I arrived in Zagreb, Croatia for ANIMAFEST ZAGREB 2008 (May 31 to June 5) early on the morning of the 31st after a 22 hour train ride from Gent. Luckily this ride proved to be much less eventful than my trip to Russia two years ago, and the ride went smoothly.
Since there is a totally new administration running the festival this year, many people had been curious about how it will run and what it will be like. There are many big changes this year. Instead of the festival being in one central location with two screening rooms, ANIMA FEST is now located in the center of town with four separate theaters and two exhibition spaces. There is good and bad to everything - I never spent much time in the center of the city in previous years since we were all in the large theater complex out a bit from the center, but since we are all scattered all over there is no real central bar or place to meet. I will reserve my judgments about the changes until nearer the end of the festival.
The opening night ceremony was held at GLIPTOTEKA, a lovely open air cinema in the Old Town area of Zagreb. The films screened were a cross-section of films that arrived too late to be juried into competition but that Artistic Director Kreshimir and the ANIMAFEST team deemed worthy of audience viewing. It is a shame that such wonderful films as Koji Yamamura's Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor and Michaela Pavlatova's Carnival of Animals could not be in competition, but it was nice to see them on the big screen.
The highlight of the evening was the awarding of the ZAGREB ANIMAFEST LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD to Priit Parn. There will be three screenings of Priit's impressive body of work as well as a screening of Parnography, Hardi Volmer's brilliant 2005 documentary about Priit and his work.
Hor d'oeuvres and drinks were served following the screening and then we all adjourned to the bar at Cinema Europa for dancing and good conversation.
I am off to meet Joanna Quinn for a drink - so I will post more tomorrow.
