There are three authors presented at Animafest 2014 in both the Grand Competition and the Grand Panorama with three completely different, but visually and narratively equally brilliant works. The reason why the festival did not host them a large retrospective already this year lies in the meticulousness of their work or the fact that they are simply too young to have presented a larger number of works. Nevertheless, whoever sees Boles by Špela Čadež, Baths by Tomek Ducki and Absent Minded by Roberto Catani will surely wish to see more of their specific signature. That is why we have the 3 x 3 selection, in which the festival’s art director Daniel Šuljić chooses three authors from the main competitions for a special presentation of their earlier works.

Roberto Catani has already been presented at Animafest: in 2012 in the New Italian Animation segment with La Funambola, which won Cartoon d’Or, and in 2002 with La Sagra (first prize in the category of films up to six minutes of duration). Animafest will re-screen both of these films in the 3 x 3 section, next to Catani’s Goldfish. Just like his latest film Absent Minded proves, Catani is fascinated with illogical processes of dreams and imagination, capable of skilful reshaping of motifs and symbols flowing into one another and pointing to lack of adaptation, and inclined to a rich visual heritage of Italian art, especially avant-garde, pastel colours and lighter tones. His films are all very intimate and personal, introspective and autobiographic and frequently portray childhood.

Tomek Ducki is a Hungarian-Polish animator, born into a family of artists. For his graduation film Life Line he was nominated for Cartoon d’Or. He studied all over Europe, starting from the famous Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), also presented at this year’s Animafest. Next to Life Line, the 3 x 3 segment also presents Ducki’s films Silent Touch and Basement Jaxx ft. Lightspeed Champion: My Turn. In 2008 Ducki was named the new up-and-coming talent of world animation, primarily for his special interest in bodies in motion, both human like those in Baths and mechanical in the conceptually brilliant Life Line where he animated anthropomorphic cog wheels, but also for the inspired use of reflexions that make his films a real treat for the eyes.

Špela Čadež (1977) is Slovenian animator who graduated from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and Academy of Fine Art in Ljubljana, mainly using the puppet technique. At Animafest she competed in 2010 in the Commissioned Films category, and this year the Grand Panorama presents her interpretation of Maxim Gorky’s tale of a sentimental prostitute and a young writer – Boles – a film that won over 30 awards in the past year and that well testifies to her recurring preoccupations with love and loneliness. The 3 x 3 section shows two of Špela’s puppet films, Mate to Measure and Lovesick, as well as The Last Minute in which she animated shadows together with Marina Rosset. Čadež is also a special guest of the Croatian Puppet Film Exhibition at ULUPUH Gallery.

An overview of the 3 x 3 selection can be found HERE.