The '90s ruined ex-Yugoslavia's proud tradition of animation. Where would the old "Eastern bloc" aesthetic, with its innovative graphics, dark outlook on humanity, and heightened sense of the absurd, fit in? Courtesy of Animteka Festival.

The Animateka Festival is like a huge marketplace in a strange city. It is full of surprises around every corner, exotic goods, stories both adventurous and mundane. Like the city center of Ljubliana itself, full of students, street art, and liberty architecture with medieval overtones, it is a mix of the modern and the historical, bursting with new life and celebrating its unique Slovenian identity.

For here there is a sense of the ending of a dark age: the '90s were ruinous everywhere in eastern Europe, nowhere more than in ex-Yugoslavia, with its proud traditions of animation. One arrives with the baggage of the past: the fine traditions of the old "Eastern bloc": innovative graphics, a dark outlook on humanity, and a heightened sense of the absurd. How will this play out now that MTV has ground these very identifying factors into a very modern banality of visual overload?

Let's map it out:

Visual Poetry at the Krakow School
One of the clearest tendencies of the festival was the emergence of a uniform body of work from Polish students from Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, under their professor, the Polish master Jerzy Kucia. "There is a singular mood in these films," noted jury member Marco de Blois of the Cinematheque Quebecois. The films coming from this school are based heavily in the graphic arts, often substituting a visual and dreamlike poetry for clear narrative. While the ambiguity of these works can often be maddening, their willingness to investigate symbols and the unconscious mind is tonic in an era where psychology is considered an offshoot of marketing.

Steven Woloshen's scratch film workshops provided an artistic outlet for festivalgoers in the theatre lobby. Unless noted, all photos courtesy of Russell Bekins.

Awarded a special mention by the jury, Joanna Rusinek's Coincidence follows a stream of consciousness from cityscapes into dreamscapes, employing motifs such as a blowing scarf, a dog, and a beggar to question whether there is some sort of strange physics that governs human encounters and gives them meaning. Another special jury mention went to Wiola Sowa's Refrains. Here, the allusion to poetry in the title tells the viewer rather directly what is up: the rhyme will come with the imagery. Cycles of life in nature and cycles of womanhood are suggested by a soft shifting cyan-green sand and mist that build the images of women interacting with nature in a monochrome pointillism.

Another entry from this school was Little Black Square, which uses the narrative trick of the chase: a boy is hunted by an all-destroying black square. Author Tomasz Siwinski uses this premise to destroy "a romantic view of the world" related to coming of age, but the fun here is to watch the sublime destruction of what seem like oil landscapes (actually they're wax) with details added in digital post. "After the fall of communism, there was nothing," Tomasz says, contemplating his job opportunities when he graduates. "Now it is a bit better. The Polish National Film Institute was established a year ago, and they have some funds."

Another entry may offer a ray of hope for Tomasz. One of the strongest entries from Poland came from working CG professional Grzegorz Jonkajtys. His vision of mankind fleeing a virus in The Ark shows a sure hand for style and a unique talent for demonstrating epic scale. He manages to finish his story with a surprise ending as well, which is something few in the festival were able to accomplish.