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World Festival of Animated Film /
5 to 10 June 2023
World Festival of Animated Film / 5 to 10 June 2023
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Friday at Animafest: 500 Pages of Festival History, Ukrainian Animation and Neapolitan Sci-Fi
06/10/2022

On the penultimate day of the anniversary Animafest, the Tuškanac cinema is again dedicated to children and young people – at 9:30 and 11:30 they can see the Films for Children Competition (ages 15+ and 3-6) and talk to the authors: Agatha Wojtaś, Armine Anda, ​​Lilit Aitunyan, Mitchelle Tamariz, Mor Israeli, Evan Thomas Stegner Bode, Emilie Mereghetti, Martin Vandas, Marie Urbankova, Maria Motovska, Jose Luis Saturno, Salome Hammann, Jiri Pecinovský, Alžbeta Mišejkova and Maša Avramović. At 15:30, the programme for children and young people continues with a selection of the best films from the VAFI/RAFI festival. At 5 pm, the retrospective segment of the Zagreb School entitled Cartoons! is also suitable for children because it includes classics of the School intended for them as well, such as Cow on the Moon, Wow Wow!, A Visit from Space, Play and Professor Balthazar. The 7 pm slot is the second and last opportunity to watch the feature film by the Academy Award nominee Michaela Pavlatova My Sunny Maad about the Afghan experience of a Czech student. The Tuškanac line-up ends with a selection from the recent Audience Award-winning films, including the big hits Acid Rain, The Physics of Sorrow, Between the Shadows and The Stork.

At 14:30 in the MM Centre, the bilingual monograph Fifty Years of the World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb (1972–2022) will be presented, with 39 textual and almost 300 visual contributions by local and foreign authors. This seminal edition covers the history and phenomenology of Animafest from its beginnings to the present day, using the perspectives of historiography, art history, film studies, architecture and urban planning, design, musicology, comics and video game theory, focusing on its audiovisual identity, media reception, exhibitions, artistic and production management. The memories of the authors of the animated films from all over the world of the early editions and the influence of the festival on the global scene are particularly emphasised.

At the &TD Theatre, a particularly attractive lecture programme begins at 10:30 with a presentation by Anastasiya Verlinska on recent Ukrainian animation. She will speak about studios, authors, events, support and how the political situation has affected its development. No less interesting will be the lecture of the most successful Slovenian animator Špela Čadež on stop-motion animation (11:30), which brought her world fame, exploring the multifaceted collage technique and offering a variety of visual solutions. Following is a review by Juan Pablo Zaramella on the development possibilities of short films, videos and series in animation (12:30), and then (from 13:30) Veljko and Milivoj Popović and Božo Balov from Prime Render Studio present the animated project The Lokals which uses NFTs (non-fungible token) and discusses their applicability in the production of animated films. At 15:30 the film programme Best of Animateka (part of the AFN network) will be presented by the long-time artistic director of the Ljubljana festival Igor Prassel, and hits such as Little Russia, Miramare, The Last Bus, Boles, III and Average Happiness will be shown, also very known titles to the Zagreb audience. Film programmes continue at 5 and 6:30 pm with the Student Film Competition 2 and Grand Competition Short Film 2. At 8pm check out the Zagreb School’s Golden Age I including The Substitute and Don Quixote, and the day concludes with World Panorama 3, followed by an interview with Irish author Cliona Noonan (Soft Tissue).

In the Sek Hall at 4 pm, Nino Kovačić will talk to the participants of the VR Animation Competition, Maarten Isaäk de Heer and Keisuke Itoh. The traditional all-day animation performance by Thomas Johnson Volda will be held at the same place from 10 am to 10 pm, and this year Petra Balekić will join him to conduct a performance called Seeds and Wounds. This year, Thomas’s famous animated puppet will communicate with the contours of the female body, which Petra will draw as loops on tracing paper.

In the central festival hall, the day begins with World Panorama 1 (11 am) and continues with an animated documentary from Polish communist history 1970 (1 pm) at the crossroads of archive and puppet film. At 15:30, composer, art director and character designer of the feature film Yaya and Lennie – Walking Liberty Dario Sansone will attend the screening of his Mad Entertainment studio and talk to the audience afterwards. It is a Neapolitan post-apocalyptic biopunk of exceptional appearance and sound, inspired by Steinbeck’s longer story Of Mice and Men. After the screening of the Student Film Competition 4 (17:30), the audience will be interviewed by Ada Hernaez (The Uncertain Snow), Bianca Scali and Paulina Larson (How Many), Leo Černic (Pentola), Jordi Morera (Don’t Feed the Pigeons), Maria Nitek (Hierophany), Shih-Yen Huang (Butterfly Jam), Anna Lena Spring and Lara Perren (Sauna), Michael Bohnenstingl (Slouch), Julia Chien (To Be a Pacific Salmon) and Shiika Okada (Maternal Awakening). This is followed by the Grand Competition - Short Film 5 and 6 (8 pm and 10 pm), both with Q&As with the authors: the two-member collective Maru (Dies Irae), Emma Calder and Julian Cripps (Beware of Trains), Adel Khan Farooq (Cockroaches), Sophie Koko Gate and Rachel Sale (Hotel Kalura), David Doutel, Vasco Sá and Jonas Jurkunas (Garrano), Pejman Alipour (Where the Winds Die), Anna Solanas (Mr. Xifró’s Morning) and Branko Farac (Psychographic).

The spectacular anime Belle by Mamoru Hosoda with free popcorn for the first 200 visitors will be screened free of charge at the Tuškanac Summer Stage from 9:30 pm under the stars – all thanks to Zagrebačka banka. After the animated thrills, DJ (and animator) Bruno Razum (from 11:30 pm) plays music in the restaurant of the Museum of Arts and Crafts.