Belgian master of animation Raoul Servais (1928) is the winner of 26th World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The Award will be presented to him at the official festival opening ceremony in Zagreb, on 6 June 2016.

The Animafest Council, which decided on the award, pointed out that the Award is given to a ‘stylistically opulent and diverse author who mostly used drawing, but nevertheless often changed his drawing style, in some works used images of human figures, combined live action and animation and in many other ways, making a name for himself as one of the early explorers of the possibilities of digital technology’.
Particularly active in the field of animation promotion as a President of ASIFA (International Animated Film Association) from 1985 to 1994, Raoul Servais is undoubtedly one of the most acknowledged European authors of his generation. Thanks to works such as Chromophobia (1965), Sirene (1968), Goldframe (1970), Operation X-70 (1971), To Speak or not to Speak (1972), Harpya (1979), Papillons de Nuit (1998) and Atraksion (2001), he became one of the most important innovators and representatives of existentialist (often symbolic) animation, occasionally completely blurring the boundary between animation and live action. With great imagination and occasional roughness of style and notion of the world, Servais followed in the footsteps of historical avant-gardes and anticipated trends dominant among later generations of artists.

To Servais, who has recently presented his latest short film Tank at Ghent Film Festival in Belgium, and in the summer is finishing his new feature Duiven, this will not be a first time in Zagreb. Servais, Animafest’s old friend, visited Zagreb as a participant of its first ever edition, way back in 1972, when Operation X-70 won in the short animated film up to three minutes’ category. Raoul Servais will receive the Animafest Lifetime Achievement Award in person at the opening ceremony of the 26th World Festival of Animated Film on 6 June 2016, at Europa Cinema. The Festival will also screen a retrospective of his films.