimate-historical, psychogeographical voyage along the St. Lawrence river. This nostalgic feature film in 12 techniques is also a memento for the indigenous population affected by colonialism.

From Tuesday at 11 am in the SC Gallery, audiences can access virtual, often interactive experiences gathered in a VR animation competition. The competition lasts until Saturday, every day from 11 am to 7 pm, and includes nine works on cutting-edge devices, including new impressive projects by Vladislav Knežević (Aqualia) and the Popović brothers (Dislocation).

&TD Theatre opens its doors at 4 pm with the Student Film Competition 3, which presents: Huis Clos – a film of exceptional black-and-white aesthetics dominated by equally ‘cyclical’ geometry and figurality of avant-garde inspirations, while its theme is criticism of the high classes devoted to vain social interactions; The Cherry on the Cake by Chloe Farr which in one of its visual segments evokes the Maniac Mansion or some similar point and click crossed with JRPG; Three Jumps to Happiness – a humorous claymation about alienation and self-help; an allegory of intergenerational noise in communication and the internet Gen TreeBusline 35A on verbal harassment and division of responsibilities in the collective; and works of bright colours – Misery Loves Company (which contrasts the cheerfulness of its appearance with a depressing text that dreams of self-destruction and modern media) and Ant Hill (about growing up, dreams and community). There is also a new film by Sunčana Brkulj The Tower, which stands out with the filmmaker’s recognizable horror vacui, predominantly medieval, but eclectic architectural and artistic sensibility leaning on the music of the psychedelic alt-indie band The Recks.

From 6 pm The Grand Competition Short Film 5 brings perhaps the strongest concentration of "quality in diversity" this year: the premiere of Franck Dion’s new black-and-white metafilm Under the Skin, the Bark, grotesque teenage Easter Eggs straight from the Berlinale, hilarious stop motion satire in Mad Max setting on Spanish society Mad in Xpain, the refined Korean Salvia at Nine, kaleidoscopically-avant-garde, but based on a universal story, the Russian Happiness and the Taiwanese thriller / revenge horror Night Bus.

From 8 pm, the first slot of the theme love program “When We Met” will be replayed with films by Lotte Reiniger, Marie Paccou, Kirsten Lepore, Joanna Priestley, Konstantin Bronzit, Marta Pajek, etc. &TD Theatre goes to sleep with World Panorama 3 where, in addition to the French, Korean, Austrian, German and Italian flags, those of Argentina, Qatar and Egypt also fly. Jaimeen Desai, an Indian author educated at the famous French school of La Poudrière, will discuss his graduation film Love in the Clouds with Silvestar Mileta.

On Tuesday, Tuškanac Cinema is dedicated to the first two panels of the eighth international animation symposium Animafest Scanner. Discussions start at 10 am with an keynote lecture by Xavier Kawa-Topor and a panel on animation and biodiversity (i.e. its absence) and continue with those on animation in public space. Along with Kawa-Topor, Andrijana Ružić, Olga Bobrowska, Vicky Smith, Martina Tritthart, João Paulo Schlittler and Wayner Tristão Gonçalves are also presenting. Admission is free, and abstracts are available here.

After high-octane theory, relaxation for a slightly younger age in Tuškanac from 5 pm comes with the Bulgarian fairy tales in the selection of the international animation festival Golden Kuker from Sofia, 10 of them in a total running time of 48 minutes. Many of them are based on nursery rhymes, some touch on classic stories like Little Red Riding Hood, and a handful of other surprises await children and parents.

At 7 pm, nostalgics of the utopian impulse of the 1960s, fans of Metal Hurlant aesthetics and mild psychedelia, but also those who like coherent adventure and/or fantasy stories with undisguised political commentary will have a field day – it’s time for the feature film Cryptozoo about a veterinarian who saves mythological creatures by fighting against the American military-industrial complex. Tuškanac finally burns in the “Flame of Love” theme program (21:00) with climaxes of animated relationships in the works of Animafest winner Yumi Joung, Rafael Sommerhalder, Špela Čadež, Michaela Pavlátova, Joško Marušić, etc.

At 13:30 in the ULUPUH Gallery, the official opening of the part of the exhibition Behind the Scenes 3 dedicated to the Grand Competition Short Film will be attended by numerous authors of works gathered there.