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The visitors to this year’s Anifilm will have a rather unique opportunity to see the debut film of a self-taught director who became the most famous Swiss animator. Georges Schwizgebel combines a simple drawing of a figure with photographs, cut-outs from magazines and samples of cloth. A prominent motif of this collage mix is a drawn male face slightly inspired by pop-art.

This film benefits from the possibilities of a distant camera in animated films. It begins with a static shot of a merry-go-round. As the camera withdraws, we begin to understand that the merry-go-round is merely a part of a colossus that moves in the rhythm of waltz. Apart from various types of carousels, other circular motifs such as staircases and a cup of coffee play an important role in this film evoking the flow of time.

Mephistopheles – as the painter – sends Faust on a journey through famous paintings. This time, the moving camera shots that are typical for the director remain static in order to enable the paintings to speak. First one of the director’s paraphrases of a famous story ends with a painting in which Mephistopheles, the intrepid mover of the plot, gets Marguerite. In the same way he nudged Faust with his brush in the beginning, he now immobilises him.

The film’s concept revolves around using animated sequences that are only six seconds long. Arranged one after another, they illustrate the music from Hector Berlioz’s opera The Damnation of Faust. To shed some light on his concept, the author ends his film with a shot of all the sequences together. By portraying two characters escaping on horses and using a dizzying style, the film resembles a strange romantic epic fulfilling its name.

After an impressive flyby through a rugged landscape, an unusually clear story begins to unfold. During a hunt, a doe is wounded by a dog. Its master takes it home and cares for it. The dog keeps going after the new resident, but its master eventually forces it to befriend the doe. But one day, the doe escapes the mansion and runs into a pack of dogs. In the end, the doe pays for its trustfulness.

Fugue is one of the author’s most fluid films so far. It constantly challenges the viewers to revise hypotheses about what they’re actually watching as changing perspectives, settings and colour confuse them. The author transfers the principles of musical form into film language and uses visual polyphony. But in the end, we find out that everything is in fact rather simple and behind all this is one man’s dream.

To his version of Cinderella, the author added – among other things – the motif of clouds that form a kind of dividing line between characteristic scenes from the popular fairy tale. The director also set his version in modern times and so the heroine and the “prince” eventually leave the old world on a plane through the clouds.

One of the highlights of Schwizgebel’s work is a successful adaptation of the novella Peter Schlemihl’s Miraculous Story. Particularly the first half of the film is characterised by constant movement of an imaginary camera and offers the viewers a breath-taking spectacle full of changes in shapes and perspectives. This film telling the story of a man who sold his shadow to the Devil only to get shunned by society is a variation on the story of Faust.

Jeu is one of just a few of Schwizgebel’s films in which the narration isn’t the primary goal. Fulfilling its name, the film is a visual and musical play that builds itself and then collapses to the tones of music by Sergei Prokofiev. Numbers become shapes and shapes become letters and people. The film’s finale set in a cinema hall alludes to the medium itself and the limits of its interpretation.

This atmospheric film portrays volatile scenes from the dreams of a young woman. The interruptions of the dreams are underlined by repeating motifs of deletion and shifts to other means of expressions. In this film, the author uses a unique combination of his favourite acrylic paintings with pastels on paper. The film’s unfathomable story is explained at the very end when a silhouette of the woman emerges from the dark in the rhythm of her breathing.

A man and a woman fall asleep next to each other onboard a plane. When flying through a turbulence, their hands touch, and the man gets carried away by his imagination. His fantasy turns into an epic romantic saga in which the director connects the film’s score to the movements of its image. Using a specific artistic technique, he draws a clear line between the desire and the reality of the characters.

Another captivating film by one of greats of traditional animation, Georges Schwizgebel. His suggestive animated ride is based on Goethe’s poem, Erlking (Erlkönig), and the music of Franz Schubert and Ferenc Liszt. A man and his sick son ride through the forest and the delirious child thinks that they are following the Erlking.

A movement within a painting, which begins with the savagery of a battle and comes to a halt in a rendition of a masterpiece from the 15th century: The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello. The famous painting is a perfect perspective study combining surface and depth effects. The same methods are used by the Swiss master of painted animation.

Several brilliant artists took part in making one of the first Czech music videos. Jaroslav Ježek composed the music and duo Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich came up with the lyrics. Furthermore, Jan Werich also performs the song about a water sprite in modern times. A combination of lively animation and Kábrt’s artistic style, which was very daring for that time, created a humorous and timeless film.

The protagonist of this legendary Academy Award-winning film is a wayward boy who is drafted into the US Army by mistake. He keeps telling the adults “I am only four years old,” but no one notices his age. Thanks to the meeting of the director and his future wife and the Bratři v triku collective, the Oscar was in a way awarded to Czech animation.

An episode of Bedřich’s popular trilogy of western slapsticks inspired by stories by Dal Stivens. This time, resourceful and intrepid Rocky Bill and his loyal cows and dog must face importunate hares. Whatever Bill tries, he always ends up as a laughing stock to the hares. Will he manage to hunt one of the scamps with the bent barrel of his rifle?

This allegorical slapstick with fantastic elements depicts a hero who deals with a rather trivial problem. He would like to order something to eat and drink in a fancy restaurant. But it seems that all the waiters have some more important business. Our hero is starving and begins to hallucinate. When he overcomes the worst of the hallucinations, it seems that he won’t get his food anyway.

Unlike their film The Giants that was banned, The Dream World by the authorial duo Deitch-Hlavatý is virtually unknown. With its unchained artistic style, the film flirts with the themes of ecology and the dehumanisation of modern society, but on the other hand, it doesn’t lack kind irony. Although this unjustly forgotten film may seem technologically demanding, its crew was composed of only the two authors and Zdeňka Deitchová.

As a line producer, Zdeňka Deitchová was in charge of the unique film Bartakiáda. It is unfortunately the only stand-alone film built on the brilliant humour and visual style of cartoonist Miroslav Barták. In a peculiar way, it tells the story of one of Barták’s typical heroes who experiences utterly absurd things on a Friday 13th.

Zdeňka Najmanová’s (later Deitchová) first film in the role of producer was an animated film commissioned by UNESCO, of which Czechoslovakia was a founding member. In a humanist story, Jiří Trnka outlines the benefits that the organisation can bring to the world. The motifs of tearing down walls and overcoming prejudice remain topical even after half a century.

The last film of this block is another music video of sorts. The main role is played by the voice and singing of Waldemar Matuška in different registers. It guides us through a Dadaistic spectacle in which people, animals, houses and water are controlled by a simple tune about a foolish frog. We can blame a farmer who wandered into a shop with this tune. Inspired by the song The Foolish Frog by American folk-singer Pete Seeger.

One day, Adam wakes up in an empty blue room. His only connection to the world seems to be a window which is also sort of a screen and filters reality and the man’s memories in a very mysterious way. What happened to his family and him? This suggestive film represents the technique of paint-on-glass animation.

This film is a part of the Faces from Places series that takes the viewers to twenty different places all around the world and introduces different customs and cultures. This episode about Pakistan introduces the annual festivities in the city of Lahore where each year the sky fills with thousands of flying kites and neighbours compare their kites from their rooftops.

Adam and Eve didn’t seem to be particularly enjoying their lives in Paradise, so they decided to leave it. And they would have gotten away with it had it not been for God! While the two enjoy the big city and its temptations, God’s helper – a dinosaur – is tracking them. Apart from a mouth full of sharp teeth, he also has a gun and a very trigger-happy claw…

Thanks to (not only) Ron Dyens, our hero Kroak made it from the pages of comic books all the way to the big screen. His absurd stories are characterised by a peculiar humour with unexpected punchlines and a unique score when authentic sounds are replaced by actual voices of the sound engineers. In this episode, Kroak wants to find some food in a hole in the ice.

For a man who doubts his own existence, getting up from a chair may be an impossible task. That’s at least what the protagonist of Man on the Chair thinks. He’s living his life imprisoned in his surreal imagination. Or is it reality? This film won the award for the Best Short Film at the 2014 Annecy Festival.

Another one of Dyens’ collaborations with director and traveller Bastien Dubois takes us to Japan to see a martial art called Hojōjutsu that uses specific restraining techniques. But similar unique bondage techniques aren’t exclusive only to Hojōjutsu. Outside of Japan, the kinbaku technique is popular in the BDSM subculture.

This music video proves that Ron Dyens doesn’t limit himself to making only narrative films. Right in front of our eyes, Olivier Chabalier presents a smoothly flowing world full of dreamy spectacles. He includes animated elements as well noticeably stylised actors and actresses who appear and disappear again alongside fairies, deer and snakes.

Another one of Dyens’ collaborators is Simone Massi, an eminent personality of Italian animation. In his intimate films, Massi finds himself on the border between stories and purely lyrical images, usually in black and white. These images take us into the burdensome memories of a little boy’s childhood.

Boris Labbé, the director of this fascinating film with minimal colour, believes that everything in the universe is closely connected – from the smallest things to the biggest ones. The director captures their movement and constant metamorphoses in a minutely elaborate whole of 2D computer animation of Indian ink and watercolours on paper.

As Kroak the Eskimo is always hungry in the land of snow and ice, we see him hunting in this episode as well. He would like to have a roast walrus for dinner. But when he encounters a rather agile adversary on his hunting quest, it comes as a big surprise to him. Who will become the main course at the end?

Madagascar, a Journey Diary describes the journey of a European traveller who is confronted with the Famadihana tradition. The pages of the travelogue turn and the drawings come to life. Before we get acquainted with the Malagasy culture, we travel through the fertile landscape of Madagascar. This collage film is characterised by captivating graphic style.

Tomek Ducki’s graduation film from the MOME travelled around the world, won many awards and was also nominated for the prestigious Cartoon d’Or award. This gloomy and even depressing film with no dialogue depicts two characters becoming closer in a precise mechanical world with strict rules, narrow paths and where one’s life is clearly defined.

In this music video from the beginning of his music video career, Ducki combined real footage with animation. In the music video, Basement Jaxx are accompanied by animated bears against a pulsating colourful background.

Apart from music videos, Tomek Ducki also realises his potential in the field of festival visuals and jingles. For the Etiuda & Anima International Festival, he made a playful and rhythmical jingle. Its 20-second-long story uses the motif of letters from the name of the festival held annually in Kraków.

Tomek Ducki’s commissioned work is full of colours but his authorial work tends to be more economical with colours. And this is the case with his film Silent Touch made at the British National Film and Television School. It is Ducki’s most realistic film as far as its execution is concerned, but its plot with live trees in a winter landscape is unusually mystical.

In the music video for Basement Jaxx’s song Unicorn, Tomek Ducki turned away from watercolour aesthetics and chose intense colours and defined shapes. At first he alternates and then entwines abstract parts with fragments of narratives. A unicorn loses its horn and the unfortunate animal, which on top of it all falls apart into three pieces, sets out to find it. The search itself is the framework of the music video’s storyline.

In this music video, the director works mainly with striking colours and contrasts. In a variation of the motif of Adam and Eve’s original sin, he puts emphasis on the female character. The technique of the music video that, incidentally, won the award for the Best Music Video at Anifilm a couple of years ago, is reminiscent of watercolour paintings.

In the jingle for the Animator Festival in Poznań, Ducki used the contrast of blurred watercolours and black and white elements. The jingle with gradually increasing dynamics is also characterised by a combination of multiple animation techniques and its motif is slightly reminiscent of the director’s first film Life Line.

Yet another of Ducki’s music videos adheres to his unique artistic and animation style. This music video was made for the song Daydreamer by Bipolar Sunshine. The music video thematises and variates the relationship of a man and a woman. The director uses original collages full of colours, motifs and geometric shapes.

This artistically captivating film with a magical atmosphere takes us into the seemingly everlasting peace of an old spa. Elderly women submerge into the water to find a fantastic but also peculiarly unpredictable (almost horror-like) world. The peaceful atmosphere of the traditional spa suddenly changes and becomes eerie.

Also in the case of this music video, Tomek Ducki follows up on his distinctive colourful and dynamic style. But at the same time, he mixes several artistic approaches and animation techniques. In the music video for Animals by Emily King, he masterfully combines the aesthetics of sand, hand drawing and pulsating abstract shapes that together with the music create a vivid spectacle.

Tomek Ducki made a lively and inventive festival jingle for the Hungarian festival Anilogue, which is held annually in Budapest. It follows a dog that gets inside a dice and finds itself in an unsolvable situation.

In the music video for Man in the Moon, we follow a young couple travelling to the Moon. Their desire to get there is so strong that nothing can stop them even though their dream destination is very elusive. This romantic music video is a visual play with space shapes, objects and colour tones.

This film commissioned by a museum in Warsaw depicts the legend of how the city was founded. A sequence of fantastic scenes tells the love story of fisherman Vars and a mermaid which can be found in the city’s coat of arms. The film also works with period materials such as historical city maps and explores the motif of merciless time.

With its visual style, Tomek Ducki’s latest music video is a follow up on his previous work. We again watch clearly defined characters against a blurry and partially abstract background. With his feeling for colour and by using plant symbolism underlining the nostalgic story, Ducki made a unique music video about a woman bound by family ties.

The central motif of this playful music video is a garden gnome in diverse settings including a subway station and the slopes and meadows of the Austrian Alps. Apart from the ironising garden gnome, Odell borrowed from the Alps also the classic lederhosen and hats in which the protagonists make fools of themselves.

Mirror and kaleidoscopic effects accompany Alison Goldfrapp along with flowers, human limbs and illustrations reminiscent of old adventure books and encyclopaedias. It is the combination of the mechanical and the organic as well as the strictly symmetrical image composition with Alison in the centre that is characteristic/essential for this music video.

Scots Franz Ferdinand on a highlighted grid of two-dimensional surfaces and Odell’s favourite combination of living people and collage compositions of newspaper clippings. The band members become strange robots composed of mechanical parts that emphasise the song’s regular and infectious rhythm.

Grids and the aesthetics of posters and newspapers are used also in the colourfully contrastive and daring music video of El Presidente. The band thematises the destructive force of rockets in a chill pop rhythm, while against the backdrop of various country flags, we see exploding heads, atomic bombs and eventually the whole planet.

A new take on the famous original by Nancy Sinatra. Symmetrical compositions almost exclusively restricted to pink and black with Nancy’s unmistakeable dreamy look in the background. In this music video, we will see not only original footage of the band, but also archive memories of the popular singer.

Classic shot of a band standing in an empty space switches with rather surreal scenes from a magic show. In them, the illusionist dressed in gold becomes a toy and an abused assistant of bossy women in flamboyant dresses.

If Jonas Odell ever borrowed some old footage of Nancy Sinatra, this time he went much further – the entire music video is composed of footage from ecstatic concerts of icons of music history including for instance Elvis, McCartney and Björk. Thanks to the director’s tricks, all of them – without exception – sing lyrics by Irish band U2.

Odell’s favourite 2D surfaces in 3D environments are back with their vintage look. Apart from mechanical motifs, this music video has also macabre skulls and flowers – everything in one scene. The music video is composed as a look on a theatre stage reminiscent of the aesthetics of Monty Python’s animations.

A tested and proven grid, limited but striking colours, emphasis on patterns in collages from various cut-outs and the artist at the centre of attention is Odell’s typical style even in this case. This time, he chose black, yellow and pink and the singer herself also contributes to the vintage look with her dress and hairstyle.

Unlike Franz Ferdinand’s previous music video from this selection, this one lacks cut-out collage and vintage Vernesque illustration. It is characterised by a smoother and often strictly right-angled background with multiplied eyes and other organs. But this time, the attention is infallibly directed towards the band.

Triptych Lies includes three stories, each one with a different visual style. The film is based on real conversations with a criminal posing as an accountant, a man who stole money from his mother when he was young, and a woman addicted to drugs. Each one of them “confesses” to others and especially to themselves.

Also in this film, Jonas Odell uses the testimonies of actual people, this time focusing on four stories of their “firsts”. He visualises the testimonies with different animation styles depending on the context, the spirit of the era and the tone of each one of them – factual, embarrassing, horrifying and even nostalgic.

This award-winning film was the turning point in the history of Odell’s studio Filmtecknarna that he founded with his colleagues in 1981. Revolver works with several animated loops representing the cycle of time and repetitions by using a hypnotic melody of a music box, surreal images and the rhythm of human breathing.

For this film thematising addiction to computer games, Jonas Odell choose a fitting artistic style: the voices of a girl who succumbed to addiction alongside her boyfriend, a young father and a schoolboy speak through avatars reminiscent of characters from popular RPG games.

Stories in which the author remembers unique personalities from his closest surroundings deal with trivialities from their everyday lives thanks to which these people left an indelible mark on the author’s life. How do we remember our close friends and relatives from our childhood and what are or were they like in reality?

Young and reckless Swede A. falls in love with a German terrorist, gets involved in a bank robbery, plans to kidnap a Swedish politician and ruins her life. Combined with the content, the film’s amazing visual style supported by techniques such as rotoscopy, cut-out animation and live footage results in a very powerful drama.

This poetic fairy-tale is about crossing boundaries and having the courage to venture into the unknown. At a small glade surrounded by a dark forest live creatures whose only food are seeds that turn into glowing fruits. The creatures are often hungry as the seeds fly to them only sporadically. But one of them, Fuzzy, gathers the courage to go into the forest.

This film exploring the influence of society on the development of an individual combines almost realistic drawings with childishly naïve but colourful images full of fantasy. It puts in contrast a boring black and white “adult” world governed by rules with a world of children that can fall behind a little but is filled with imagination. The author asks the question of whether it is right that we must give up ourselves just to keep up with the majority.

1923 aka Heaven is one of two animation loops directed by Max Hattler, inspired by the work of French outsider artist Augustin Lesage (1876-1954). 1923 is based on Lesage’s painting A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World from 1923. This captivating video at times visually reminiscent of mandalas takes us into the inner world of an unknown colossus.

In Aanaatt, one of the highlights of his filmography, the author presents an ever-changing vision of “analogue futurism” created completely without digital effects. His original world is characterised by a constant movement of various objects that may or may not be of this world. Deviated points of view and reflection of the reality behind the window plunge the viewers into uncertainty.

Responding to the compositional and aesthetic qualities of abstract expressionism and camera-free animation, All Rot uses photographic reanimation to render the mundane environment of a decaying crazy golf course into a rapturous split-screen experiment in synesthetic cinema.

One of the older films of Hattler‘s retrospective was made during his studies at the Royal College of Art. In it, he disassembles the symbols of the Islamic world and the stars and stripes from the American flag. In the spirit of non-figurative Islamic art, he works only with shapes and colours. Accompanied by a meaning-laden score, the film very clearly evokes a destructive conflict.

Repetition and distortion drive this audio-visual collaboration between composer Lux Prima and visual artist Max Hattler, where fuzzy analogue music and geometric digital animation collide in an electronic feedback loop, and spawn arrays of divisional articulations in time and space.

Motion creation, energy transmission, kinetic combustion. Audiovisual collaboration between composer Lux Prima, director Max Hattler, and a group of animators from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. The result is a short but intensive experience combining the visuality of early abstract films with the atmosphere of sci-fi blockbusters.

In the second of Hattler’s student films screened at Anifilm, the author works with the real world. Analogue games with longer exposition of night lights create a spectacular visual supplement to an electro-jazz song of the same name. Together with the protagonists flashing past, we, as if by nature, find ourselves somewhere in the city during the night.

Serial Parallels approaches Hong Kong’s built environment from the conceptual perspective of celluloid film, by applying the technique of film animation to the photographic image. The city’s signature architecture of horizon-eclipsing housing estates is reimagined as parallel rows of film strips. It is one of the first screenings of Hattler’s latest film.

Max Hattler tries to visualise higher dimensions and unearthliness based on a turbulent atmosphere caused by a premonition of the end of the world. He uses elements of a complex and endlessly functioning mechanism. The cosmos of its pieces still performs many functions without emotions and retrospect. Partial changes are almost imperceptible.

What might appear as fun in training turns into a bloody ballet on the battlefield. This animation short-cut depicts the “attractiveness” of war using plastic toy soldiers. Their dance is alluringly mesmerising at first, yet weapons and dance do not go together and it is only a question of time before the first shot is fired. When conflict becomes a spectacle, the lines between destruction and entertainment get blurred…

“The film is based on the idea that there is an underlying unchanging synchronisation at the centre of everything; a sync that was decided at the very beginning of time. Everything follows from it, everything is ruled by it: all time, all physics, all life. And all animation,” Max Hattler explains. This film will drag you into a vortex of rhythmically unfolding infinite synchronisation.

The unknown X becomes a whole symphony of shapes. In a kinetic energetic otherworld where everything is by itself yet can intersect with each other, cross-action seems the best way to solve an unknown equation. Documentation of a water screen projection presented on Regent’s Canal in London.

After 1923 aka Heaven, this is Hattler’s second video inspired by the works of Augustin Lesage. Both films were created during five days in February 2010 with students at the Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. And in this case as well, the film is a flight through a colossus of sorts, but this time, the surroundings are more depressive and almost hellish.

A portrait of a deserted fisherman’s village in Northern Norway called Børfjord, a place with an incredible personality in the middle of magnificent Arctic nature. The film was filmed in 70mm Super Panavision, using a specially developed “nature animation” technique. This suggestive trip to Norwegian nature speeds up time 50,000 times and days pass within seconds.

Diversity is a rhythmic, hypnotic stop-motion piece with elements of non-phased animation that we can see on the crown caps of well-known German beer brands. They are combined in various compositions and morphed into each other to abstract it from its original meaning into an intense and energetic visual composition.

This combined film that apart from specific animation uses also real footage, rapid camera movements, close-ups and dynamic editing interprets the decorations from human bones in the chapel in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora. The original film was accompanied by a recording of the chapel’s official guide, but after the events of the year 1968 in Czechoslovakia, it had to be replaced by a version without commentary that the film’s author rejected.

This one-minute-long “touchless” film documents the author’s journeys through Northern Bohemia. Rather than the tourist signs themselves, Matyáš Trnka brings to life their immediate surroundings. He invites us on a sixty-second-long journey through woods and towns where signs seem permanent, but the landscape changes.

Pacer looked at the world in a way no film had before it. The geometry of the city and its construction, the artistry of Montreal’s landscape seen through the hyper-prism of a camera racing through time in a different dimension. Pacer can lay claim to being the first hyperlapse film, or at the very least, to being the precursor to its development. It was shot on a Bolex 16mm camera.

Paul Bush accepts the challenge of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “What prevents me from supposing that this table either vanishes or alters its shape when no one is observing it and then when someone looks at it again it changes back? But one feels like saying – who is going to suppose such a thing?” Bush changes not only a table, but everything else lying around his house.

In this unique short, Israeli animator Gil Alkabetz discovers secret movements within Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, where animated fragments of the painting reveal eating, dancing, discussion and argument. The fresco comes to life in front of our very eyes and we can watch an unexpected story unfold.

In his storyless film, Vojtěch Domlátil focuses on various patterns that surround us and that we repeatedly encounter but we do not pay any attention to them. A real physical feeling from the used materials is supplemented by corresponding sounds and, as the author says, “is built upon perfect patterns.” Tenderness, weakness and kitsch. Life in twelve frames per second.

The remarkable project Urbanimatio was created by a duo of Estonian filmmakers in ten random cities throughout the world. The result is a poetic portrait of the anonymous urban sphere. The authors were particularly interested in the themes of evolution and decay, ageing and regeneration but also in the visible magic of the dynamic symbiosis of stone, concrete, wood and steel. The authors describe their film as “magical realism in its most natural form.”

An observer, who clears his mind and constrains his resources to work only with time and motion in space, can not only find pixilation rapture, but what’s more, if he connects to the wave, his journey will consume him in his entirety. And everything plays its part – waving of the grass, clouds, hills and valley, sunlight and also ourselves. A non-narrative pixilation of the Czech landscape.

BOOKANIMA, a compound word of “book” and “anima”, is experimental animation to give books, specifically pictures from books, new cinematic life. It enables us to watch these images moving along the border of picture and film in their specific choreographies.

More than three thousand insects appear in this film, each for a single frame. As the colours glow and change across their bodies and wings it seems that the genetic programme of millions of years is taking place in a few minutes. It is a rampant creation that seems to defy the explanations of evolutionists and fundamentalists. It is like a mescaline vision dreamt by Charles Darwin.

Accompanied by African music – singing and drums – we can admire the film and dancing potential of seemingly immovable gothic architecture. For their humorous contribution to the series of urban symphonies, the authors have chosen the cold North. Their star is the façade of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway.

Is Prague a place to live or just a tourist attraction? Why do people move away from its centre and then feel like foreigners when they come back? The film confronts the magical beauty of the historic city with the ubiquitous tourism that has long since crossed the boundaries of good taste and morality. Is there any chance that the city can still be purified – and its beauty restored?

The heroes of the new animated bedtime story made by Czech Television are the members of the extraordinary Kokoška hen family who experience unusual and exciting adventures. Daddy Kokoška is a journalist who writes reports from all around the world for the Hen Daily. On his travels, he is accompanied by his family including little rooster Jonáš. And even though exciting situations seem to avoid reporter Kokoška as if on purpose, in the end something always happens. And it is often to the credit of little Jonáš that even the biggest and most dangerous adventures always end well and Mr. Kokoška submits a report that everybody envies.

The Island of Nine Palms
The Race in the Grand Canyon
Australian RugbyIce Tobogan
Amazonian Aquapark
Tree Lookout Tower
Meeting in the Himalayas

Produced by Česká televize, 2019, 7 x 7 min

The Websters are a spider family that lives in a corner of a lift machine room. It is a big family – grandma and grandpa, daddy and mummy, teenager Hugo and our main heroine, little Lili.

Their world is charming and surprising, created to the smallest perfect details. It has Lili’s friends, her spider school, distribution centre for canned flies where Lili’s father works, a shopping mall… The spiders have dining etiquette rules and naturally a long history. They are in many ways the same as humans. Their life is full of twists, adventures, experiences and problems. And Lili, along with the viewers, learns to deal with all these twists and problems and understand and solve them. And also understand her feelings. And forgive.

Two of five episodes screened at Anifilm will have their world premiere at the festival.

Hero Daddy
The Cabriolet
Relaxing Stay
Big Cleaning
True Blossom

Produced by Slovenská televízia, 2017-18, 5 x 11 min

It has been twenty years since we first visited Bikini Bottom and met its inhabitants with the titular hero. Biologically speaking, SpongeBob is a yellow sea sponge, but he’s mainly an indomitable optimist with a big heart and the soul of a child. He is employed as an enthusiastic hamburger flipper at the Krusty Krab where he, along with the cynical Squidward, works for the greedy Mr. Krabs. When he’s not at work, SpongeBob spends his time getting up to shenanigans with his friends – silly Patrick Star and Sandy Cheeks, a resourceful squirrel who lives underwater in a diving suit. The series, which became an international hit show not only among children, was developed for Nickelodeon by animator and marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg. To commemorate Hillenburg’s passing last year and also this year’s anniversary of his show, we have picked several of its episodes including rarities such as its puppet special and created two one-hour-long blocks – A and B.

Produced by: Nickelodeon, USA, 1999–2018

In collaboration with ADAF (Athens Digital Arts Festival), we present an international selection of representative animated shorts for children. The second block includes films for children from twelve to sixteen years of age – the most demanding category according to what the authors often say. They don’t feel like children anymore and expect more complex plots in films – but not such that belong to purely “grown-up” films. But the ADAF selection should not miss the mark. It is a collection of unusual, artistically and narratively captivating films from all around the world that can surprise teenage audiences in many ways.

Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) is an International Festival which celebrates digital culture through an annual gathering bringing together a global community of artists and audiences. Athens Digital Arts Festival aims to encourage, stimulate and promote all aspects of digital creativity by hosting local as well as international artists and communities. Through its multidisciplinary program Athens Digital Arts Festival offers a wide range of Exhibitions, Screenings, Live Performances, Workshops and International Tributes showcasing artworks that display distinctive characteristics of the digital medium and reflect on its language and aesthetics.

Twin Islands
Director: Manon Sailly, Charlotte Sarfati, Christine Jaudoin, Lara Cochetel, Raphaël Huot, Fanny Teisson, France, 2017, 7 min

Awaker
Director: Filip Diviak, Czech Republic, 2017, 10 min

Memorial
Director: Natchapat Jamtaksa, Natthawat Jamtaksa, Thailand, 2017, 5 min

Savanah Swift 
Director: Pauline Gregoire, Lucie Bonzom, Benoit Parias, Theo Pierrel, France, 2017, 3 min

Impact
Director: Tristan Weis, Germany, 2017, 4 min

Flaring 
Director: Mathilde Debray, Jeremy Gurdal, Matthieu Barbier, Camille Marissal, France, 2017, 4 min

Finito
Director: Mauricio Bartok, Brazil, 2016, 4 min

Immersion
Director: Lalita Brunner, Switzerland, 2016, 3 min

Icky
Director: Parastoo Cardgar, Iran, 2017, 6 min

Voyagers
Director: Gauthier Ammeux, Valentine Baillon, Benjamin Chaumeny, Alexandre Dumez, Lea Finucci, Roger Marina, France, 8 min

As you can see for yourselves at the exhibition in the Štěpánek Netolický House, this year marks 30 years of Czech animation after the Velvet Revolution. In this respect, Swiss animation is a bit older; it celebrated 50 years last year. Over 50 Swiss animators teamed up to create an animated omnibus film to honour this anniversary. One of them was a member of this year’s jury – Georges Schwizgebel.
In 2018 the Swiss Animation Group GSFA (Groupement Suisse du Film d’Animation) will have been around for 50 years. To celebrate this, over 100 Swiss artists from all generations – animators, directors, musicians, character designers etc. – took part in a project in groups of various sizes to create an omnibus film which reflects the wide spectrum of Swiss animation that is around today. They had complete carte blanche for their contributions, there were no limitations in terms of style or content, and only rough recommendations for the length of their films. The filmmakers produced 15 short films that came from all regions of Switzerland. These are sometimes homogenous, but mostly they themselves are a patchwork of multiple directors and their individual styles.
Additionally, a 16th group was made to implement a frame-work: a story connecting, embedding and even leading up to some of the 15 other projects.
The result is a wild ride through the unknown, an eclectic mix of visions: ranging from playful birthday celebration antics, to dynamic chases, or alternative interpretations of Swiss traditions, to the down-right wild and wacky! With segments clocking in between one and five minutes, accumulated into a 40-minute showcase, this animated present has something for everyone.

CEE Animation: Talents aims to promote the most talented young animation filmmakers from the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region. It presents the best films made by students and debuting artists in the given year to a professional audience and the general public. The film selection focuses on extraordinary talents whose work promises successful future careers. The project counts on the presentation of this film compilation at selected European animated film festivals to draw attention to new talents and bring them together with experienced international producers. Our primary ambition is the year-round promotion of young CEE artists animation and assistance for its further development, visibility and distribution.
An expert board from CEE is annually compiled to select the best regional work produced that year. Festival artistic directors Anna Ida Orosz (Primanima), Olga Bobrowska (StopTrik), Pavel Horáček (Anifilm), Maroš Brojo (Fest Anča), Daniel Suljic (Animafest Zagreb), and Igor Prassel (Animateka) participated in the selection.
While the quality of animation from CEE increases yearly, alternative presentation channels are needed due to the lack of scope for animated film promotion through national film institutes. Hence the CEE Animation has taken the initiative and, as the first such project in the region of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia and Slovenia, we aim to raise the profile of our animation even outside the films production countries.

Apart
Director: Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Producer: Karolína Davidová, Produced by: FAMU, Czech Republic, 2018, 10 min

Bless You!
Director: Paulina Ziółkowska, Producer: Agata Golanska, Produced by: Film School in Lodz, Poland, 2018, 5 min

Cloudy
Director: Zuzana Čupová, Filip Diviak, Producer: Lukáš Gregor, Produced by: UTB Zlín, Czech Republic, 2018, 5 min

Dance of Love
Director: Leo Černic, Producer: Nina Robnik, Produced by: UL AGRFT, Slovenia, 2018, 6 min

Am Not Playing Anymore
Director: Matej Babic, Producer: Adam Schwarz, Produced by: FTF VSMU, Slovakia, 2018, 6 min

Poetika Anima
Director: Kriss Sagan, Producer: Diana Švihlová, Produced by: FTF VSMU, Slovakia, 2018, 5 min

Take Me Please
Olivér Hegyi, Producer: József Fülöp, Produced by: MOME, Hungary, 2017, 14 min

Two for Two
Director: Jelena Oroz, Producer: Vanja Andrijević, Produced by: Bonobostudio, Croatia, 2018, 8 min

Unsafe Land
Director: Marcell Szénási, Producer: József Fülöp, Produced by: MOME, Hungary, 2017, 10 min

Although Ari Folman’s film Waltz with Bashir premiered more than 10 years ago, this suggestive story is so unforgettable that many viewers remember it vividly to this day. It was screened in the official competition selection at the Cannes Festival, won dozens of awards and was nominated for dozens more, including an Oscar. Folman balances between multiple genres – his film is a documentary, an autobiographical story and a psychological and war drama. Its main protagonist is the director himself, who, as a 19-year-old soldier of the Israel Defense Forces, took part in the First Lebanon War in 1982. The film reconstructs his memory – in later life, Folman approaches other veterans, asking them to help him find his memories of savage massacres in Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila. In its time, the film resonated with another Middle Eastern autobiographical film, Persepolis. Unlike its director Marjane Satrapi, Folman is more thorough in his documentary approach. But his film can also stir the emotions of its viewers who see a gruesome world that they had only a faint (or no) idea existed.

Studio Ponoc, the new animation studio founded by two-time Academy Award-nominee Yoshiaki Nishimura (Grave of the Fireflies, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya), featuring renowned animators and artists who worked in Studio Ghibli before it closed its production department in 2014. After the successful debut film Mary and The Witch’s Flower, this year the studio releases a new animation – Modest Heroes: Ponoc Short Films Theatre, Volume 1, an ambitious anthology of three thrilling tales created by some of the greatest talents in Japanese animation today.
Kanini & Kanino tells a story of two crab brothers who embark on a grand underwater adventure to find their father. Life Ain’t Gonna Lose is about an 8-year-old called Shun with a life-threatening allergy to eggs and all the consequences it brings. And lastly, in Invisible, a man struggles with his invisibility. Together, the stories explore ideas of heroism in everyday life, and the infinite potential of the short film format allows the directors and Studio Ponoc to experiment with breathtaking, action-packed visuals, concise human drama, and gorgeous fantasy worlds.

The tenacious Gauls are back! The tension is rising and the pot is boiling! The secret of the strength of the inhabitants of a small village of Gauls is hidden in a magic potion. Its recipe is safe with druid Panoramix. He was always an expert in picking mistletoe in tree crowns, but when he falls from a tree one day and breaks his leg, he needs to admit that he’s not getting any younger. He realises that it would be a catastrophe if he forgot the recipe. With the help of his loyal friends Asterix and Obelix, he sets out to find a suitable talented successor to whom he can pass on his craft and the secret of the potion. But that sparks the interest of the most cunning and shameful druids.
The script of the brave Gauls’ latest adventure was written by the film’s co-director Alexandre Astier who drew inspiration from the comic book of the same name by Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. The second director of the film was Louis Clichy. This duo celebrated worldwide success with their previous story – Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods.

Each year, Animania festival presents short animated films made by children and students up to 26 years of age. The best films selected by an international jury composed of film professionals and pedagogues of film and media studies are awarded the Animánička.

This showcase of short films brings a selection of 16 films that celebrated success at the last two editions of the festival’s international competition. You will see films made by children as well as university students.

Category MINI (5 to 13y)

Moment with Mom
Director: Konstancja Taraszka, PL, 2 min

Little Fox
Director: Witczak Antonina, PL, 2 min

Hanging Bride
Director: Ema Ivanová, Natalia Monica Dudaško, Tamara Hricová, Lea Ertlová, Emma Lukačková, SK, 4 min

The Christmas story
Director: kolektiv / collective, CZ, 6 min

Yellow Dynamite
Director: Josefína Truksová, Markéta Mikulášková, Marian Klementová, CZ, 2 min

The Pipe
Director: kolektiv / collective, CZ, 2 min

Gamekeeper
Director: Marek Trnka, CZ, 1 min

Space Hero
Director: kolektiv / collective, HR, 3 min

Category MIDI (14 to 18y)

Kapitán / Der Käpitan
Director: Stanislav Cincibuch, CZ, 3 min

Two Ravens
Director: Pavla Bečvářová, Sára Nejedlá, Karolína Čermáková, Kristýna Čermáková, CZ, 3 min

Red Landscape
Director: Adam Svěcený, Matouš Sedlák, Matyáš Holna, CZ, 3 min

Category MAXI (19 to 26y)

CSSR
Director: Leoš Matejček, Tomáš Červený, CZ, 3 min

The Fox and the Crown
Director: Eliška Hoskovcová, Stanislav Pecháč, Kristýna Krištofová, CZ, 4 min

Tutti
Director: Marek Jasaň, SK, 1 min

Tailored
Director: Léa Cousty, Chloé Astier, Raphaël Guez, Mélanie Fourgeaud, Hugo Bourriez, Victoire Le Dourner, FR, 7 min

Mukumu
Director: Pavla Baštanová, CZ, 8 min

Just like with documentaries made in a real environment with real protagonists made from flesh and bones, there is a number of documentary sub-genres in the world of animated documentaries. One of the most popular is for example orally-historic animated documentary in which an original recording/testimony of witnesses (or thematically chosen sociological group) is accompanied by a visual authorial interpretation using animation.

Mockumentary may not be the most common animated documentary sub-genre, but its individual examples are all the more original and varied. In this programme block, we will find a parody on a sports report (Rallye Kampa-Petřín), a biographical documentary (Brown’s Daughter), fake scientifically exact nature documentaries (Dinosaurs, Bearytales) and sociological interviews (Bread). After all, the magic of animated documentary spoof was alluring also to one of the most famous Czech animators, Jan Švankmajer – in his mockumentary Castle of Otranto, he searches for fictitious tracks of a local mystery.

Animation has always worked with exaggeration, hyperbole and absurd situations. And it seems that these are exactly the qualities of most good mockumentaries.

Bearytales
Director: Veronika Zacharová, CZ, 2015, 3 min

My Mum is an Airplane
Director: Yulya Aronova, RU, 2013, 7 min

Dinosaurs
Director: Dao Linh, CZ, 2013, 5 min

Castle of Otranto
Director: Jan Švankmajer, CZ, 1977, 17 min

Bread
Director: Andrew Gordon, GB, 2007, 2 min

Rally Kampa-Petrin
Director: KREUS, CZ, 2012, 8 min

Brown’s Daughter
Director: Coline Brun-Naujalis, GB, 2011, 12 min

Museum Guard
Director: Alexander Gratzer, AT, 2016, 3 min

LUCENS
Director: Marcel Barelli, CH, 2015, 6 min

Trick Collection
Director: Ester Nemjóová, CZ, 2015, 2 min

How to Obtain a Good Child
Director: Stanislav Látal, Miloš Macourek, CZ, 1965, 10 min

In collaboration with ADAF (Athens Digital Arts Festival), we present an international selection of representative animated shorts for children. The first block includes films for children from six to twelve years of age – it is a collection of remarkable films from the whole world that will definitely expand the children's horizons! The block also includes a film by Czech author and graphic designer Veronika Zacharová who created this year's festival visual style.

Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) is an International Festival that celebrates digital culture through an annual gathering bringing together a global community of artists and audiences. Athens Digital Arts Festival aims to encourage, stimulate and promote all aspects of digital creativity by hosting local as well as international artists and communities. Through its multidisciplinary programme Athens Digital Arts Festival offers a wide range of Exhibitions, Screenings, Live Performances, Workshops and International Tributes showcasing artworks that display distinctive characteristics of the digital medium and reflect on its language and aesthetics.

Temptation
Director: Camille Canonne, Laura Bouillet, Michael Hoft, Catherine Le Quang, Pauline Raffin, Martin Villert, France, 2017, 5 min

ZOO Story
Director: Veronika Zacharová, Czech Republic, 2015, 4 min

Sushido – スシドゥ
Director: Michele Boldoni, Italy, 2018, 2 min

Undiscovered
Director: Sara Litzenberger, USA, 2017, 3 min

The House
Director: Veronika Zacharová, Czech Republic, 2016, 5 min

Broccoli
Director: Frank Peng Liu, USA, 2016, 2 min

The Rainmaker
Director: Vincent Chiarotto, France, 2017, 2 min

Orion
Director: Chami Collado, Spain, 6 min

Theodoro
Director: Marco Tulio, Vladimir Molina Morales, Guatemala, 2 min

Two Trams
Director: Svetlana Andrianova, Russia, 2016, 10 min

Low Battery
Director: Fabio Teles, Brazil, 2018, 1 min

Scrambled
Director: Bastiaan Schravendeel, Netherlands, 2017, 6 min

Willie and the Foxtrot 01
Director: Esteban Polito, Santiago Uriarte, Uruguay, 2017, 2 min

True Love
Director: Pask D’Amico, Italy, 2018, 2 min

This autobiographical film tells the extraordinary story of Paul Fierlinger, from his birth in Japan, through his childhood in the USA and growing up in communist Czechoslovakia, to his escape back to the United States he dreamt of. The director depicted lingering images from his childhood in order to come to terms with painful memories and a complicated relationship with his parents. The film is a valuable and extraordinary testimony about modern Czech history by an author who never considered Czechoslovakia to be his home. An interesting fact about the film is that its authenticity is underlined by the voices of some of its characters such as artists Miloš Forman, Jan Tříska and Pavel Landovský who – just like Václav Havel – voiced themselves.

Mimi and Lisa are unusual friends. One of them always has her eyes wide open while the other keeps them closed. But together, they can watch and see because the world can be seen with hands and ears, one just needs to try it… This charming showcase of short animated films about an extraordinary friendship of two little girls is suitable for little children as well as their parents. We will find out how to make a friend for a sad terrycloth crocodile from Clothland or how it’s possible that Mimi sees herself in the mirror according to how she feels. We will also see how Mimi and Lisa helped to chase out a mean germ from the throat of a famous singer and in a thirty-minute-long special, we will save the Christmas lights.
The whole showcase originates from Slovakia where it was brought to life by director and producer Katarína Kerekesová in collaboration with company Fool Moon and Czech co-producer, company MAUR Film.
“We try to follow up on the tradition of animated showcases for children that used to be standard parts of cinema’s programmes. Recently, the demand for them has been rising,” said Petr Slavík from the distribution company CinemArt, which distributes the showcase into Czech cinemas.

The films in the programme deal with the presentation of memory, tackle important social and political topics and show how the filmmakers get to grips with their own or someone else’s history by using different approaches and various animation techniques. While the key film The Sinking of the Lusitania by Winsor McCay still cannot shake off the look and feel of wartime propaganda, Trade Tattoo by Len Lye covers its marketing purpose already quite well with experimental visuals. War Story by Peter Lord, Silence by Orly Yadin and Sylvie Bringas and Ann Shenfield’s film A Saucer of Water for the Birds are all based on memories of World War II, but present the subject in three different ways. Hidden by David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn is their first film of a trilogy about illegal immigrants in Europe. The programme ends with a film about Norman McLaren who has been an important historical figure in the history of animated documentary.

The Sinking of the Lusitania
Director: Winsor McCay, USA, 1918, 12 min

Trade Tattoo
Director: Len Lye, UK, 1937, 5 min

Jute: Letter for Carter
Director: Gerrit van Dijk, NL, 1979, 6 min

War Story
Director: Peter Lord, UK, 1989, 5 min

Silence
Director: Orly Yadin, Sylvie Bringas, UK, 1998, 11 min

A Saucer of Water for the Birds
Director: Ann Shenfield, AUS, 1994, 9 min

Abductees
Director: Paul Vester, UK, 1995, 11 min

Hidden
Director: Hanna Heilborn, David Aronowitsch, Mat Johansson, SWE, 2002, 8 min

McLaren’s Negatives
Director: Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre CAN, 2006, 10 min

Anidoc is becoming more and more popular in the Czech Republic. To a large extent, we can see it in recent student films. This programme gives space to the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín – its students had an assignment to visually portray speeches of selected personalities from the fields of philosophy (Wandering Bondy, A Philosophical Discourse) and art (Definitiveness of a Line). Zlín itself is the setting of the impression by a Turkish director who studied here (Zlín Soup) and also of Urban Speech that captures the city’s sounds. Thematically and visually very different films Hypnagogia and Chase are connected by the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Both authors conceived their films as animated testimonies. Just like student of the Film and TV Academy of Performing Arts in Prague Diana Cam Van Nguyen with the currently most successful Czech anidoc Apart.

The theme of this year’s Anifilm also directed our looks into the history of Czech animation where anidoc showed up as early as in the interwar period from which we will screen the educational film The Adventures of a Ubiquitous Fellow. From recent history, our programme includes a film by Michaela Pavlátová who made several animated documentaries.

Všudybylova dobrodružství / The Adventures of a Ubiquitous Fellow
Director: Irena Dodalová, Karel Dodal, ČSR, 1936, 12 min

Filozofická rozprava / A Philosophical Discourse
Director: Kryštof Ulbert, CZ, 2018, 3 min

Mykokosmická symfonie / Mycocosmic Symphonie
Director: Seun Lee, CZ, 2016, 3 min

Egon Bondy o filozofii a vůbec / Wandering Bondy
Director: Veronika Zacharová, CZ, 2017, 2 min

… až na věky / Forever and Ever
Director: Michaela Pavlátová, Pavel Koutecký CZ, 1998, 14 min

Definitivnost čáry / Definitiveness of a Line
Director: Aliona Baranová, CZ, 2017, 1 min

Zlínská polévka / Zlín Soup
Director: Akile Nazli Kaya, CZ, 2007, 9 min

Hypnagogia
Režie / Director: Magdalena Kvasničková, CZ, 2017, 5 min

Štvanice / Chase
Director: Michaela Režová, CZ, 2017, 12 min

Řeč města / Urban Speech
Director: Šárka Zahálková, CZ, 2016, 5 min

Spolu sami / Apart
Director: Diana Cam Van Nguyen, CZ, 2018, 10 min

Karel Zeman's legendary film Journey to the Beginning of Time has been digitally restored and after many years, it was finally screened in cinemas in new colours this April. The screening of Journey to the Beginning of Time concludes a long-term project called Cleaning the World of Fantasy that already enabled the comeback of restored versions of Zeman's films A Deadly Invention and Baron Munchausen.
Thanks to a complete technical renovation, Journey to the Beginning of Time was restored to the look it had in 1955. “Due to the amount of material we had to process, diverse techniques and tricks that Karel Zeman used, I place Journey to the Beginning of Time among the technologically most intricate restoring projects we did,” said Ivo Marák, expert on digital restoration of films and Technological Director of the UPP Studio.
A fossilized trilobite and the desire of little Jirka to see the exhibits that charmed him in the museum alive sends four boys on an extraordinary journey. Narrator Petr, the leader of the expedition Jenda, photographer Toník and the youngest Jirka decide to sail through a cave near which Jirka discovered the ancient fossil. They set out on a journey to prehistory during which they will see much more than the longed-for mammoth – they for instance witness a dramatic fight between Mesozoic dinosaurs.

Long Way North is the directorial debut of French animator Rémi Chayé who gained experience from the acclaimed films The Secret of Kells (2009) and The Painting (Le Tableau, 2011). Long Way North is an adventurous and slightly chilling film set in Russia in 1892. Sasha, a young aristocrat whose parents are desperately trying to establish their family amongst the nobility, is fascinated by her explorer grandfather. Fancy balls are not a thing that would interest Sasha and the endeavours of her parents who are trying to find a fine husband for her only terrify her. Sasha’s grandfather failed to return from an expedition to the North Pole and his ship was never found. Although the Tsar off ers a considerable reward for finding the ship, everyone except Sasha has already forgotten him. Nonetheless she finds his maps and decides to look for the ship herself and save her grandfather’s reputation. She sets out on an unexpectedly hard and dangerous voyage into a land of eternal ice. During the voyage, she meets various people and experiences many adventures on the border of life and death. The visually captivating artistry makes the story all the more compelling.

The European Animation Association was formed some years ago with the idea to unite and celebrate European Animation. As a result, the first two editions of the Emile Awards ceremony took place in 2017 and 2018 in Lille, France to celebrate animators, storyboarders, directors, composers, background artists, sound designers and more. More than 1200 animation professionals and enthusiasts gathered for the occasion. An occasion that was complemented in 2018 by conferences and masterclasses held by prominent members of the animation community and representatives of European institutions.
The EAA is proud to celebrate the European animation community by granting it the recognition it deserves. The films presented in this session have been nominated and awarded during our 2018 edition. Next edition: 6th December 2019!

(Fool Time) Job
Director: Gilles Cuvelier, Produced by: Papy3D Productions, France, 2018, 17 min

Enough
Director: Anna Mantzaris, Produced by: Royal College of Art, United Kingdom, 2017, 2 min

Cat Days / Neko no Hi
Director: Jon Frickey, Produced by: Jon Frickey, Takashi Horiguchiit, Germany, 2018, 11 min

Have Heart
Director: Will Anderson, Produced by: Wanderson Studios, United Kingdom, 2017, 12 min

Last Stop in the Moon
Director: Birute Sodeikaite, Produced by: Likaon, Art shot, Poland, Lithuania, 2017, 9 min

A Most Precise and Nuanced Look into the Life of the Man, Legend and Visionary – Martin Luther
Director: Magnus Igland Møller, Produced by: Tumblehead, Denmark, 2017, 4 min

Pura Vida
Director: Nata Metlukh, Produced by: Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia, 2018, 9 min

The Heroic Quest of the Valiant Prince Ivandoe – The Prince and the Pretty Poodle
Director: Christian Boving-Andersen, Eva Lee Wallberg, Produced by: Cartoon Network EMEA & Sun Creature Studio, Denmark, 2017, 4 min

In 1980, Joyce Ann Brown was sentenced to life imprisonment for an armed robbery and a murder in Texas. Four years before that, Edward Baker was sentenced to life imprisonment for similar crimes in Pennsylvania, and Jimmy Landano, who committed an armed robbery and killed a police officer in 1976, also received a life sentence. Just like these three protagonists of Sheila M. Sofiano’s anidoc, dozens of people who actually haven’t committed any crimes spent decades in prison (or were executed). With the help of expert lawyers, criminologists and James McCloskey, founder of the Centurion Ministries organisation fighting for release and vindication of the unjustly sentenced, the director tries to shed some light on mistakes that resulted in fundamental judicial errors in America. Authentic recordings of interviews with the protagonists are supplemented with suggestive paint-on-glass animation and extremely surreal illustrations of trials based on erroneous evidence whose portrayal, along the portrayal of the prison environment, come to life with unpleasantly impressive details. Although Brown, Baker and Landano eventually managed to clear their names and were released after many years in prison, their cases became a warning to the deficient American justice system.

In her very personal film Chris the Swiss, director Anja Kofmel combines animated passages with archive and live-action footage. She draws inspiration from the dark and hard-to-believe story of her own cousin Christian. She decided to unravel and map it in the form of a documentary – almost twenty years after his body was found in the middle of the war rampage in Yugoslavia. In her remarkable reconstruction, Kofmel builds upon passages from Christian’s diaries and her own precisely executed and artistically elaborate animations. She documents not only her cousin’s mysterious fate, but also her efforts to get to know and uncover his personality and motivation. At the same time, she explores the former war conflicts. Christian, who has always been fascinated by war, ran away to join a South African militia when he was 17. A few years later, he went as a reporter to the Yugoslavian war zone where he subsequently joined a paramilitary unit of foreign volunteers whose Bolivian officer had been trained by the KGB. The film was screened during the International Critics’ Week at Cannes and won many nominations and awards at festivals of documentary as well as animated films.

The Addams family, Dracula family, British royal family and your family – each family is different but essentially the same. In Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation by Sony Animation Pictures, you will join the popular heroes on a cruise where Dracula plans to have his well-deserved rest from his work in the hotel. Together with his friends and family, he enjoys a calm voyage and everything the luxurious vessel can offer from scary volleyball to exotic excursions and moonbathing. But when Mavis finds out that Dracula is head over heels with the ship’s mysterious captain Ericka who hides a terrible secret that could destroy monsters all over the world, the dream vacation becomes a nightmare.
At the helm of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation was once again Genndy Tartakovsky, author of several original series for Cartoon Network (Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars). He joined the Hotel Transylvania family in Sony Pictures Animation during the preparation phase of the first film which turned out to be a success. The third instalment of the series is more a classical comedy than family entertainment, it relies more heavily on its visuals, work with light, textures, details and movement and the script is written in a way that enables the authors to make full use of the possibilities of computer animation as proven by the Bermuda triangle and other vacation destinations depicted in the film.

The eight serials that Zdenka Deitchová herself picked to be screened as a part of the festival’s homage to her, without exaggeration represent the classics of Czech animated serials. As a producer, Zdenka Deitchová often focused on commissioned work – in this case commissioned by Czechoslovak Television. The label “commissioned” may sound a bit pejorative to us, but in the case of filmmakers like Miler, Smetana, Bedřich and their excellent graphic artists (that is if they even needed any), they may have unintentionally created something timeless. Something that the audiences like to return to and will likely keep on returning to along with the authors who draw inspiration from these “commissions”. It is well known that Zdenka Deitchová didn’t stop working on animated films after the Velvet Revolution. An example of a successful series created in new and free production circumstances is the still extravagant series by Jaroslava Havettová From the Diary of a Third Grade Pupil, or Edudant and Francimor inspired by the book by Karel Poláček. The lion’s share of its originality is thanks to Vratislav Hlavatý and his design.

Little Mole – Little Mole and the Transistor
Director: Zdeněk Miler, CZ, 1968, 9 min

Bob & Bobby – Top Hat Rabbits – Gas Station
Director: Václav Bedřich, CZ, 1978, 7 min

Edudant and Francimor – In Trouble
Director: Jaroslava Havettová, CZ, 1993, 8 min

Reedy and the Stars – How Reedy saved the Crayfish until his Head got Dizzy
Director: Zdeněk Smetana, CZ, 1975, 7 min

Maxidog Fík – Maxidog Fík in School
Director: Václav Bedřich, CZ, 1975, 7 min

Fairy Tales of Moss ad Fern – Entertaining Mr. Mouse
Director: Zdeněk Smetana, CZ, 1968, 8 min

Rumcais the Robber – Tricks of Don Miraculo
Director: Ladislav Čapek, CZ, 1967, 8 min

Poppy-seed Girl and Butterfly Emanuel – Poppy-seed Girl and the Prickstick Thimble
Director: Václav Bedřich, CZ, 1972, 8 min

With Frank Film by Frank Mouris, Ryan by Chris Landreth and The Moon and the Son by John Canemaker, you can enjoy three Academy Award winning films in this programme of very personal animated documentaries. Most of the films have an autobiographical note, but use many different techniques to display it. In Frank Film (preserved by the Academy Film Archive), you will be overwhelmed by the collages of images and words that are the life of Frank Mouris, while in The Moon and the Son the filmmaker enters into an imaginary dialogue with his father. Some filmmakers recorded and filmed themselves while using the animation to reflect on their thoughts about life and work. Others, like John and Faith Hubley in Moonbird, used recordings of their kids to animate a story around it. And Animated Self Portrait shows some of the most important animation filmmakers at their time from their own perspective, so it can be called an animated documentary, even though it was not made as such.

Doubled Up
Director: Samantha Moore, UK, 2004, 6 min

Animated Self-Portraits
Director: Jan Švankmajer, Jiří Barta, Osamu Tezuka and others, CAN, JAP, USA, CS, 1989, 8 min

Moonbird
Director: John Hubley, Faith Hubley, USA, 1959, 10 min

The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation
Director: John Canemaker, USA, 2005, 28 min

Interview
Director: Caroline Leaf, Veronika Soul,CAN, 1979, 14 min

Frank Film
Director: Frank Mouris, Caroline Mouris, USA, 1973, 9 min
(Frank Film je součástí archivního fondu americké Akademie filmového umění a věd. / Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.)

Ryan
Director: Chris Landreth, CAN, 2004, 14 min

We first met them in 1976 in the pilot episode of the series “… And it’s done!”. Graphic artist and director Lubomír Beneš drew inspiration from his anecdotes starring two tinkerers, Mr. Ouholíček and Mr. Sedlec, that he created and drew for a magazine. In collaboration with dramaturge Jiří Kubíček and graphic artist Vladimír Jiránek, they made a film called Fitters. Since then, dozens of episodes have been made and the relentless optimists Pat and Mat won the hearts of audiences all over the world, even in Iran. After the death of Lubomír Beneš, his son Marek took over and he continues producing new episodes in his studio Patmat. The films are made by experienced animators who follow up on the established tradition and make sure the puppets move smoothly.
In this anthological feature film, the tinkerers moved into new houses where they can expect new challenges and absurd situations. But no challenge is too big for Pat and Mat, whether it is a fight with a swarm of bees, broken electric lawn mower, clogged drain, a mole or a design of a new rock garden. In these loosely connected stories, Pat and Mat can deal with everything. Tinkering is fun to them and they can thoroughly enjoy it while keeping up-to-date with the latest trends – they install security cameras, use a drone and become experts in using solar energy.

Ka-Boom! is an animated series for children, their parents and everyone who wants to learn something in a fun way. Its main protagonist is presenter Kata Strof from TV station Ka-Boom! who reveals the secrets of natural phenomena in the world of molecules and particles and explains them to its viewers in a simple way. Kata doesn’t hesitate to make a report in any weather or conditions! She takes us beneath Limestone City, which is underwashed by water particles, to a sunny vacation where a tsunami is formed, to an expedition deep into a jungle during a volcano eruption, to a struggle between positive and negative particles and to a barbeque that inadvertently causes a forest fire and a tornado.

Episodes: Holes in the Ground, Tsunami, Volcano, Lightning, Tornado, Fire

Produced by: Super Film, 2017, 13 x 9 min

Also the second programme block of Czech animated documentaries is composed primarily of student films. The viewers will have a chance to compare selected films from the Department of Animation of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague where anidocs have been included in assignments for several past years (Prague. A Foreigners Perspective, Here and Here, Our Number Eight).

But this genre didn’t appear in our cinema in the form of student film. We can find several examples for instance in the rich filmography of Jiří Brdečka (Man Under Water). And also Michaela Pavlátová who is included in the first block (This Could Be Me) and Pavel Koutský who likes to refer to our reality with various means (No Comment).

We would also like to draw your attention to titles from recent years that are somewhat unjustly ignored (Neighbours, The Chronicle of Oldřich S.). And to add something special to this block, we included fresh films (Advertising the Earth Radio – Stephen P. McGreevy’s VLF Cut-outs, Gambler) that prove that Czech anidoc authors are still exploring new ways of expression.

Člověk pod vodou / Man Under Water
Director: Jiří Brdečka, ČSSR, 1961, 18 min

No Comment – kuponová privatizace / No Comment – voucher privatization
Director: Pavel Koutský, CZ, 1994, 1 min

Praha očima cizinců / Prague. A Foreigner’s Perspective
Director: Daria Kashcheeva, CZ, 2017, 5 min

This Could Be Me
Director: Michaela Pavlátová, CZ, 1997, 3 min

No Comment – odsun ruských vojsk / No Comment – The Withdrawal of the Russian Troops
Director: Pavel Koutský, CZ, 1994, 1 min

Advertising the Earth Radio – Stephen P. McGreevy’s VLF Cut-outs
Director: Zbyšek Semelka, CZ, 2019, 6 min

Tu a tady / Here and Here
Director: Michaela Mihalyiova, CZ, 2017, 2 min

Sousedi (příběh Rudolfa Bělohoubka) / Neighbours (Story of Rudolf Bělohoubek)
Director: Martin Búřil, CZ, 2018, 9 min

Malá / The Little One
Director: Diana Cam Van Nguyen, CZ, 2017, 9 min

No Comment – zánik KF a. s. / No Comment – The Ending of KF a. s.
Director: Pavel Koutský, CZ, 1994, 1 min

Gambler
Director: Michaela Režová, Ivan Studený, CZ, 2018, 3 min

Naše osmičky / Our Number Eight
Director: Petr Mischinger, CZ, 2018, 4 min

Kronika Oldřicha S. / The Chronicle of Oldřich S.
Director: Rudolf Šmíd, CZ, 2011, 17 min

In this programme, we present two new and in essence educational projects made by Czech Television – series Stars and Speaking of Our Country. Both were made by renowned Czech directors and both aim to inform and educate children in a playful manner. Eight episodes of Stars were made to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of independent Czechoslovakia. It presents important figures from the history of our country (for instance Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Karel and Josek Čapek and Milada Horáková) in a unique way – through stories from their childhood and adolescence, i.e. periods of their life that are not so well known, but with which the children can easily identify: as naughty children or stubborn teenagers. Animation reminiscent of contemporary comic books combines modern drawing with artistic elements typical for the period the protagonist lived in.

Animated cycle Speaking of our Country uses a playful form to explain the meaning of our state symbols. The cycle is made up of three independent episodes: “ANTHEM in a briefcase”, “FLAG is not a scarf” and “Leaping COAT OF ARMS”. Director Maria Procházková used playful animation which helps little viewers to understand the episodes’ meaning. A part of the episode about our anthem is also an animated music video for an official recording of the Czech National Anthem as recorded by the Czech National Theatre Choir and Orchestra conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek.

Stars
Produced by: Česká televize, 8 x 5 min

Speaking of Our Country
Produced by: Česká televize, 1 x 18 min

It has been twenty years since we first visited Bikini Bottom and met its inhabitants with the titular hero. Biologically speaking, SpongeBob is a yellow sea sponge, but he’s mainly an indomitable optimist with a big heart and the soul of a child. He is employed as an enthusiastic hamburger flipper at the Krusty Krab where he, along with the cynical Squidward, works for the greedy Mr. Krabs. When he’s not at work, SpongeBob spends his time getting up to shenanigans with his friends – silly Patrick Star and Sandy Cheeks, a resourceful squirrel who lives underwater in a diving suit. The series, which became an international hit show not only among children, was developed for Nickelodeon by animator and marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg. To commemorate Hillenburg’s passing last year and also this year’s anniversary of his show, we have picked several of its episodes including rarities such as its puppet special and created two one-hour-long blocks – A and B.

Produced by: Nickelodeon, USA, 1999–2018

Animated documentaries are often used to explain how people deal with difficult circumstances or situations in their life. Here, animation is applied to conceal the identity of the protagonists, but still leaves room for their story. And it illustrates the feelings, but often also provides a bigger subtext to it, such as in films like Tying Your Own Shoes by Shira Avni or A is for Autism by Tim Webb, which both offer a deeper understanding of life with disabilities. Life outside of the norm in society is portrayed in films like Some Protection by Marjut Rimminen or The Wrong Trainers by Sarah Cox, where children explain what it means to be poor, while Survivors by Sheila Sofian offers an insight into the complexity of domestic abuse. And while Love on the Wing by Norman McLaren is a light-hearted animation advertisement that was made for the GPO in London, the film Never like the First Time by Jonas Odell could rather be called irritating, but revealing.

Love on the Wing
Director: Norman McLaren, UK, CAN, 1939, 5 min

Survivors
Director: Sheila M. Sofian, USA, 1979, 16 min

Some Protection
Director: Marjut Rimminen, UK, 1987, 9 min

Never Like the First Time!
Director: Jonas Odell, SWE, 2006, 15 min

Tying Your Own Shoes
Director: Shira Avni, CAN, 2009, 16 min

A Is for Autism
Director: Tim Webb, UK, 1992, 11 min

The Wrong Trainers - Keona and Chantelle
Director: Matthew Walker, UK, 2006, 4 min

In connection to Zdenka Deitchová receiving the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Anifilm presents a little-known documentary named For the Love of Prague. The film’s title alludes to a book of the same name written by American director of animated films Gene Deitch. In a little less than an hour, its authors try to summarize some of the humorous, dramatic and in every case hard-to-believe stories of this Academy Award-winning filmmaker of world renown. Apart from his own work, Gene Deitch is known thanks to his life story which is tightly connected to this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. She was and is the reason why Gene Deitch decided to stay in Czechoslovakia (which was then a communist country) at the end of the 1950s. Anyone who hasn’t had the chance to see the English or Czech version of Deitch’s book, now has a chance to sneak a peek into the life of Gene and Zdenka Deitch thanks to this documentary. And much like its heroes, the film itself has a very peculiar history. It was supposed to air on Czech Television but it never happened. The original broadcasting copy cannot be found anywhere, the documentary survived only thanks to a “rescued” DVD copy. So please excuse its quality. And what’s more, there are several versions of this documentary. This one, which will see its premiere on the big screen at Anifilm, was edited by Gene Deitch himself.

It’s been fourteen years, but you feel like it was yesterday. In The Incredibles 2, the popular superhero family returns to the very moment the first film ended. This time, the main star is Helen Parr; daddy Bob stays at home and helps Violet and Dash to overcome the obstacles of everyday “normal” life including first love and math homework. He struggles with it, but it is a challenging time for everyone – even more so as no one from the family realises that little Jack-Jack also has superpowers. But when a new villain appears and wants to carry out his brilliant devilish plan, the family, along with Frozone, have to find a way to put their differences aside and join forces – which is more easily said than done, but the Parr family doesn’t get scared easily, after all, they are i*n*c*r*e*d*i*b*l*e.
Director and screenwriter Brad Bird, winner of two Oscars (The Incredibles, 2004, and Ratatouille, 2007) and other prestigious awards (The Iron Giant, 1999) once again made use of his feeling for perfect timing and brought us action-packed chases and surprising gags. After the success of the first film, the return of the Incredibles was a huge task, but under his leadership, the Pixar team managed to deliver a film that is elaborate both visually and story-wise.

The second feature film of director, screenwriter and producer Anca Damian, Crulic – The Path to Beyond, is a Polish-Romanian co-production. The film was screened at more than 150 festivals and attracted lots of attention in Locarno, London, Warsaw and Copenhagen. This ani-doc collage is an artistically and technologically daring film telling the story of Romanian Claudiu Crulic who died in a Polish prison during a hunger strike. He was only 33 years old. In her film, Damian has Crulic speak to the viewers from beyond the grave (with the voice of famous Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov). The disturbing film is dominated by a strong visual style based on a mix of hand drawing and painting, collage, stop-motion and cut-out animation… The collage of techniques and styles that the director created will surprise viewers with its compactness.

Last year’s harvest of Czech, mainly student, films brought an interesting crop of midnight films. These unusually provocative and satirical films full of black, absurd and at times perhaps internal humour make up an excellent collection of genuine animated curiosities. For the first time, Anifilm is dedicating one of its midnight blocks exclusively to Czech animation. The viewers will probably wonder what’s possible in (Czech!) animation. Boundaries are wiped and animation now includes a marionette speaking with the voices of the authors (I.P. Pavlova Story) and also a quirky reporter called Jan Čařík, the star of the comic strips from the Festival Daily. All that can be found in 15 and more minutes of running length (Tlačenka, Love Thy Neighbor, Teambuilding TV Estrada). On the other hand, other authors work with slightly perverted gags and quicker punchlines as seen for instance in Parasites and Kisser.

Tlačenka, Love Thy Neighbor: Feminism
Director: Marie Krajpová, CZ, 2019, 15 min

Kisser
Director: Filip Tatýrek, CZ, 2018, 1 min

Purgatory with Angel and Jan Čařík
Director: Matouš Valchář, CZ, 2018, 6 min

Parasites
Director: Ivana Zapletalová, CZ, 2018, 5 min

I.P. Pavlova Story
Director: Matouš Valchář, CZ, 2018, 1 min

The XXXL Plumber Jack Dingbongs Her Tiny Skinpompom: Episode 8
Director: Vojtěch Kočí, CZ, 2018, 2 min

Teambuilding TV Estrada
Director: Zdeněk Zdráhal, CZ, 2018, 32 min

Mark Hogancamp is brutally attacked and suffers a serious head injury resulting in a memory loss. Mark’s physical and in particular mental condition seems incurable and his memories of the past forever lost. He suffers from paranoia and has trouble communicating with the outside world. In a desperate attempt to regain balance and his memories, he intuitively starts building a new world and leading an alternate life in it. In his house and garden, he builds a remarkable model village named Marwen which he populates with dolls. Among the dolls, Mark himself is the only man and thus the main male hero who is protected and saved by female heroines. And heroes and heroines are exactly what Marwen needs as it exists during World War II and the attacking Nazis show no mercy. But when fighting the SS villains, puppet Mark and his courageous friends show no mercy either. When the real Mark, however, is asked to testify against the men who attacked him, his demons come back.
Daring and remarkable film Welcome to Marwen was made by the visionary director Robert Zemeckis who regularly switches from live-action films to animated films or uses a unique combination of both. Apart from some cult classics such as Back to the Future and Forrest Gump, his filmography includes innovative animated films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol.

The author of the animated musical comedy Sita Sings the Blues from 2008 once again explores religious concepts and their tie-in in the modern world. And just like in her first film, she does it craftily, firmly and with a very personal relation to the theme. In this film, it is the Passover Seder during which Jews retell the story of the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. In this case, the narrator is the author’s father as God, while Nina portrays herself as a curious goat that accompanies her father’s story with important observations and question. Thanks to using an authentic recording of their conversation, we have a unique opportunity to gain insight into Jewish culture that – apparently – is not an unconditionally defensible dogma for Nina or her father. While Moses and the Egyptian Pharaoh dance and the Venus of Willendorf moves her buxom hips to the music of Gloria Gaynor, Louis Armstrong and Led Zeppelin, we begin to clearly see the problem of suppression of women in a patriarchal tradition. Complemented by real footage of important global events of last year, the film presents a personal view on the meaning of Passover and the Passover Seder and seeks to find the meaning and impact of passing on certain traditions, stories and mindsets.

When taking stock of last year’s distribution offer of feature films, we can’t miss the action-packed adventure Ralph Breaks the Internet. Popular videogame villain Ralph and his little rascal friend Vanellope Schweetz must set out on a dangerous journey through the world wide web and find a replacement part for Vanellope’s videogame Sugar Rush. On the way, Ralph and Vanellope meet various inhabitants of the internet including an entrepreneur named Yesss, who is the main algorithm and soul of the trending videosite BuzzzTube, and Shank, a tough racer from even tougher game called Slaughter Race.
Creative duo director Rich Moore and screenwriter Phil Johnston (this time acting also as a co-director) who have won a number of awards including an Annie and were nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for their films Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Zootopia (2016) and now also Ralph Breaks the Internet, have made a clever film about relationships and friendship that humorously teases the audiences in order to make them consider their approach to technologies.

As part of the Jury Programme, Max Hattler will present Hattlerizer 4.D, the latest version of his live audio-visual performance practice, which for the fi rst time incorporates stereoscopic vision and optical sound, supported by Lux Prima’s music track. Using custom-built software, Hattler expresses an abstract audio-visual terrain in which hard-edged geometries and supple organic forms proliferate, interact, and wane. Aesthetics of metric shapes and colours coalesce with optical feedback recursions to engross the audience with virtual realms that range from the soft, nebulous, and celestial, to the frenetic, psychedelic, and dissonant. Paying homage to infl uences ranging from improvisational jazz to avant-garde animation and VJ culture, Hattler plays his audio-visual instrument in an ad lib manner, resulting in a radiant spectacle that is at once arresting, rapturous, and starkly original.

Blocks of new midnight animations are an inseparable part of Anifilm’s accompanying film programme. Each year, we pick the most shocking, horrifying, obscure, saucy and extreme films. This block will present horror films whose authors play with the genre in various ways. Some take it seriously, so their films are mysterious and spine-chilling (The Feather Pillow, Island of the Deceased), others have a more metaphorical approach (Baraa, My Little Goat) and there are also some examples of irony (Sunscapades), parody (A Long Way from Home) and twisted exaggeration (Under Covers). In their films, the authors take us to mysterious settings – we see a world where raw meat grows rampant (Carnotopos), we explore weirdly trashy (supposedly hotel) interiors (Under Covers), a nightmarish forest, Wild West and a garden where one can grow zombies.

The Feather Pillow
Director: Joseph Specker Nys, BR, 2018, 12 min

Carnotopos
Director: Felicia Bergström, Anita Becker, Fabián M. Salgado, DE, 2018, 4 min

A Long Way from Home
Director: Andy Tai, Eduardo Enriquez, USA, 2018, 4 min

Island of the Deceased
Director: Jihyeon Kim, KR, 2018, 9 min

Undergrowth
Director: Laura White, UK, 2018, 6 min

Under Covers
Director: Michaela Olsen, USA, 2018, 7 min

Inseyed
Director: Jessica Hudak, USA, 2018, 2 min

Limbo of Innocence
Director: Michal Ben Porat, IL, 2018, 4 min

Baraa
Director: Natasza Cetner, UK, PL, 2018, 5 min

Sunscapades
Director: Ben Mitchell, UK, 2018, 5 min

My Little Goat
Director: Tomoki Misato, JAP, 2018, 10 min

The charming story of Dilili in Paris is the latest film by renowned French director, graphic artist and animator Michel Ocelot, the author of films The Three Inventors (1980, BAFTA Award), The Legend of the Poor Hunchback (1982, César Award), series about an African boy Kirikou (1998) and the music video for the song Earth Intruders by Icelandic singer Björk.
Through the adventures of a little girl, the audiences get to know the period of “Belle Époque”, a “Beautiful Era” from the history of France that the Czechs know from the posters by Alfons Mucha. Together with her friend Orel, brave Dilili tracks down a group that kidnaps girls in Paris. During their search, the heroes visit, among other locations, the famous cabaret Moulin Rouge and meet a number of important personalities of the era – from scientist Marie Curie through painters Picasso, Monet and Renoir to writer Marcel Proust. Each of them will give the young detectives a helping hand or a clue. They explore remarkable places, the mysterious investigation involves magic and at the end, good traditionally fights the forces of darkness. In his latest film, Michel Ocelot in a fascinating manner combines animation with photorealistic backgrounds so the viewers have a chance to see Art Nouveau Paris in all its beauty. The film’s score was composed by Gabriel Yared who won an Oscar for his work on The English Patient.

Jaromír Plachý is our juror for the games category this year. He is the author of computer games Chuchel and Botanicula that were made in the studio Amanita Design. But apart from developing games, Jaromír, who studied animation, also makes films and in his masterclass, or should we say goofyclass, he will give us an overview of his audio-visual work. And he will do it by showing a mix of more than twenty music videos, short films, festival jingles, jingles that nobody wanted, and last but not least also computer games he worked on as a designer, screenwriter or animator.

The screening will be accompanied by his fitting remarks regarding his own person which should shed some light on what brought him to the world of animation, how it happened that he started making games, how these two fields interconnect, why his games are perceived as not games by a number of gamers and why his films are often not made for audiences.

You will have a chance to interrupt his monologue with questions that he will happily answer. Mostly.

Baba Aga, 2005, 2:32 min

Visiting Card, 2005, 0:54 min

The Clod, 2007, 2:10 min

Anifest, 2006, 0:31 min

Anifest, 2007, 0:31 min

Anifest, 2008, 0:32 min

Anifilm, 2010, 0:39 min

Menu Card, 2007, 1:10 min

The Time, 2007, 3:22 min

Joe, 2009, 1:27 min

On the Branch, 2009, 1:21 min

AAAD, (Academy of Architecture and Applied Design), 2009, 0:35 min

Nunovó Tango, 2009, 3:26 min

Botanicula, 2012, 1:06 min

Kiki, 2013, 0:23 min

Mulatu, 2013, 3:42 min

Chrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, 2014, 3:39 min

Summer, 2014, 0:26 min

Mysliveček, 2016, 1:49 min

Vespering, 2016, 2:40 min

Chuchel, 2018, 1:42 min

As with her previous film Crulic: The Path to Beyond (2011), the director chose the genre of animated docu-drama to portray the extraordinary life of Polish photographer and climber Adam Jacek Winkler (1973–2002). Her film covers almost 50 years of the life of a Polish immigrant living a wild life in Paris. In the 1980’s, he feels a change mind. As a modern knight, he sets out for Afghanistan to join the Mujahedeen in their fight against Soviet Russia. The film, which combines live action with animated sequences, is a dialogue between Winkler and his daughter Ania. It draws attention to an often ignored period from the recent history. The film’s visual style, based on Winkler’s photographs and naïvist sketches developed in many styles, creates a manifold collage of artistic approaches from simple sketches through gouache and watercolour to stylized live action as well as computer animation. The film’s visual style is truly impressive but, when accompanied by original soundtrack, the epic and captivating storyline binds naturally with the film’s poetic imagery.

Since 1979 Ars Electronica has been analysing and commenting on the digital revolution. The focus is always on current developments and possible future scenarios and the question of how these will change our lives. It is a worldwide unique platform for art, technology and society.
The Ars Electronica Animation Festival has been a mainstay of the Ars Electronica Festival since 2005. The programme delivers a colourful and diverse selection of recent works submitted to the Prix Ars Electronica’s category Computer Animation, a competition in which artistic originality counts just as much as technical mastery. Prize winners range from indie artistic or scientific efforts all the way to high-end commercial productions in the film and entertainment industries as well as to experimental and multidisciplinary approaches, but always on the fringes of computer animation.
This best-of programme shows the Golden Nica Prize winner film Tropics by Mathilde Lavenne, besides a selection of Honorary Mention and Award with Distinction winning films of 2018. In collaboration with the Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs the Ars Electronica Animation Festival is available at all Austrian cultural forums and embassies worldwide.

ars.electronica.art

Tropics
Director: Mathilde Lavenne, FR, 2018, 13 min

Love
Director: Réka Bucsi, HU, FR, 2016, 15 min

489 Years
Director: Hayoun Kwon, FR, 2016, 12 min

La chute
Director: Boris Labbé, FR, 2018, 14 min

Quantum Fluctuations
Director: Markos Kay, GB, 2016, 4 min

Finity Calling
Director: Jasper Kuipers, NL, 2018, 15 min

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a unique single-player RPG set in the realistic world of medieval Europe. The path to its release was a long and complicated one: the game was rejected by publishers as too risky and its development was only possible thanks to the support of thousands of backers on Kickstarter. Even then, the developers still faced a whole range of obstacles due to the game's unconventional ideas and mechanisms. This documentary charts the more than six-year-long, tortuous journey from the foundation of Warhorse Studios to the final release of the game. The film wasn’t distributed through typical distribution channels, it was available only on online platforms.

Graham Chapman, probably best remembered as “the dead one from Monty Python,” writes and stars in the animated film of his own life story, A Liar's Autobiography. He was born, he went to Cambridge and met John Cleese (not mentioning the meeting with the Queen Mother), he smoked a pipe, he became a doctor, he became a Python, he decided he was gay (well, 70/30, according to a survey he did on himself), he got drunk a lot, he stopped being drunk, he made some films, he had some sex (actually, a lot), and moved to Los Angeles. Finally, he was whisked up to space by aliens (although that might have been in a film). Although Chapman selfishly dropped dead in 1989, he had taken the trouble to record himself reading the book by which this film is inspired. Incredible? Yes. Surreal? Certainly! True? Who knows…? The only thing that is certain is that 14 different animation studios worked on this film using various techniques to depict the most significant chapters from Chapman’s life. Or at least what this crackpot anidoc balancing on the border with a mockumentary claims it to be.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller, makers of hit films The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street, combined their skills and talents to introduce the unknown worlds of Spider-Man in a ground breaking and unique visual style. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has a multi-layered dramatic story. It introduces Miles Morales, a young boy from Brooklyn, and the infinite possibilities of parallel worlds with more than just one masked hero. This action film doesn’t lack humour and an intelligent and well-narrated plot with characters you can understand – all in a fast pace.
The authors use new and original animation methods, techniques and a combination of textures. Lively camera constantly swirls through the scenes, comic book pages turn into three-dimensional space, heroes travel through alternate universes, frames keep pouring on us and Spider-Man meets a new Spider-Man in every reality that opens to us. Just like a new dimension opened to comic book films that for a long time stood still.

The third midnight animation block focuses on the body and flesh and not only in an erotic context. The viewers can look forward to ten unforgettable films. One of them explores pure sexuality (Roses in the Night), another the circumstances of experiencing it (Adorable) and the authors of other films try to push the limits of what they can depict in their portrayals of the body and what their audiences will tolerate. They examine deviations (Soapboy, Looking for You), disgustingness (Boilermaker), obscure behaviour and situations (Retiredness) and other similar things. Even the classic of Dutch animation Paul Driessen explores uncharted waters with his film The Origin of Sounds in which the Creator realizes he forgot to add sound to the world! He starts fixing this by using his weird collection of animated cartoons. But not to the liking of his creatures…

Roses in the Night
Director: Pencho Kunchev, BG, 2018, 11 min

Retiredness
Director: Szilard Kardiak, SK, 2018, 2 min

Boilermaker
Director: Risto Kütt, EST, 2018, 4 min

Slug Life
Director: Sophie Koko Gate, UK, 2018, 7 min

Wunderkammer
Director: Jennifer Linton, CAN, 2018, 5 min

Looking for You
Director: Diyala Muir, Dominic Myatt, UK, 2018, 3 min

Adorable
Director: Cheng-Hsu Chung, UK, 2018, 6 min

Soapboy
Director: Agne Jurkenaite, Daniel O’Connor, Anna Smirnova, UK, 2018, 7 min

The Origin of Sounds
Director: Paul Driessen, Toon Loenders, BE, NL, 2018, 13 min