I always look forward to Animafest. There are wonderful screenings, excellent exhibitions, interesting guests, and a relaxed atmosphere
Countering The Dark Clouds Around Us With Humor
I always look forward to Animafest. There are wonderful screenings, excellent exhibitions, interesting guests, and a relaxed atmosphere. For one week Zagreb becomes the international center of animation and I am so fond of the city.
The theme for this year’s festival was humor - humor in all of its forms from laugh-out-loud fun to dark, dark humor. Each year, at the discretion of the Animafest Council, the festival honors a person who, over the years, has made an outstanding contribution to the world of animation. Given this year’s festival theme, it is only fitting that the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award went to the master of black humor British animator Phil Mulloy.
When a Phil Mulloy film comes up on the screen, it is almost immediately recognizable for its minimalist, grotesque, and very funny style. My first encounter with Phil’s work was his absurdist dark trilogy Intolerance (2000 – 2003).
His twelve part series The Cristies is a black comedy. As Phil describes the series on his website, the Cristies trilogy is about a family who “live in Wellington Green, a picturesque English village with a church, a pond, and a cricket pitch. Outwardly Mr. Cristie is a perfect gentleman inwardly he is a selfish, arrogant monster. When the whole world sees him on television having sex with a French sailor, his life is changed forever. Prepare to be shocked. This film takes you from the leafy green suburbs to hell and beyond”.
Phil’s films have won numerous awards including the 2016 Animafest Zagreb Grand Prix for Endgame. Richard and George like to play war games over the weekend to relax after a tough week at the office. In a dispassionate atmosphere and Phil’s characteristic minimalistic style, the growing brutality of the games slowly dawns on the viewer as you began to realize that what started out as a pleasant pastime has become a vicious reality. A fitting film for these turbulent times.
At Animafest, Phil gave a Masterclass where he told the packed audience that he takes his work seriously but never strives for perfection. I think that it is this lack of perfection, the rough images in his films, that heightens the horrific and grotesque feeling the viewer is left with after watching one of Phil’s films. If pretty is what you want, these are not the films for you, but if you enjoy films that you think about long after you have left the theatre then spend some time watching Mulloy’s films.
He also revealed that he doesn’t write scripts, which allows him to carry on working without hesitating. The audience was also treated to a screening of his latest work in progress. The yet-to-be-titled film is the story of a family who are trying to survive on the outskirts of London after the apocalypse.
Year after year I find the programming at Animafest to be of exceptionally high quality and thought-provoking. This year was no exception. The festival had a number of young female animators/directors who tackled hard-hitting subjects with fresh approaches. Finnish director Elli Vuorinen looked at the age-old problem of how society views and treats women in her social commentary Flower Show. Just as flowers are cultivated for their beautiful blooms, for generations young girls have been cultivated to be charming, the perfect wife and mother, to know their place and stay silently in it. In many societies today, women are not free to make their own choices, travel without a male relative, or even drive a car. Even in so-called “enlightened” societies, women are still paid less than their male counterparts for doing the same job.
Flower Show is a story of females confronted with different expectations and demands. Elli uses flowers and gardening as a metaphor for society and how even though many things change, some things stay the same.
Daria Kashcheeva first came to my attention in 2017 with her graduation film Daughter. Among its numerous awards the film received the Annecy Cristal for Best Graduation Film and was one of the five final films in the Academy Awards Best Animated Film category. I was very curious to see what Daria would create next and with Electra she has not disappointed me. Blending live action and animation, the film returns to the complex father/daughter relationship that she explored in Daughter.
This time the Czech filmmaker introduces us to an adult Electra who is trying to come to terms with events that occurred on her tenth birthday. Mixing memories with her imagination and hidden fantasy world, she delves deeper and deeper into her childhood memories of her rebellion against her mother and the complex feelings she has for her father. Normally when I see that a film is over fifteen minutes, I want to run the other way, but with Electra, Daria has created a film that is so rich both visually and storywise that the time flew by and I didn’t feel like I had watched an almost thirty-minute film. During the 26’33’’ film Electra’s painful memories, suppressed for so long, are finally revealed and the audience, along with Electra, finally discovers what really happened during her tenth birthday. The film does need a couple of viewings to take in all of the complex visuals and story, but it is time well spent. No matter how many awards Electra wins, I don’t think it will make it to the Academy’s final five films this year.
Nina Gantz’s latest stop motion film, Wander to Wonder, begins quite pleasantly with three miniature human actors, Mary, Billybud, and Fumbleton, who perform in a 1980s children's television series called Wander to Wonder. When the creator of the series, a full-sized human who looks after the tiny actors, dies the three small people are left alone in the film studio. Unable to get out of the building, the actors get hungrier and dirtier, and as they continue to make episodes of their show for their young audience, the episodes become increasingly bizarre. The puppets are beautifully crafted and the story is eerie but it did make me think about how much we are all dependent on other people in our own way.
I was totally charmed by Velijko and Milivoj Popovic’s latest film Zarko, You Will Spoil The Child, a film drawn from true life. The thirteen-minute film revolves around young Tisja who lives in Split, Croatia with her parents and grandparents in the 1980s, when Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia. Using a combination of archival photos and drawings, Tisja takes us back through her memories of the deep love she felt for her grandparents while giving us a picture of what life was like in Tito’s Yugoslavia.
One of the things that I love about the film is that it is extremely political without being preachy or trying to cram a serious political message down your throat. The film is full of love, touching memories, and a lot of humor, which is always a good thing when you are dealing with politics. Twin brothers Milivoj and Velijko live in Split. They grew up there and experienced the 1980s themselves.
Zarko, You Will Spoil The Child is based on the book U malu je usa dava (loosely translated by my phone as It’s In A Small Mouth) by Tisja Kljakovic Braic. Velijko and Braic co-wrote the script for the film together. I was not the only person who liked the film. It received the Best Croatian Film Award as well as the coveted Mister M Audience Award for the best film in the short film competition.
This year there was a strong group of feature films and while I am delighted to see excellent films such as Chicken For Linda, Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds, and Sultana’s Dream win numerous awards, my feature film discovery at Animafest was Pelikan Blue.
Hungarian director Laszlo Csaki’s animated documentary is set in 1990’s Hungary, at a period of significant change for the country. It was the end of Communist rule and travel to the rest of the West was finally possible, but unaffordable for most people.
The film is based on interviews with people who traveled to the West on international train tickets forged by three young Hungarians using Pelikan Blue Carbon Ink. At that time Hungarian train tickets were handwritten on paper with carbon paper underneath to make copies. The only protection was a stamp. Using imported bleach, indigo paper, and copied stamps the three friends forged tickets, first for themselves, and then for an ever-widening circle of friends until their lucrative scheme attracted the attention of ticket inspectors and then the police. Full of nostalgia, Pelijan Blue is sure to leave you walking out of the theatre with a smile on your face.
A special program that I enjoyed was That’s What She Said, a collection of short films by women and female-identifying filmmakers. The program was comprised of films that were screened at Animation Festival Network member festivals. The Animation Festival Network is comprised of five leading Central and Eastern European festivals: Animafest Zagreb, Anifilm International Festival of Animated Film in the Czech Republic, Fest Anca International Animation Festival in Slovakia, Animaest International Festival in Romania, and Animateka International Animated Film Festival in Slovenia.
Programmers at these five festivals wanted to spotlight the importance of the female voice in animation. In the history of animation in these countries female directors and independent animators were an exception to the rule until the end of the last century, and as this program demonstrated, women are now at the forefront of Eastern European animated films.
The nine films in the program included Lea Vidakovic’s beautiful puppet film The Family Portrait. Tolstoy said in Anna Karenia “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. This adage is aptly born out in Lea’s film when, on the eve of the Austro-Hungarian collapse, Andras and his daughter’ receive an unexpected visit from Andras’ unpredictable brother Zolton and his entire large family. After totally disrupting the entire household and leaving a path of carnage in their wake, they depart as suddenly as they arrive. Lea’s attention to detail, not just with the puppets but down to every little detail like the last cake crumb on a plate is amazing. I have seen the film several times and at each viewing I find something new that I hadn’t noticed before.
Another film in the program, Her Dress For The Funeral was inspired by animator Martina Mestrovic’s grandmother who dyed her wedding dress black because she wanted to be buried in it. It is a touching portrait of a person facing the end of their life and taking control of how they want it to end. Martina explained that the character of the grandmother in her film encapsulates all of the women who have affected her life in some way or another.
Animation Festival Network offers several other programs as well as That’s What She Said for screenings at festivals and events in the five participating countries. You can learn more about Animation Festival Network at: animationfestivalnetwork.eu
All you have to do is turn on the news and hear what is going on all over the globe to realize that the world desperately needs more to laugh at. It was most refreshing to have humor in all of its various forms as this year’s festival theme. Program curator Daniel Šuljić put together six screenings each one dedicated to a different type of humor. Slapstick or gag humor included such classics as Alexey Alexeev’s extremely funny Log Jam KJFG # 5 and Cordell Baker’s toe-tapping The Cat Came Back, based on an old folk song of the same name. I was especially happy to see Juan Pablo Zaramella’s delightful film Lapus on the big screen again. His curious little nun always makes me laugh.
Other screenings featured dark humor, theatre of the absurd, and verbal humor which opened with the 1952 Chuck Jones classic Rabbit Season starring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The series was rounded out with satire and a program titled That’s Just Human Nature which had films that dealt with laughing at ourselves as a species. It contained such classics as Bill Plympton’s Guard Dog and Creature Comforts by Nick Park.
Exhibitions are an important part of Animafest. Along with receiving his lifetime achievement award, presenting a masterclass, and introducing a two-part retrospective of his work, there was also a solo exhibition of thirty of Phil Mulloy’s drawings. His artwork is full of dark humor and sarcasm, further proof that Phil goes where few other animators dare to tread.
Even though the beloved Croatian animator and cartoonist Borivoj Dovnikovic, or Bordo as he was known, passed away in 2022 his films and cartoons are a lasting tribute to his great talent, wonderful sense of humor, childlike enthusiasm, and his championship of “the little man”. Bordo’s tremendous contribution to animation and in particular to the Zagreb School of animation was honored during this year’s festival with “Bordo’s Day”. The festivities began with the naming of a city park after him, with a dedication plaque that was unveiled by his wife Vesna Dovnikovic.
Bordo’s Day continued with the opening of an exhibition of sixty-four of Bordo’s cartoons at The House of Cartoons. The exhibition opening was followed by a presentation of Jelena Novakovic’s work-in-progress film Learning To Walk 2, a tribute to the life and artistic career of Bordo.
The title of Jelena’s film comes from Bordo’s classic 1978 film Learning To Walk. It is the story of Svojislav, who always walked the way his mother taught him to walk. Four of his friends take turns trying to teach him their styles of walking, convinced that each one’s way is the only way to walk. The little man has a difficult time getting away from them, but eventually he does and then he goes back to walking the way he has always walked.
An entire room of the Galerija Na Katu was devoted to the original drawings and sketches used in the making of Zarko, You Will Spoil The Child. Along with character designs, backgrounds, sketches, and croquis, Milivoj and Veljko Popovic presented two videos showing the making of the film along with its trailer. It was a treat to get to see the original artwork from a film that I like so much.
As well as adding another dimension to the understanding and appreciation o f films and filmmakers at the festival the exhibitions are recognized as important on the international art scene. In 2023, South African animator William Kentridge was the guest of honor at the festival where he was awarded the Animafest Life Time Achievement Award. A special exhibition of his artwork was also presented at the Galerija Kranjcar.
In June this year, the festival was honored by the Croatian Society of Art Historians when it bestowed its annual award on Animafest Zagreb for its Kentridge Project exhibition. The award honored the festival's promotion of interdisciplinary and visual culture. In selecting the project, the Awards Committee said “International Collaboration, networking, and supernatural creativity marked this year’s award for the promotion of interdisciplinary and visual culture. A high level of professional engagement in the presentation of manifold art forms, marking William Kentridge’s creativity and his connection with Croatian art forces firmly placed the award-winning project side to side with similar events on the international scene”. High praise indeed for the exhibition, which I can confirm was most impressive.
Animafest Scanners, the Symposium for Contemporary Animation Studies, held its eleventh edition this year in conjunction with the festival. Scanners is a platform for the theoretical discourse between filmmakers and animation scholars. Each year at the opening night ceremony the Animafest Council gives an award to a person who has made an outstanding contribution to animation studies. This year’s recipient was Ingo Petzko, an internationally acclaimed German expert in film and video art with a focus on experimental film. The person who receives the award also delivers the Scanners keynote address, and Ingo delivered his paper on Tracing Back To Some Basics of Analogue Animation.
This year’s speakers focused on four topics: Studying Early Animation (Tracing Some Basics), Role of the Editor and Editing In Animated Films, Humor In Animation, and Authorship In/Of AI Animation. Sixteen papers were presented during the two-day event.
The Zagreb festival picnics are legendary and for the last few years the festival organizers have added a new twist. Instead of putting us all on a bus and driving us out into the hills for a barbeque, this year we all walked together to a lovely, large park where members of the Croatian army cooked and served a delicious meal for us. There was plenty of wine and soft drinks and after lunch a nice green lawn to relax on. It was a lovely afternoon with an opportunity to have relaxed conversations.
At a time when many festivals are no longer printing catalogs, I commend Animafest on their many years of excellent catalogs. I understand the desire to save paper but catalogs are a valuable historical record for animation historians and journalists. They are also a source of memories for festival participants. My twenty-some years of KROK catalogs bring back so many memories of a special time that will never happen again with the terrible war in the Ukraine and my Zagreb books are a valuable resource for me as a journalist. The Zagreb catalogs also always have had the best covers.
A big thank you to the festival for inviting Nik and me to be part of Animafest again this year. A special thank you goes to the festival producers Paola Orlic and Matea Milic and to artistic director Daniel Suljic as well as the rest of the staff and volunteers for their many acts of kindness to me and for inviting me to host a book chat every year at the festival.
The next edition of Animafest Zagreb will take place 2 – 7 June 2025
You can find out more about the festival at: www.animafest.hr
AWARDED FILMS:
GRAND COMPETITION SHORT FILM JURY:
Sofia Melnyk, The Ukraine; Naomi Van Niekerk, South Africa; Marta Pajek, Poland, Malte Stein, Germany; and Vjeran Salampn, Croatia
GRAND PRIX: The Miracle, Nienke Deutz – Belgium, Germany, and France
GOLDEN ZAGREB AWARD FOR CREATIVITY AND INNOVATIVE ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT: Entropic Memory, Nicolas Brault, Canada
THE ZLATKO GRGIC AWARD FOR FIRST FILM PRODUCED APART FROM EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: Reborn With You, Inju Park, South Korea
SPECIAL JURY PRIZES:
Sofia Melnyk: Aaaah!, Osman Cerfon, France
Naomi Van Niekerk: Three Birds, Zarje Menart, Slovenia/Croatia
Marta Pajek: The Bitch, Carla Melo Gampert, Colombia/France
Malte Stein: Zima, Tomek Popakula, Poland
Vjeran Stein: Circle, Yumi Joung
GRAND COMPETITION FEATURE FILM JURY:
Barry JC Purves, United Kingdom; Vassilis C. Karamitsanis, Greece; and Vera Neubauer, United Kingdom
FEATURE FILM GRAND PRIX:
Sultana Dream’s, Isabel Herguera, Spain and Germany
SPECIAL JURY AWARD:
Pelikan Blue, Laselo Csaki, Hungary
STUDENT FILM COMPETITION AND CROATION FILM COMPETITION JURY:
Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Czech Republic and Vietnam; Joao Gonzalez, Portugal; and Ivana Kvesic, Switzerland
THE DUSAN VUKOTIC AWARD FOR THE BEST STUDENT FILM:
Carrotica, Daniel Sterlin-Altman, Germany
SPECIAL AWARD:
Miracles Do Happen, Barbara Rupik, Poland
SPECIAL AWARD:
Posthuman Hospital, Junha Kim, South Korea
CROATION COMPETITION BEST FILM:
Zarko, You Will Spoil The Child, Milivoj and Veljko Popovic
SPECIAL AWARD:
Windows from the South, Eugen Bilankov
CHILDRENS’S JURY:
Val Bandic, Jakov Botic, Maris Dlacic, Polina Glebova, Karlo Jurcic, Alana Kovac, Jasna Salopek Radic, and Vita Stojic
BEST FILM FOR CHILDREN:
Nube, Diego Alonso Sanchez De La Barquera Estrada and Christian Aredondo Narvaez, Mexico, France, Hungary
SPECIAL MENTION :
The Grand Mother, Julia Hazuka, Poland
BEST FILM FOR YOUTH:
On The 8th Day, Agathe Senechal, Alicia Massez, Elise Debruyne, Flavie Carin, and Theo Duhautois, France
AUDIENCE AWARD MR. M FOR SHORT FILMS:
Zarko, You Will Spoil The Child, Milivoj and Velijko Popovic, Croatia
AUDIENCE AWARD MR. M FOR A FEATURE FILM:
Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds, Benoit Chieux, France
