SIDE EVENTS | EXHIBITIONS

Behind the Scenes 5

Gallery SC 05–10/6 11:00–19:00
opening: 07/06 12:00

The group exhibition Behind the Scenes, which at the Zagreb Animafest, as part of the accompanying events, presents the works of authors whose films entered the Grand Competition Short Film and Student Film Competition, for its first small anniversary – the fifth edition, for the first time presents the authors of the short and student competition in one unified (joint) set up at the SC Gallery.

Driven as always by the idea of promoting a broader platform of animation that would provide the audience with an insight into the background of the artistic process and reveal some of the most interesting making-of moments in terms of the work-in-progress stages that preceded the completion of the film itself, the concept of this exhibition project in the previous four festival editions significantly expanded and improved.

From the initial idea of an exhibition of an illustrative nature with an emphasis on the presentation of diversity and variety of techniques and ideas and creative approaches behind the selected titles in the Grand Competition of Animafest 2019 with barely fifteen participants whose works made up the first display of the group exhibition in the Galerija na katu in KIC, Behind the Scenes, however, in the not particularly favourable in the years that followed, fully justified its initial impulse and purpose.

Despite the well-known aggravating circumstances that have befallen the world since the next edition in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, while Zagreb and Croatia were additionally struggling with the consequences of two devastating earthquakes, which closed the doors of the previous festival office forever, it sounds completely incredible that not only did the festival manage to take place live even under such circumstances, but it also continued with the full extent of the organisation of the accompanying events which included this exhibition during the next two so-called pandemic editions in 2020 and 2021, when the exhibition continuously grew and expanded its initial concept by introducing a selection of works by the authors of the Student Film Competition (2021). Achieving its full potential at last year’s large and sumptuous set up at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, dedicated to the big 50th birthday celebration of the festival (2022), the exhibition moved from a classical display of works into a performative platform, thus expanding its profile as an important and indispensable festival practice of promoting animation in the gallery space.

Among 42 film titles, selected for the Grand Competition Short Film, and 41 titles from the Animafest 2023 Student Film Competition, this year as many as 51 of their authors are jointly presented with the broadest range of works, from paintings, sketches, drawings, prints, collages, to parts of the set, models, studios, storyboards, to specific installations and multimedia that will be displayed in the SC Gallery during the festival week from 5 to 10 June 2023.

Since with this, the first small anniversary Animafest group exhibition of the most diverse works of art, expressions and techniques, we definitely confirm the continuity of the practice of regularly exhibiting animation in a gallery context, our wish, as always, is that in the upcoming festival editions, animation and its authors, apart from as legitimate participants film programme in theatres, in the near future we start presenting them in the long-desired and dreamed-of Animation Museum, which Zagreb as a city of animation truly deserves.

Paola Orlić

GRAND COMPETITION - SHORT FILM:
ALIMO, Juxtaposed LAND
Atsushi Wada, Ikimono-san: Turtle
Aude David, Mikaël Gaudin, A Tiny Man
Florentina Gonzalez, The World’s After
Alec Green, Finbar Watson, Teacups
Delphine Hermans, Michel Vandam, The marrons glacés
Elizabeth Hobbs, The Debutante
Susanne Jirkuff, Where I Live
Pernille Kjaer, Spring
Matea Kovač, Y
Ricardo Kump, The Cactus
Sofiia Melnyk, Mariupol. A Hundred Nights
Dimitri Mihajlovic, Miguel Lima, Almost Forgoten
Lucija Mrzljak, Morten Tšinakov, Eeva
Gabriel Nóbrega, Lucas René, La Pursé
Zahra Salarnia, No. 28
Volker Schlecht, The Waiting
Ines Sedan, Love Me True
Seyoung Ok, Chamber of Shadows
Shunsaku Hayashi, Our Pain
Sasha Svirsky, The Master of the Swamps
Naomi Van Niekerk, Box Cutters
Lea Vidaković, Family Portrait
Charlotte Waltert,Alvaro Schoeck, Greylands
Varya Yakovleva, Oneluv
Zhan Zhang Xu, Compound Eyes of Tropical

STUDENT FILM COMPETITION:
Jordan Antonowicz-Behnan, A Taste for Music
Mamadou Barry, Rodrigo Veras, Ziyu Wang, Junhao Xiang, Wang Yu,Linfeng Zhou, Funeral at Nine
Fernanda Caicedo, Wind Whisperer
David Crisp, A World In Chaos
Joke Duwaerts, Sem
Selma El Maki, Water Drop
Miriam Fox, Dead Silent
Philippe Kastner, Dede Is Dead
Mona Keil, Juice
Ciara Kerr, Homemaker
Raz Merhav, Symbiosis
Honor Price, Zuman
Rika Nakayama, Under a Shooting Contrail
Itati Romero, Carlos Montaña
Shiyu Tang, Soaked In
Alize Sotelo Gutierrez, Chopping WoodChips
Suchana, Dear Me
Sara Tomas, Foreign Side
Jezaja Uten, Burnt Cookies
Bar Vaknine, Tamar Sharvit, Matan Levi, The Building at 9 Etzel St.
Matti Vesanen, Ascent
Xu Yuan, Sewing Love
Yu-jin Oh, Unique Time
Zhen Li, fur