Online catalogue

Since the beginning of 2021, each week the microproject #ukazsvojekino (show your cinema) initiated by the educational project New Cinema (Nové kino) has presented a different Czech cinema online. Apart from presenting the organisation and the premises of the cinema, the presentation includes ticket sales and visitor statistics and an inspirational project which could enrich other cinema owners. This special festival edition will introduce Liberec’s oldest bricks and mortar cinema – Cinema Varšava. Since 2012, the cinema has been run by a society of the same name which managed to revive the tradition of the last single-hall cinema in the city.

f-a-t.cz is a platform for sharing content from the world of animation. For a year now, our motto has been ‘From Animators to Animators’ and our content centres not just around texts and the database of animation professionals, but also around podcasts. In this special live recording session, we will talk about Anifilm’s 20-year-long history. How did it all start? What has changed during the years, what has remained the same and where’s the festival heading? Come and listen to people connected to the festival and toast to its long life. There will also be time for your questions.

In mainstream animated series, queer characters are a very recent phenomenon, especially if we look at titles primarily for children and adolescents. This lecture will try to outline the development from subversive interpretations of Smurfs to the inclusion of openly queer episodic and main characters in milestone series such as The Legend of Korra and Steven Universe to icons who came out later, such as Spongebob Squarepants.

New Cinema 2021 (Nové kino 2021) is an educational project for cinema owners and others. Its participants present their work with specific films, visitor statistics, un/successful campaigns and other related activities at selected film festivals. The aim of these publicly accessible seminars is to present various perspectives on work with specific films and their viewers to the professional public. The seminar, hosted by Anifilm, will focus on animated film in the ‘Covid’ year 2020, the availability of animated films in distribution and work with the youngest audiences.

The Studio of Animation at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM) is the oldest school of its kind in the Czech Republic. What was it at the beginning? What names did it have before? Why wasn’t it founded at FAMU, but at UMPRUM? How did the education plan change and what could the students expect after graduation? What do several generations of pedagogues and graduates remember? This lecture will shed some light on the history of the Studio, a book due to be published this autumn and the planned celebration of the Studio’s 70th anniversary.

Golem is a feature film project of director Jiří Barta and screenwriter Edgar Dutka. The film, with combined animation technology, is loosely based on an old Prague Jewish legend and tells a surreal story dealing with manipulation and crowd psychology.

Newts is loosely based on one of the most important works in the history of Czech literature, Karel Čapek’s 1935 dystopian allegorical and satirical novel War with the Newts. Our film will be a combined visual-effects sci-fi following the tradition of illusive cinema by Georges Méliés and Karel Zeman. In the film, real settings and actors will have an equal share with artistic stylisation and animation.

Through its one-hundred-year history, animation has frequently engaged with nonhuman actors and with environmental issues. It has functioned as the principal aesthetic genre through which industrial societies have reflected on the animatedness of the nonhuman, the inanimate and the object. With examples drawn from French, Japanese and American animation, this lecture will analyze the fundamental – if often playful – exploration of the objectness of objects that makes animated film a crucial medium for thinking about the reification of nature and its consequences.

After a six-month-long house arrest, Prasení returns to Liberec with its sixth edition, called Spit it Out. This joyful showcase of dozens of Czech animators will traditionally be accompanied by a GIF Competition. Each author has 4 minutes to create any audio-visual content they can think of. Add your own content to the showcase or just come, hang out and have a beer – more information at the Facebook event Prasení #6: Vymáčkni se!

Prasení is organised and its visuals created by: Mikoláš Fišer, Adela Křižovenská, Viktorie Štěpánová and Filip Zatloukal.

Creative Europe is the only European Union Programme designed exclusively to support culture and creative industries. In 2021, it enters another seven-year period with a much higher budget.

What are its main priorities, how much money will it allocate and what can we expect from it? What possibilities of support and other opportunities does it offer to animators and animation within cinematography, its promotion and distribution?

The Creative Europe Programme will be introduced by Daniela Staníková, Head of Creative Europe – MEDIA Czech Republic.

In the last four years, game developer Michal Berlinger has worked on all the game projects created by Amanita Design and he will share his experience with you. Each of the studio’s current projects uses different tools for 2D animation, which means we can use them as examples of different approaches. The lecture will be intriguing to everyone, not only to people interested in technical details and 2D animation.

Would you like to know what games will compete in this year’s video game competition? Come and check out their presentation. You will see trailers with commentary by Anifilm Gaming Section Coordinator Martin Vaňo. You can take it as a recommendation of interesting indie games that you shouldn’t miss!

In his presentation, director and producer Petr Oukropec will focus on using various kinds of animation and special effects and their incorporation in live-action scenes in films for children. Why are his films for young audiences (Blue Tiger, Martin and the Magical Forest) perceived abroad as a continuation of the traditional and specific Czech approach to special effects? And is there even such an approach? As the producer of My Sunny Maad by Michaela Pavlátová, Oukropec will screen several previews from this long-anticipated film due to be premiered later this year.

Organised in cooperation with Creative Europe Desk CZ – MEDIA and CEE Animation.

Friendly get-togethers over animation are back! The event will introduce three speakers from the fields of film and visual art. In three twenty-minute slots, they will show you what inspires them.

You will see:

Nora Štrbová, author of personal ani-docs and dinosaur mockumentaries;

Marek Náprstek, immortaliser of Carp Women and ant apocalypses;
Pavel Ryška, admirer of Puňta, Háček and Čárka – archaeologist of Czechoslovak visual culture.

Prepared by the Sós-girls: Davidová, Děcká, Hejzlarová, Valtrová

There are dozens of film festivals around the world focusing on animation, and dozens of queer film festivals. How does queer animation fare on the festival market, how do dramaturges work with it most often and what animated films with queer themes have been successful with festival viewers, juries and film critics in the last few years? Are thematic and formal trends of contemporary queer cinema showing in animation? And what can be queer in animation? Dramaturge Jana Čížkovská will use excerpts and thematic probes to outline the journey of queer animation through the festival world, which isn’t always full of rainbows.

f-a-t.cz is a platform for sharing content from the world of animation. For a year now, our motto has been ‘From Animators to Animators’ and our content centres not just around texts and the database of animation professionals, but also around podcasts. In this live recording session with the authors of this year’s Anifilm playful visual identity, we will talk about the origins of this visual identity, clay and other work produced in their family studio, Oz Animation. There will also be time for your questions.

A talk about how Tom Barsweik and Franz Bayer looked for a visual identity for their project titled Velvetist.

Inspired by many years of collecting testimonies from the period of normalisation, the authors use their interactive project, Velvetist, to tell the stories of underhanded moneychangers, dissidents and members of the underground. The script also offers the perspective of the young generation – the authors included their own experiences and world views. The lecture will give an insight into their thoughts about the aesthetic aspect of their work, from creating period accoutrements like mess tins and Trabants to the urbanistic concept of a city inspired by Prague to the overall stylisation of the project.

As it does every year, Anifilm has prepared a gaming session with certain authors. Come and check out games on a big screen played and commented upon by their authors. You can look forward to the horror adventure Someday You’ll Return set in mysterious Czech woods and Hungry Bears’ Cookbook, inspired by the Czech Television series of the same name.

Independent Czech studio Amanita Design presents its latest project. This time, it’s not suitable for families with children. It is, apparently, not suitable for anyone. It’s absurd psychedelic horror, an unprecedented thing in Amanita’s production so far. In this game, the players take on the role of a little boy who must pass through three unique worlds in a horrible nightmare. Happy Game’s main developer, graphic artist, animator and game designer Jaromír Plachý will personally give an amusing and intriguing presentation about the game’s development and about the secondary projects which have spun off during the seven ‘happy’ years of the game’s development. And as the presentation will be held on Friday evening, a time when we traditionally rest after a full week’s work, Jaromír will spice up the presentation by playing something on his ukulele. If he’s not overcome by stage fright, that is. PS: The presentation is not suitable for small children as it includes scary and nasty things which should not be seen by children. So don’t come complaining if you bring them anyway and they subsequently look for bogeymen under their beds. You have been warned.

My masterclass will explore the differences between some of my visual projects. On the one hand, we have video installations such as the Big Night Watchman on the cooling towers of the Temelín NPP or big statues that need a lot of preparation, and the journey from idea to execution can be rather miserable and hard, production-wise. Similar projects usually involve more people and in such cases I feel more like a producer than an artist. On the other hand, there’s my intimate work done in my peaceful studio where I don’t need anyone else to make a drawing, watercolour painting or a small object. The result tends to be much faster and closer to my original idea as there are no other components involved. In spite of that, I still enjoy combining my visual work and creating something bigger than my studio from time to time.

Cedric Babouche is currently working on his first computer game – Dordogne. It’s a beautiful exploration game that is both 3D rendered and hand painted. He will describe the process of bringing traditional hand-painted arts and a narrative story to life thanks to real-time engines and dedicated 3D tools.

Organised in cooperation with CEE Animation.

Game designers and artists from various Czech game development studios will discuss the topic of the design and development of environments in games. They model countrysides from real world data, design old-time cities and manufacture whole planets. We will discuss all the whys and hows but most importantly what influence the environment has on the player. Our guests are Ivan Buchta (Bohemia Interactive), Prokop Smetana (SCS Software), Petr Motejzík (Hangar 13), Natiq Aghayev (Keen Software House) and Lukáš Medek (CBE Software). Hosted by Martin Vaňo (GameDevHub).

Jakub Dvorský, the founder of the Czech independent game developers Amanita Design, will present the most beautiful and interesting indie games made last year.

From corporate offices to the garage and back again. In my lecture, I will share my experience with work on small and big game projects. I will outline the work of an art director and describe the issues of implementing an artistic vision along with its obstacles and opportunities.

What’s the difference between film and game animation? How can you succeed in the job of your dreams and what should you avoid? Where can you look for inspiration? These and other questions will be answered by game producer and director Tomáš Roller (Devil May Cry, Warhammer Vermintide) in collaboration with animation veterans Memo Dupinet (Deus Ex, Spongebob) and Jofre Balboa (Thor: Ragnarok, Horizon Zero Dawn) from the Prague studio Plan A Collective. Adventures! Fuckups! Strokes of luck! And possibly also cats…