Online catalogue

The Wandering Kite is a high-quality programme of thematically and stylistically diverse animated shorts for the youngest audiences. The programme features contemporary works from Central and Eastern Europe. Suitable for children aged 4 and over, the films have been carefully selected by Martina Peštaj, a media psychologist and head of the Children’s and Youth Programme at Slovenia’s National Television, and Igor Prassel, director of the International Animated Film Festival Animateka.

The Wandering Kite is part of the CEE Animation Festival Network (Animafest, Anifilm, Fest Anča, Animest and Animateka).

Koyaa – Elusive Paper
Director: Kolja Saksida, Slovenia, 2019, 3 min

Mr. Night Has a Day Off
Director: Ignas Meilunas, Lithuania, 2016, 2 min

The Kite
Director: Martin Smatana, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, 2019, 14 min

Knock Knock
Director: Ivana Guljašević, Croatia, 2018, 4 min

Mitch-Match: Episode 6
Director: Géza M. Tóth, Hungary, 2020, 2 min

Cloudy
Directors: Filip Diviak, Zuzana Čupová, Czech Republic, 2018, 4 min

Prince Ki-Ki-Do: On the Run
Director: Grega Mastnak, Slovenia, 2018, 5 min

Children on Planet A: Woods, Water, Tornados

8+

As part of this year’s accompanying programme titled Planet A, we have prepared screenings of short environmental films for children of all ages. In this showcase for children above 8 years of age, you will see many different films which are definitely not boring educational or unpleasant agitational animations. On the contrary, this showcase includes film stories or puns offering various perspectives on the issue of environmental protection.

You will see a moving drama involving migrating bears but also a delightful story of a garden that decided to move. You will find out how serious deforestation is in the acclaimed Brazilian film Plantae. A humorous fictitious report on the life of hot air molecules will explain to young audiences how a tornado is formed. What about roasting some plastic fished from the sea for lunch? The ironic tone of some of the films, including a new student film titled Shoot, is balanced by the poetic and deeply moving Canadian film Man Who Planted Trees.

And in the very first film of the showcase, The Planet Comes First, we will find out that everyone can help the planet by planting a tree.

 The Planet Comes First: April

Director: Jakub Hussar, Czech Republic, 2020, 3 min

Migrants

Directors: Hugo Caby, Antoine Dupriez, Aubin Kubiak, Lucas Lermytte, Zoé Devise, France, 2020, 8 min

The Lost Garden / Le jardin perdu 

Director: Natalia Chernysheva, France, 2018, 3 min

Baked Fish

Director: Guillem Miró, Spain, 2018, 4 min

Plantae

Director:  Guilherme Gehr, Brazil, 2017, 10 min

Shoot

Director: Ema Mlynarčíková, Czech Republic, 2020, 3 min

The Story of a Tornado / Ako vzniká tornádo 

Director: Veronika Kocourková, Slovakia, 2013, 6 min

Man Who Planted Trees

Director: Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987, 30 min

These four animated fairy tales share not only the name of screenwriter, dramaturge and occasional director Edgar Dutka, but also an original sense of humour filled with parody, irony, new takes on fairy-tale stereotypes and innuendos obscure to children but humorous to grown-ups.

Maryshka and the Wolf’s Castle is a story about the courage, selflessness and loyalty of a poor girl named Maryshka who sets free an enchanted princess and her twelve maids from a mysterious castle. Even today this captivating puppet fairy tale has a very mysterious atmosphere. The Golden Mouse is an atypical fairy tale starring a king swordsman who hasn’t time for his own daughter Milča, due to all the swordplay. She has a sleepy piano teacher and always runs away to their neighbour, Vendelín. But during one of her escapes, a sorcerer turns her into a mouse. In Budulinek Mandelinka everything is a bit different from the classical version of this fairy tale. Budulinek, designed in the style of Josef Lada, lives with his grandparents. As he’s naughty and full of mischief, his grandfather comes up with the idea that he will only tell Budulinek opposites. Similarly cunning is Queen Koloběžka based on a fairy tale by Jan Werich (and narrated by him). A young king has to settle a petty dispute between a stupid miller and an equally stupid fisherman. But suddenly the fisherman’s smart daughter enters the scene.

Maryshka and the Wolf‘s Castle
Directors: Vlasta Pospíšilová, Edgar Dutka, Czechoslovakia, 1979, 15 min

The Golden Mouse
Director: Edgar Dutka, Czechoslovakia, 1990, 18 min

Budulinek Mandelinka
Director: Josef Kluge, Czechoslovakia, 1979, 14 min

Queen Koloběžka
Director: Dagmar Doubková, Czechoslovakia, 1981, 12 min

This film, by director Ilja Novák from Ostrava, is a biting satire on the relationships between top athletes. At the time it was made, it openly criticised athletes from the 'socialist camp' and that criticism eventually proved fateful to the film. We will first screen the cinema version drastically cut by the studio and subsequently the original film.

Graphic artist and director Dagmar Doubková and screenwriter Edgar Dutka conceived their film as a modern, educational and emancipative lesson for young girls entering the world of men. The film is ironic thanks in particular to its commentary and the visual gags often building on the admitted stiffness of cut-out animation, which in this case is really excellent.

A humorous story mocking modern housing architecture. A successful architect, himself living in Baroque comfort, designs cubes, cubes and more cubes for other people. When he finds that this might not be the best solution, he is blessed with a brilliant idea – he designs a pyramid-shaped structure. The accompanying music is adapted from a famous Beethoven motif.

Edgar Dutka’s unprecedently loose script is the foundation 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 manner, it tells the story of one of Barták’s typical heroes who experiences utterly absurd things one Friday the 13th.

One of the masterpieces of Czech animation, which was unjustly ignored at the time of its production – a time of major political changes – despite the fact that it indirectly addressed the new era which was about to come. A family of figurines lives in an old, decrepit house. The life of this ‘household’ revolves around routine, everyday tasks until this cabinet of curiosities welcomes new tenants.

A joyful story based on the work by Josef Štefan Kubín about a poor tinker who helps an old nobleman and his young wife to have children. Artistically, the film was inspired by folk paintings on glass. This film is a part of the popular racy trilogy along with the films The Water of Freshness (1966) and Bit-of-all-Hair (1978).

A fairy tale about a brave, selfless and faithful poor girl named Maryška who sets free an enchanted princess and her twelve maids from a mysterious castle. To this day, the captivating puppet fairy tale has a very mysterious atmosphere and its form will appeal to children as well as adults.

Although (or perhaps because) planet Earth is plagued by many problems caused by us humans, it remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration, enthusiasm and awe not only for scientists of various specialisations, but for other people all around the world. And it’s this awe, or love if you will, that connects the films of this block. The films celebrate and search for the secret of life in the universe (Living on the Comet) or go deep below the icy surface of Antarctica in order to reveal the mysteries of our planet’s past (The Secrets Held in the Ice). Other films from this block, on the other hand, focus on the planet’s surface. Thanks to Norwegian director Morten Skallerud and his film made using the technique of hyperlapse, we will spend A Year Along the Abandoned Road and then move to Australia in a short film personifying the sacred Uluru. Reach, using sounds heard in nature, is a pure audio-visual impression. The Natural Order of Things is a commentary on the laws of nature with humorously subversive references to people. The internationally acclaimed films Cow and The Man Who Planted Trees by animation legends Aleksandr Petrov and Frédéric Back are superbly animated and artistically charming testimonies about nature and the place of humankind in it.

Living on the Comet

Director: Kathy Smith, Australia, 1993, 13 min

The Secrets Held in the Ice

Director: Loïc Fontimpe, France, 2015, 14 min

Reach

Directors: Kayla Parker, Stuart Moore, United Kingdom, 2014, 3 min

Cow

Director: Aleksandr Petrov, Soviet Union, 1989, 10 min

Ayers Rock Animation

Director: Kathy Smith, Australia, 1985, 2 min

A Year Along the Abandoned Road

Director: Morten Skallerud, Norway, 1991, 12 min

The Natural Order of Things

Director: Mathilde Poigniez, France, 2019, 4 min

The Man Who Planted Trees

Director: Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987, 30 min

Although Queer Animation is a relatively young genre, there has been an array of ground-breaking films by a new generation of filmmakers that have arisen in the last few years. From gender identity in Purpleboy and Cut to the early internet chat room culture in Guy 101, these films all explore a unique perspective on queer culture and queer identity. A variety of approaches is displayed from first-person narrative anthropomorphic realisations in I Like Girls to the imaginative otherworldly female-led visions of Entropia. Some utilise humour and imagination, some are factual accounts of experiences lived. From all across the globe, including Hungary, Canada and Singapore and using stop-motion, hand-drawn or pixilation animation, the one thing these films have in common is an engaging account of the queer human experience. 

Entropia 
Director: Flóra Anna Buda, Hungary, 2018, 10 min

Hi, It’s Your Mother
Director: Daniel Sterlin-Altman, Canada, 2016, 5 min

Guy 101
Director: Ian Gouldstone, United Kingdom, 2006, 8 min

The Saint of Dry Creek
Director: Julie Zammarchi, United States, 2015, 4 min

I Like Girls
Director: Diane Obomsawin, Canada, 2016, 8 min

Between Us Two
Director: Tan Wei Keong, Singapore, 2017, 5 min

Purpleboy
Director: Alexandre Siqueira, Portugal, France, Belgium, 2019, 14 min

The Night Cleaner
Director: Blair Fukumura, Canada, 2017, 5 min

Cut
Director: Dar Laor, Israel, 2015, 3 min

Erma Fiend 1
Created by: Erma Fiend for Adult Swim (producer: Anca Vlasan), sound designer: Mason Brown, United States, 2020

Erma Fiend 2
Created by: Erma Fiend for Adult Swim (producer: Anca Vlasan), sound designer: Mason Brown, United States, 2020

Goodbye Forever Party
Director: Jonni Phillips, United States, 2017, 19 min

In the field of animated family features, Pixar is a household name. Mainstream, yet top-quality films made by the studio boast elaborate scripts, top dramaturgy and modern technologies. Meticulous CGI with excellent textures and superb animation has always been synonymous with Pixar. The studio, which always uses state-of-the-art technologies, sometimes manages to go beyond ‘quality entertainment’ and include a message in its films. That is the case of its Academy Award-winning sci-fi film Wall-E screened at this year’s Anifilm in the Planet A programme. Its disturbing story is set in the year 2700. Planet Earth has become a trash-strewn wasteland and all life has been de facto suffocated. Humanity relocated to a spaceship a long time ago and left the planet to robots for cleaning. Of these robots, only one remains operational – Wall-E. To brighten up his daily routine of endless cleaning, he collects various curiosities and memorabilia. His only friend and companion is a cockroach. But one day Wall-E, who after hundreds of years of solitude starts feeling human emotions, discovers a tiny plant. Does that mean that photosynthesis has been restored on Earth? At this very moment, a probe named EVE arrives on Earth with the objective to find out whether the planet is habitable again. 

The second showcase we put together with Edgar Dutka from his work for children is dominated by animal heroes and literary adaptations. We will see his lesser known Bedtime Story about Bumblebees and stay in the world of insects in the humorous story of two clumsy spooks (Scaring Bumblebees). The book by František Nepil about a dog named Baryk has been adapted into an equally charming animated series – Adolf Born created its graphic design and the main hero was voiced by the author himself. Two short films were inspired by Hans Christian Andersen. The first is a modern adaptation of The FIint and the second is the slightly scary yet visually exquisite The Little Match Girl. We can’t forget the legendary Bit-of-All-Hair, a humorous, folksy tale based on the story by Josef Štefan Kubín and adapted for children by screenwriter Dutka and director Smetana. Narrated by the legendary František Filipovský, it’s full of innuendos which will definitely entertain grown-ups.

The Flint
Director: Dagmar Doubková, Czechoslovakia, 1985, 17 min

Bumblebees – The Master of the Contrabass
Director: Zdeněk Smetana, Czechoslovakia, 1977, 8 min

The Little Match Girl
Director: Milada Kačenová, Czechoslovakia, 1984, 7 min

Bit-Of-All-Hair
Director: Zdeněk Smetana, Czechoslovakia, 1978, 12 min

Scaring Bumblebees
Director: Zdeněk Smetana, Czechoslovakia, 1977, 7 min

I, Baryk – I, Baryk, and My Hedgehog
Director: Jiří Kubíček, Czech Republic, 1997, 7 min

8+

As part of this year’s accompanying programme titled Planet A, we have prepared screenings of short environmental films for children of all ages. In this showcase for children above 8 years of age, you will see many different films which are definitely not boring educational or unpleasant agitational animations. On the contrary, this showcase includes film stories or puns offering various perspectives on the issue of environmental protection.

You will see a moving drama involving migrating bears but also a delightful story of a garden that decided to move. You will find out how serious deforestation is in the acclaimed Brazilian film Plantae. A humorous fictitious report on the life of hot air molecules will explain to young audiences how a tornado is formed. What about roasting some plastic fished from the sea for lunch? The ironic tone of some of the films, including a new student film titled Shoot, is balanced by the poetic and deeply moving Canadian film Man Who Planted Trees.

And in the very first film of the showcase, The Planet Comes First, we will find out that everyone can help the planet by planting a tree. 

The Planet Comes First: April
Director: Jakub Hussar, Czech Republic, 2020, 3 min

Migrants
Directors: Hugo Caby, Antoine Dupriez, Aubin Kubiak, Lucas Lermytte, Zoé Devise, France, 2020, 8 min

The Lost Garden / Le jardin perdu
Director: Natalia Chernysheva, France, 2018, 3 min

Baked Fish
Director: Guillem Miró, Spain, 2018, 4 min

Plantae
Director:  Guilherme Gehr, Brazil, 2017, 10 min

Shoot
Director: Ema Mlynarčíková, Czech Republic, 2020, 3 min

The Story of a Tornado / Ako vzniká tornádo
Director: Veronika Kocourková, Slovakia, 2013, 6 min

Man Who Planted Trees
Director: Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987, 30 min

4+

This showcase is intended for children above 4 years of age. The films screened share a focus on the environment and humanity’s behaviour in it. Princess Prga will introduce the insidious Plastor Nezmar and show us how to deal with him. Also the popular family of Little Rain Worms has to deal with litter as an inconsiderate tourist visits their forest. But the forest animals know what to do and they send a clear message to children: litter doesn’t belong in nature!

Zdeněk Miler’s timeless Little Mole has a different problem: a highway is to be built over his garden. Can a small animal prevail over a huge bulldozer destroying everything in its way? The Little Mole doesn’t give up. Another fairy tale takes us to Africa – in Snowflake, a little boy finds out what his country would look like if it started snowing. The last film in this showcase is the charming fairy tale Lost and Found about loneliness, the power of friendship and mainly about a little boy who decides to return a penguin to its home – even if it means an arduous journey to the South Pole.

The Planet Comes First: February
Director: Jakub Hussar, Czech Republic, 2020, 3 min

Snowflake / Snejinka
Director: Natalya Chernysheva, Russia, 2012, 7 min

Little Rain Worms: Tourist
Director: Jaromír Gál, Czech Republic, 2012, 7 min

The Little Mole and the Bulldozer
Director: Zdeněk Miler, Czechoslovakia, 1975, 6 min

Lost and Found
Director: Philip Hunt, United Kingdom, 2008, 24 min

The year is 1992 and twelve-year-old Sever Cullis-Suzuki is speaking about the future of her peers and other people at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. As most of the films included in this programme block prove, a cruelly uncertain future is still affecting the lives (and not only the lives) of children 30 years later. The bears from Poles Apart (starring Helena Bonham Carter) also know that something’s going on as a future without a sufficiently large habitat has a fateful encounter in store for them. The animals from the competition film Mex and the Animals, on the other hand, have only a virtual chance. The colourfully charming film Spell of the West warns against greed and the young hero of Wild Boar learns about the importance of the environment we live in. Bill Plympton’s musical film No Snow for Christmas and Václav Bedřich’s Beer Across the Street are bitterly humorous commentaries on contemporary issues. Branching Out for a Green Economy, narrated by the legendary British natural historian David Attenborough strives to find a solution as does the testimony of another nature conservationist in Bright Spots. ‘If you don’t know how to fix it, stop breaking it,’ Severn appealed to world politicians almost thirty years before the movement Fridays for Future was established. Her emotional speech, accompanied by a joint effort of more than twenty directors is the closing film of this block.

It´s nighttime. A group of pedestrians are waiting at a crosswalk to get to the other side. Some, however, have waited far longer than others...

A boy hides inside a book and feels better.
The War of the Words of the Respectful Silence? is a commissioned film made for an educational program in schools. Through this program, children rediscover their own history, the history of their territory and apply this knowledge to the future.

A pressing demand has been imposed on contemporary artists to construct new language and images capable of grasping fast-pacing climate catastrophe in its whole natural, human, social and historical spectrum. A greater artistic challenge would be hard to imagine. When it comes to us, the film festival community, there is something we should do while we’re waiting and dreaming of a new symbolic order that would show us how to overcome the crisis, shake and awaken our dormant capacity for collective solidarity, interspecies empathy and individual self-agency in saving what’s most valuable in our surroundings. It’s an exercise in perceiving, decoding and interpreting films as cultural texts testifying to the currently prevailing fears, aspirations and desires. The presented programme might be discussed solely in terms of technique, cultural criticism and filmmaking qualities. But if we change the optics, we may discover that the metaphors within the films – embedded in puppet movements, colour compositions or the corporeality of animated objects – expand well-known/worn-out categories of discussion, their meanings drift towards the semantics of a new language and the cinema screen appears new. In order to become accustomed to the idea that business as usual is inevitably over it’s helpful to practice this exercise on each occasion. Enjoy the screening.

Curated by Olga Bobrowska

Machini Directors: Tétshim & Frank Mukunday, Belgium, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2019, 10 min

Winter in the Rainforest / Talv vihmametsas 
Director: Anu-Laura Tuttelberg, Estonia, Lithuania, Mexico, 2019, 9 min

Ostrich / Avestruz 
Director: Agostina Ravazzola, Argentina, 2019, 5 min

The Elephant / Słoń
Director: Dominika Wilkosz, Poland, 2019, 7 min

Sororelle
Directors: Louise Mercadier, Frédéric Even, France 2020, 15 min

Pandora
Director: Matthias Lerch, Germany, 2020, 7 min

Nadirah: Coal Woman
Directors: Negar Elodie Behzadi, Kate Jessop, United Kingdom, 2019, 3 min

Silent Embassies / Botschaften
Director: Daniel Höpfner, Germany, 2020, 15 min

The Story of Planet A began hundreds of millions of years ago in accordance with the life conditions created by the planet and the surrounding space. But it wasn’t until the last few decades that we have noticed that ‘something went wrong’.

The films in this block have different genres, animation techniques and artistic styles, but they all explore the themes of evolution and the unwanted direction the development of life took on our planet. The effect of humans on the development of other species, their irretrievable extinction, forced domestication, industrial exploitation, modification, unnecessary cruelty and excessive breeding have attracted the attention of many filmmakers. Some of them made ironically critical films (What Did We Do to the Hens), other chose experiments (The Tasmanian Tiger) or non-narrative films (Water Dream) and some even made absurd farcical films (Pandas). Using the technique of hyperlapse (replacing), the director of While Darwin Sleeps plays with the diversity of nature represented by dead animals pinned in museum showcases. The award-winning musical film Elephant’s Song with refined animation is also very suggestive. A curiosity in this block is the cut-out film Crabs, oscillating between sci-fi and horror and the disturbing nature of the whole programme is underlined by the films Nigel and Swarming. The first tells the story of a confused seabird trying to nest with a mate made of concrete and the second will show you how severe nature – in a seemingly inconspicuous event – can be in response to human cruelty.

Water Dream

Director: Koji Yamamura, Japan, 2017, 11 min

Nigel

Director: Natasza Cetner, United Kingdom, 2020, 9 min

Crabs

Director: Václav Mergl, Czechoslovakia, 1976, 11 min

Swarming

Director: Joni Männistö, Finland, 2011, 8 min

What Did We Do to the Hens

Director: Josef Hekrdla, Vladimír Jiránek, Czechoslovakia, 1977, 6 min

The Tasmanian Tiger

Director: Vergine Keaton, France, 2018, 14 min

The Elephant’s Song

Režie / Director: Lynn Tomlinson, United States, 2018, 8 min

While Darwin Sleeps

Director: Paul Bush, United Kingdom, 2004, 5 min 

Pandas

Director: Matúš Vizár, Czech Republic, Slovakia, 2012, 12 min

This showcase presents a diverse mosaic of themes, approaches and forms of queer animation in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the millennium. It uses the perspectives of authorship, possibilities of queer interpretation, theme, work with the genre and the activist potential of the films to look at the limited number of queer animations made in this period. Barbara Hammer reflects on the AIDS pandemic, prominent Austrian artist Maria Lassnig explores the boundaries between manhood and womanhood, Barry Purves works ingeniously with the aesthetics of the male body and ancient myths in Achilles and the legendary Norman McLaren thematises violence in the fight between two neighbours over a delicate flower. The block presents ground-breaking titles made on a minimal budget but originally reflecting the period views on sexual identity or disrupting genre stereotypes: in the 1970s, Paul Kim had a moustached boss fall in love with his muscular employee; in her noir film, Heidi Kull has two lesbian assassins face each other. With a public toilet blowjob, Craig Boreham unites Jesus, leather aficionados and aliens and May Trubuhovich worships female icons in a variation on classic works of art. The relationship of John and Michael, suffering from Down syndrome and searching for one’s identity in 1977 reflects the rise of interest of film festivals in queer animation. A peculiar contribution to the fight against HIV – paradoxically overflowing with negative stereotypes – can be found in a French television campaign promoting safe sex. From drawings on the edges of a sketchbook for communities to films appealing to an international audience. Eleven films from six decades.

Neighbours
Director: Norman McLaren, Canada, 1952, 8 min

Shapes
Director: Maria Lassnig, Austria, 1972, 10 min

Queerdom
Director: Paul Kim, Lew Gifford, Unites States, 1978, 9 min

Snow Job: The Media Hysteria of AIDS
Director: Barbara Hammer, United States, 1986, 8 min

Beloved Murderer!
Director: Heidi Kull, Germany, 1991, 9 min

The Assumption
Director: May Trubuhovich, New Zealand, 1995, 4 min

Achilles
Director: Barry Purves, United Kingdom, 1995, 11 min

Blow
Director: Craig Boreham, Australia, 1997, 3 min

John and Michael
Director: Shira Avni, Canada, 2004, 11 min

AIDS Awareness Campaign – Sugar Baby Love
Director: Wilfrid Brimo, France, 2006, 3 min

1977
Director: Peque Varela, United Kingdom, 2007, 9 min

The unforgettable Dutch film Wildebeest, starring guileless tourist Linda, opens a block of films in which humans form a part of the environment they live in, an inseparable component of an immense natural cycle. Along with her outdoorsy husband, Linda goes on a safari to blend in with a herd of her favourite animals (shown in the film using real footage). In the Polish film Humming Forest, the lost hero experiences the inhospitable and dangerous side of wilderness, while the classic British film The Hill Farm takes us to an idyllic farm surrounded by nature where everything has its own rhythm and order – just like the meditative film Cycle 1 and the hypnotically flowing family abstraction Microphobia by Nikki Schuster, an acclaimed Austrian director with a penchant for environmental topics. Our quest to return to the trees ends with the epic film Legend of the Forest by the renowned Japanese manga artist and versatile genius Osamu Tezuka. His film from 1987 is characterised by the usage of many artistic styles trying to reflect the development of animation as a medium, its classical score using one of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, and in particular by its philosophic framework exploring the timeless topics of coexistence, harmony and respect.

The Studio of Animation of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM) is the oldest school of its kind in the Czech Republic. It was established 70 years ago. The more than 200 graduates of this studio have made over 1,000 films, including short films, music videos, jingles and animation exercises. This showcase presents some of these films and can be perceived as an invitation to the anniversary celebrations and a film exhibition starting on 2 September in the UM Gallery. In preparation for the anniversary, the students in this uneasy academic year have had to take on the task to make their own films in response to a personality, group or movement from the long list of the Studio’s graduates who intrigued them. While making their films, they adhered to the principles of animated documentary, whether it was during the development or the filming process itself. This showcase will present these selected films by students of animation made in collaboration with students of the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and the Department of Screenwriting at FAMU and films made by their predecessors.

Mayfly

Director: Ingrid Glaserová, Czechoslovakia, 1982, 4 min

Deluge

Director: Zuzana Bartová-Zintlová, Czechoslovakia, 1983, 4 min

The Illustrated Woman

Director: Pavla Řezníčková, Czechoslovakia, 1969, 5 min

Metamorphoses

Director: Václav Mergl, Czechoslovakia, 1964, 5 min

Mission UMPRUM

Director: Jitka Uhříčková, Czech Republic, 2021, 4 min

Bussines Card

Director: Radim Jurda, Czech Republic, 2006, 1 min

Nusle

Director: Jakub Dvorský, Czech Republic, 2001, 1 min

Bussines Card

Director: Jaromír Plachý, Czech Republic, 2009, 1 min

Something Like Magic

Director: Veronika Skalická, Czech Republic, 2021, 3 min

One Thousand and One Nights

Director: Filip Pošivač, Czech Republic, 2008, 3 min

CRASH! BANG! BOOM!

Director: Iris Hobson-Mazur, Czech Republic, 2021, 2 min

There is Something Behind the Sound

Director: Julie Lupačová, Czech Republic, 2019, 9 min

Free Hands

Director: Thanh Mai Tranová, Czech Republic, 2021, 3 min

Home

Director: Lukáš Fišárek, Czech Republic, 1994, 1 min

402

Director: Patrik Trska, Czech Republic, 2021, 4 min

Captain Dog

Director: Michaela Kukovičová, Czech Republic, 1995, 3 min

Čampulka

Director: Anna Wysocká, Czech Republic, 2021, 6 min

A Lion Doe

Director: Nina Čampulková, Czechoslovakia, 1974, 1 min

When young Ashitaka, last prince of the ancient Emishi family, decides to save a small village from an enraged forest demon, he has no idea that this act of heroism will change his life for good. The touch of the huge boar-like demon, driven by hatred towards people, causes a much deeper wound than it would seem. In order to stop the hatred corrupting his body and eventually killing him and others, the prince has to go to a distant land and seek out the mysterious Great Forest Spirit, the only being capable of healing his wound. Ashitaka travels to Irontown, led by the strict Lady Eboshi. The town grows at the expense of the forests surrounding it: as the town expands, the habitat of the forest spirits shrinks. An iron ball which has transformed the boar-spirit into a raging monster comes from one of the town’s workshops. Ashitaka finds himself torn between two seemingly irreconcilable worlds – the realm of old forest spirits, whose life and death is watched over by the now and then oddly indifferent Great Forest Spirit, and the town in which Lady Eboshi gives jobs to lepers and protects local women. Thanks to a mysterious girl named San, Princess Mononoke, who repeatedly attacks the town with her wolf family, Ashitaka will find out if it’s even possible to choose a side. This iconic filmy by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki boasts magnificent and meticulous hand-drawn cel animation and apart from an environmental message, the film is characterised by one of the basic principles of Miyazaki’s films – the ambiguity of good and evil.

One of the most visible and tangible problems the inhabitants of Planet A must face is trash. It’s repulsive, provably harmful and intrusively ubiquitous. Efforts to eliminate it fail. Pollution of water, air, soil… take your pick, there’s plenty in store for everyone. No wonder that animators explore this theme thoroughly and persistently. The oldest ‘trash’ film in this programme was made in 1972 but there are even older films. Just like there are many ways to deal with garbage. The title of this programme was taken from the film Orgiastic Hyper-Plastic reflecting the inevitability and ambivalence of living with ‘our’ trash. But there are more straightforward (Big Bang, The Flat and Air!) and symbolic ways (Castillo and the Catfish) to portray it. It’s rewarding for the authors to let their imagination run wild, make the trash alive and put it and its residua into fictitious but realistically looking settings (Age of Rust, Hybrids, Oil Gobblers). The hidden beauty and secrets of thrown-away stuff can be discovered in the non-narrative film Absent, whose title expresses the wishful thinking of the inhabitants of Planet A about trash.

Nostalgic, inventive and superbly animated – those are just some of the attributes that apply to Jiří Barta’s feature film titled In the Attic or Who Has a Birthday Today? Barta likes to animate forgotten and discarded objects and create their own specific world. In a similar style and also in collaboration with Edgar Dutka, he previously made a short film titled The Club of the Laid Off (1989).

Four friends set up a cosy home in a dusty old trunk in an attic: a pretty doll named Buttercup, a hedonistic and somewhat lazy teddy bear named Mucha, a marionette Prince Charming and a spry plasticine gnome named Schubert. They are cheerful and playful and every day at breakfast, they draw someone who has a birthday that day. The birthday boy/girl gets a song; the lovely Buttercup bakes a cake and then sends her friends off to ‘work’. Mucha is a train dispatcher at a nearby station, Schubert an engine driver and Prince Charming takes the train every day to the dragon’s den where he fights a fierce inflatable dragon. But their idyllic life of joyful games and playful rituals is destroyed by the Lord of the Land of Evil – a bronzed plaster ‘Head’. He orders his henchmen to kidnap Buttercup. On their quest to save Buttercup, her friends have to overcome dangerous obstacles and rely on help from other inhabitants of the attic, led by a clever mouse named Sklodowski. This successful film, which has won many awards and nominations at various festivals, was adapted into a theatrical play several years later.

3+ 

Not many Czech animated projects for children have attracted as much attention and aroused as much enthusiasm as the tales of two hungry bears. This popular series, which also inspired a book and a cookbook, is made by the young and talented Czech directors Kateřina Karhánková (Fruits of Clouds, 2017) and Alexandra Májová (Mythopolis, 2013). Its captivating artistic style designed by Filip Pošivač (Deep in Moss, 2015) situated on a white background is elaborate, richly coloured and yet likeable and comprehensible to children.

The series description reads: ‘the cheerful adventures of two constantly hungry fuzzballs.’ The friendly bears Mishka and Ned, living in their forest house, are always wondering what delicious things they can eat. But the way to obtaining the delicacies they want isn’t always easy. Tiny Mishka often loses hope, but the more rational and beefier Ned usually knows what to do. And as the sweet-toothed bears aren’t easily put off when on their quest for the given goody, they always end up having a feast. As a bonus at the end of this showcase, you will see a ‘making of’ film titled How We Were Made. In it, Ned and Mishka will tell you everything about what the production of a show such as theirs needs.

How They Met

Truffles

 
The Bears’ Dispute

The Impostors

Christmas Magic

The Great Gathering

How We Were Made

Directors: Kateřina Karhánková, Alexandra Májová, Czech Republic, 2020, 40 min

What would you say to a summer camp led by teenage witches situated on an island inhabited by the most bizarre creatures and objects brought to life? Thanks to magic, the laws of physics and sometimes even logic don’t apply to this place. That’s the very camp where the unsuspecting friends Oscar and Hedgehog are supposed to go. While Hedgehog is thrilled, Oscar needs some time to get used to the camp. But together, they have the best summer ever. Aliens, talking trees and other oddities gradually become a natural part of their summer adventure.

This successful series with dozens of episodes in three seasons is full of mysteries and wicked humour. Its heroes constantly discover new secrets of this magically attractive place. In designing the characters and various settings and objects of this fantasy series, the authors really let their imaginations run wild. The audience are in for a fun time as humour outweighs mystery. Summer Camp Island was created by animator and screenwriter Julia Pott, who worked on the last two seasons of the legendary series Adventure Time.

Humans began affecting life on Earth thousands of years ago. Our ancestors changed ancient landscapes and animal populations with slash-and-burn tactics and hunting. But it’s not that long ago that experts started seeing humans as the principal cause of changes on the face of the Earth. At the turn of the millennium, geochemist Paul J. Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer proposed that the geological epoch significantly affected by human impact on Earth be called Anthropocene. In our block of the same name, we will explore how this ‘age of man’ is reflected in nature and in ourselves. Two immortal geese will take us on a captivating excursion into the development of Western civilisation in God Has Already Gone Ahead. In their 1981 film The Status Report on Civilisation, Josef Hekrdla and Vladimír Jiránek commented humorously on our perception of nature and the circumstances of our own lives. So did Jiří Barta in his film Project, depicting reality tainted by a socialist climate. The mockumentary Lucens offers a humorous take on nuclear energy and Dam explores the effects of landscape engineering on local inhabitants. The Grind, depicting the ancient whaling tradition in the Faroe Islands, explores the relationship of humans to nature as a source of food and also the deep ties to one’s home. How fares humankind in the Anthropocene? This self-reflective question is asked in the satiric film PolarBarry and the closing metaphorical film Ark.

During the production of Insects by surrealist director Jan Švankmajer, the film’s producer (Jaromír Kalista) along with Švankmajer asked the film’s editor (Jan Daňhel) and cinematographer (Adam Oľha) to try and uncover and capture the creative processes fermenting in their film company Athanor in the form of a documentary film. In Athanor – a medieval alchemical furnace – three principles compete with each other: Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. In this case the third one is the love of Švankmajer’s life, his wife and exceptional collaborator Eva Švankmajerová with whom he lived for 45 years. A being who is, despite her death in 2005, a constant and all-permeating hermetically inseparable agent. Without her critical intuition and spirit constantly challenging him to achieve permanent liberation, Švankmajer’s work wouldn’t be complete and would certainly be different.

A producer and a surrealist – can it be? Are they communicating vessels? Can obsessions, detestations, magical thinking, games, infantilism, imagination, the unconscious mind, something essentially liquid and procedural be sold? Can you put a price on the creative process and convert it into money? Where does it even come from, where is its source? What’s ‘love’s cruel terror,’ Kalista’s production method for extracting more ‘sweet’ juice from his collaborators? The authors were also concerned with Švankmajer’s fabled withdrawnness as he mostly rejected any form of self-presentation. But they were surprised that he actually let them into significantly deep layers and intimate lobes of his personality and life.

The film, which in no particular order uncovers Švankmajer’s thoughts and work, doesn’t aim to be a mere summarising documentary, but first and foremost a vivid, lively, imaginative and playful situational film. It shows that world-class cinema can be done ‘at home’ and that an authentic experience from a magical world can triumph… even over death.

An episode of the successful series about hungry bears, co-directed by Kateřina Karhánková and designed by Filip Pošivač. The bears have a heap of dishes to wash, but none of them wants to do it. They ask a raccoon who’s good at washing to help them. But it turns out that washing the dishes quickly is not as easy as it would seem.

A foppish sheep takes care of her wool with too much ardour: she soaks, washes, shampoos and dries it. But enough is enough. And as this short morality tale with a pleasantly naïve artistic style proves, one’s desire for perfection can go awry. The result is the exact opposite of what one is trying to achieve.

Swimming Pool is one of the most successful Czech student films of its time; it has been screened at a number of festivals. The story begins after sundown. The swimming pool is closed and empty until two loners decide to have a swim. The director has prepared an unexpected punch line.

Mythopolis follows up on the author’s previous successful film, Swimming Pool, and stays in the world of characters from Greek mythology. We will see the heroes of her previous film as well, but the film revolves around the everyday troubles of Medusa – a single mother – and her offspring. Lots of humorously stylised legendary creatures living their ‘ordinary’ lives in Mythopolis also appear.

Another episode of the successful and acclaimed series about hungry bears, popular with children. The weather forecast talks of snow, so it’s high time to prepare for hibernation. But the bears are intrigued by information about meringue kisses and other delicacies made of snow, so they decide to wait for the snowfall.

This humorous and playful film is a remarkable parable on human relationships. But in this film, a man isn’t trying to solve problems with a woman, but with a troublesome home appliance. Eventually, emotions and hormones steer this minimalist and artistically inventive home drama in an unexpected direction leading to a surprising end.

Bikes, Beasts and Washing Machines is a showcase of different animation techniques through which filmmakers from Croatia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia present us with a unique worldview. From stop-motion to 3D animation, the selection includes 10 short films that tell different and interesting stories, some of them with a humorous touch, others discussing hot topics that we are all confronting in our daily lives.

This programme is an invitation to sit back, relax and enjoy quality filmmaking, but also to reflect and discuss the films further, be it with cinephile friends or with professionals in the field.

The selection was curated by Mihai Mitrică as part of the CEE Animation Festivals Network’s joint activities.

Cockpera
Director: Kata Gugić, Croatia, 2020, 4 min

Washing Machine
Director: Alexandra Májová, Czech Republic, 2020, 5 min

Nighthawk
Director: Špela Čadež, Slovenia, 2016, 9 min

Somewhere / Ceva
Director: Paul Mureșan, Romania, 2018, 9 min

Farewell
Director: Leon Vidmar, Slovenia, 2016, 6 min

Wild Beasts
Directors: Marta Prokopová, Michal Blaško, Slovakia, 2019, 9 min

The Blissful Accidental Death
Director: Sergiu Negulici, Romania, 2016, 15 min

Cyclists
Director: Veljko Popovic, Croatia, 2018, 7 min

Yellow
Director: Ivana Šebestová, Slovakia, 2017, 7 min

Daughter
Director: Daria Kashcheeva, Czech Republic, 2019, 15 min

Once upon a time, there was a nursery of raccoons who loved their peace and quiet even though there were some scuffles now and then. But they were essentially peaceful creatures who, according to Japanese folklore, possessed magical powers (just like foxes). But once their home found itself in danger from the pervasive diggers and bulldozers of construction companies, they realised that something had to be done and decided to finally fully utilise their almost forgotten powers.

The simple plot of this layered film by Isao Takahata of the renowned Studio Ghibli, known for his war drama Grave of the Fireflies, is seemingly a spectacle for children. But thanks to its imaginativeness, inventiveness and in particular, a wide range of complex themes, the film will appeal to grown-up audiences. Not only the methods used by the raccoons to discourage humans from destroying their homes, but also the reactions of their adversaries and the increasing disunity of the raccoon society regarding their next move are remarkable. In his superbly animated film, Takahata doesn’t explore merely the frictions between what we perceive as nature and civilisation, but also asks deeper questions regarding human (or raccoon) souls and the possibilities of change for an individual or an entire society. These are questions which have the utmost importance in our time, burdened by an environmental crisis.

Many films combine animation with live action. But not many filmmakers have had to work with something as fast and elusive as Sonic the Hedgehog. This superfast blue hedgehog is, incidentally, one of the biggest legends in the world of video games. In this case, he has popped out of his video game into this film in order to fight a real villain. But the only appropriate film starring the crazy, superfast and alien hedgehog is a comedy in which our hero uses his supersonic speed to flee from his tireless pursuer, Dr Robotnik.

Sonic the Hedgehog would trade his ability to run faster than anyone else in the world (in any world that he currently finds himself in) for a real friend, in a heartbeat. He sometimes leaves his secluded shelter in the woods and visits a kind-hearted, small-town sheriff named Tom, but that doesn’t count because he doesn’t even notice Sonic, who’s careful not to leave any trace of his presence as he knows that they would instantly go after him. Who is ‘they’? Everyone! But even the most careful hedgehog can slip up. In this case, his slip-up causes a large-scale power outage across the US. To investigate the cause of this colossal outage, the clueless and unsettled government enlists the services of its most competent genius, a slightly crazy scientist who goes by the name Dr. Robotnik. Soon enough, he catches Sonic’s scent. Sonic suddenly finds out that not even his quick feet are enough to escape, especially when he loses the magic rings enabling him to travel between worlds. The only one who knows where they are is his ‘buddy’ Sheriff Tom, who doesn’t actually rush to save an alien hedgehog from the ingenious Dr. Robotnik. But as a real lawman, he realises that he needs to protect those in need and that’s when things start happening.

(moulds – teeth – cheeses)

Our Midnight Animation block has a secure spot in the Anifilm programme. Each year, there are many films whose authors use many ways to passionately explore what animated film and its viewers can stomach. This year is no different – we have picked nine such films for you.

Midnight Animation classics include not just traditional (Arachnarche) and psychological (The Expected) horrors, but also ‘yuckies’ for hard-boiled viewers (Subsoil, The Tale of the Green Cheese, Touch), ‘nasties’ for shockproof viewers (Thank You for Your Teeth!) and last but not least also unclassifiable ‘wackies’ which are represented this year by a parodic and absurd Naked juice commercial (Fruit).

Several of the aforementioned labels can be applied to the 20-minute-long ambitious and disturbing film Night Bus, in which several passengers’ ride on the last daytime bus turns into a fight for their very survival.

Arachnarche
Director: Emma Jordan, United Kingdom, 2020, 4 min

The Tale of the Green Cheese
Director: Noah Erni, Switzerland, 2020, 5 min 

The Expected
Director: Carolina Sandvik, Sweden, 2020, 14 min

Touch
Director: Sofja Gorelova, Estonia, 2020, 4 min

Fruit
Director: Ivan Li, Canada, 2020, 4 min

Subsoil
Director: Erica Maradona, Otto Guerra, Brazil, 2020, 8 min

Thank You for Your Teeth!
Director: George ve Ganaeaard, Horia Cucută, Romania, 2020, 3 min 

The Surrogate
Director: Stas Santimov, Ukraine, 2020, 6 min 

Night Bus / 夜車
Director: Joe Hsieh, Taiwan, 2020, 20 min 

This charmingly poetic family film is an adaptation of a book of the same name by Tereza Horváthová and its playful artistic style is based on original illustrations by Juraj Horváth. It is also the feature debut of director Petr Oukropec.

The story revolves around a somewhat forgotten but still magical botanical garden hidden in a buzzing city. Together with their quirky parents and a talking parrot, two friends named Johanka and Matyáš lead a carefree life among the plants. But when the city’s ambitious mayor decides to demolish the garden and build a brand new district in its stead, a mysterious blue tiger appears directly on a crossroads. With the help of the tiger, the children try to save their unique world. In their film, the authors have organically combined live-action and animation and used several animation techniques – traditional animation, cut-out animation and CGI.

The film’s strong points lie in its nostalgic atmosphere, an impossible-to-capture magic of a forgotten world where time stands still, supported by interestingly selected and shot real locations. The performances of the child actors are also praiseworthy. The environmental message of Blue Tiger also resonates with the theme of the festival’s accompanying programme, Planet A.

The first of two films focusing on the relationships among South Asian LGBTQ people living in Britain. Kate Jessop uses her favourite animation technique of collage and an expressive soundtrack to portray the situation of a young lesbian mother struggling with the disapproval or her own father, her child’s grandfather. 

The second film about the relationships among South Asian LGBTQ people living in Britain tells the story of a young Indian who hates everything Indian, from food to Bollywood films. But as we find out in this cleverly built film about first love, even his aversion has limits.

Alan Turing, Audre Lorde, Keith Haring and Debbie Smith: those are just some of the important queer personalities celebrated by this project directed by Kate Jessop. Along with several graphic artists and animators, she recounts their lives and contributions with David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ playing in the background.

An ordinary boring evening in the house of a typical British family who may have as well been sitting in a Czech living room. The daughter is preparing to announce some important news to her parents, but her nosy mother doesn’t let her speak. But at the end of the day, it’s not just the parents who hear an important revelation. In this comedic series, Kate Jessop uses a combination of live action and animation. 

In another episode of her comedic series about ordinary queer people and their everyday troubles, Kate Jessop takes on nuisances widespread inside the community. How will a date between two girls go when they start arguing who’s queerer?

A poem by Richard Scott delves deep inside the feelings of a man coming to terms with his sexuality and confronting his bully in his home neighbourhood of Merton (London). The poem’s rhythm is accompanied by imaginative visuals created by the director herself using her typical collages.

There’s no need to introduce the famous fashion designers Dolce & Gabbana. In this film, Kate Jessop took a letter by Stefano Gabbana to his partner Domenico and animated it to make an emotional testimony about great love accessible to a broad audience.

While the first film was dedicated to important queer personalities of the past, this one, once again made with the help of many animators and graphic artists, praises contemporary heroes of the queer minority such as theorist Judith Butler, director Gregg Araki, singer Frank Ocean and comic book author Alison Bechdel.

When a girl comes home from school, her mother serves ‘Chinese’ soup. This routine and unappetising dinner turns into a thrilling story revealing the life hidden underneath the package. This fresh student miniature exploring creative childhood fantasy is superbly animated and some of its details allude to certain social issues.

A short music video for a song by the alternative band Květy from Brno, starring spring onions and various bears made using various animation techniques.

A gang of wild forest chairs take a naïve tourist (played by Pavol Seriš) by surprise. This film, made at the pixilation workshop of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague + Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno, held in Poněšice masterfully animates the malicious furniture out in the open.

The kitchen of a forgetful grandma comes to life when she is not around. Saltshaker, Sugarbowl and the rest are set to fix what she's accidentally forgotten. Will their plans be foiled by the feared rapper Tartar, hiding in the fridge? The pilot for a never realised series.

A family gathers at the table to enjoy the Christmas stollen, but nothing goes according to plan. Within limited time and space, this film works excellently well with stop-motion animation as well as live actors (including a child) who are confronted with the ‘disintegration’ of their Christmas peace in quick cuts. 

An observer who clears his mind and restricts his resources to work only with time and motion in space can find pixilation rapture; what’s more, if he connects to the wave, his journey will consume him in his entirety. Everything plays a part – the waving of the grass, clouds, hills and valley, sunlight and ourselves. A non-narrative pixilation of the Czech landscape.

A collection of audio-visual haiku poems. Stop-motion poetry, oscillating between animation, documentary and experiment. Transforming the structure of haiku poetry based on 5-7-5 syllables into an audio-visual form using a 5-7-5 second shot structure. The author made the film during a two-month art residency in Japan and uses typical local motifs, which he often puts in unusual contexts.

Tireless experimenter Vojtěch Domlátil, who focuses on nature and movement through the landscape, presents this black-and-white (or rather white-and-black) morning impression that he likes to call ‘a breathing meditation in the form of a fully linear animation’. We watch undefined and minimalist, yet familiar spectacles accompanied by everyday morning sounds.

A secluded house in the countryside. Inside? A family cocktail of love, care, shared history and all kinds of gadgets and unfinished things. Or a space for living out the rest of one’s life peacefully. This simple documentary stop-motion animation pays tribute to the author’s parents and the things they left here. The director finds life and a special kind of beauty in them.

With the festival’s relocation to Liberec, Anifilm decided that each year, it will present the work of an artist who was born in Liberec. This year, we screen a selection of works by director and graphic artist Michal Žabka. He studied at the Vocational Film College in Zlín and at FAMU. Even in his student films Baballon and Premammals, he proved to be an original graphic artist, a quirky narrator of unusual stories and an excellent puppet animator. In 2016, he finished Břetislav Pojar’s puppet project Christmas Ballad. We will also screen his puppet film Mrs. G and his sequence from the feature project Car Fairy Tales titled The Accountant and the Fairy. In his short and feature films (as well as television series and various commissions) Žabka likes to test various animation techniques. He’s been shifting his focus gradually toward young audiences. His television work is represented in our selection by an episode from the series Annie and Joey based on the popular comic series of the same name by Lucie Lomová.

Baballon
Czech Republic, 1999, 5 min

The Premammals
Czech Republic, 2001, 10 min

Mrs. G
Czech Republic, 2007, 13 min

Car Fairy Tales: The Accountant and the Fairy
Czech Republic, 2011, 20 min

Click!
Czech Republic, 2014, 1 min

Christmas Ballad
Czech Republic, 2016, 12 min

Annie and Joey: Scandal in the Town
Czech Republic, 2017, 13 min

This ambitious and artistically mesmerising film is set in the spring of 1937 in the nostalgic atmosphere of a seaside town. The director depicts a single tragic event from the perspective of four different women. In this unusual concept, their stories intertwine and all four of them – a pilot, a postwoman, a shop assistant and a singer – are involved in the tragedy.

At the start of hunting season, the forest animals try to get to safety. They board a bus and try to get away. Their fear turns into panic when the bus is stopped by hunters in the middle of the night who are searching for the animals whose fur is the most valuable. This metaphorical story about totality and refugeeism builds on the cold atmosphere of an autumn forest.

A woman is waiting for her loved one who is climbing distant mountains looking for the perfect, intact snowflake. On his journey the man battles with the elements. But do the perfect snowflake and the man looking for it really exist? The author deploys the unmistakable, stylised art of cut-out animation known from her earlier successful film, Four.

A young violinist is on his way to play the solo of his life with the philharmonic of an imaginary city named Fongopolis. But first, he has to find his bearings in the city’s intricately designed train station and catch his train. The overcrowded station turns into a dark labyrinth before his eyes. This collage film boasts a Kafkaesque oppressive atmosphere.

This metaphorical and artistically refined film follows an opera singer named Viola who is suffering from a strange phobia – she can’t stand anything yellow, bright or cheerful and finds peace only in darkness. But a hot summer presents a number of obstacles for her. The film is characterised by the author’s unique artistic style.

What makes a human… human? Pixar Animation Studios present their latest feature film, Soul, starring a high school music teacher named Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) who is offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play in a legendary jazz club. But one step in the wrong direction takes him from the streets of New York into the ‘Great Before’, a fantastic place where newly born souls are prepared for life on Earth and acquire character traits, habits and vices. But Joe desperately clings to life and so he joins forces with soul number 22 (voiced by Tina Fey), who doesn’t understand what makes human life so special. As Joe tries to explain what makes it so unique, he finds answers to the question he asked himself countless times.

Soul won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Its score is naturally a very important part of the film – in addition to composer Jon Batiste, the music was composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, known as members of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails.

In animation, ecology and environmental protection can take various forms. Such topics are particularly interesting in original ‘midnight’ films in which nothing is considered too extreme and environmental stories are often turned inside out and spiced with irony, parody and absurdity. A popular technique switches the roles of victim and aggressor. What if nature deliberately killed people like in the film End of Public Road? Or what if animals had an opulent feast with a human roast like in L'ère bête, an example of extraordinary 3D animation? And what would it look like if women were used for industrial milk production instead of cows (MILK)? You’ll also find out what people could look like in the future if our way of life doesn’t change; what happens behind the closed door of a henhouse (Cockpera); and what a goat thinks about the current situation (Capra Cooked Wild). The horror film Chicken of the Dead and the artistically quirky film Eatself are other representatives of ‘chicken’ films and Thin Ice is a perfect example of a parody.

The recently completed film Martin and the Magical Forest takes the viewers into a magical world of forest creatures. It takes place at a summer camp and reveals the true secrets of the forests. Because when we’re not looking, the forests swarm with creatures of various shapes and forms. ‘The forests are more alive than we think. If you stumble over a stump or when a cone falls on your head, it’s not an accident or a playful squirrel. It’s them showing us that we’ve entered their home,’ says director Petr Oukropec.

The human hero of the film is a city boy named Martin nicknamed Mazel. He’s not that much into nature, he prefers his phone and to spend his nights in a tent at a summer camp wasn’t his idea. But it’s Martin who discovers the mysterious forest creatures and makes a pact with them. At first, they help him win a camp game, but eventually they have a much more important and challenging task to take upon themselves. The live-action film written by Kateřina Kačerovská includes extensive SFX scenes starring grass gnomes, a flying salmonberry witch, various flowers, families of assault cones, several original branchers and mossies and – inspired by the legendary Ents – also living trees. Some of them are merry while others may be dangerous. When designing these creatures, their authors combined modern CGI and animation with partial puppets made with natural materials.

Somewhere in the Universe, Planet Z. A miracle happens. A water jet springs up and gives birth to a new life: plants. A desert planet becomes a green planet. Different species cohabit: liquid and sticky mushrooms. But little by little, they invade the green land, and destroy the idyllic life.

Five testimonies of an apocalyptic and surreal event. This documentary film takes us to Ishinomaki, a city north of Tokyo, which was devastated by the tsunami in March 2011. A year after the event, the director spent several days in the city capturing the lives of its inhabitants.

In PLANET ∑, giant creatures are trapped inside the ice. Submarine explosions provoke global warming, and a new life begins for the animals. The third installment of the director’s provisional tetralogy won an award at Berlinale.

This series of short videos in which director Momoko Seto uses seafood to play with porn stereotypes starts with a romance between an octopus and a red fish, titled A Wednesday Afternoon in a Hotel.

The intensity of sexual intercourse of two oysters is underscored by a vigorous soundtrack. This stop-motion porn from a series of four short films exploring the same topic is titled A Monday Night in the Bathroom.

Sometimes the title says it all. That is the case of this short sneak peek into the secret life of prawns. There are nine of them and they definitely don’t spend Saturday night watching TV.

The last submarine ‘porn’ by Momoko Sato also stars a prawn. She experiences a very short but intense moment of passion with a young man. This surreal closing film of the programme is titled A Tuesday Morning on Your Bed.

This medium-length film is a curiosity in our programme focusing on animated films with environmental themes. Its message is: ‘how much longer can humans foul their own nest and ignore the consequences?’ Its delivery is rather straightforward as the film is a sort of lecture by Dr. Fred H. Knelman, Professor of Science and Human Affairs at Montreal’s Concordia University, whose words are interspersed with animated sequences. Knelman’s lecture might seem humorous and some of his remarks are naturally conditioned by the geopolitical situation of the time the lecture was given but – and we have to say unfortunately – some of them are still valid. We are, of course, interested in the animated parts. They were created thanks to the unique partnership of two prominent animation studios – the National Film Board of Canada and the former Yugoslavian Zagreb Film. The resulting superbly animated sequences significantly help to transmit the film’s warning with unflagging humour, imagination, movement and design. In addition to renowned Croatian animators Dušan Vukotić and Nedeljko Dragić, you can see the surprising name of American filmmaker Chuck Jones in the closing credits.

Two feature films and a selection of short films by the legendary Slovak director Viktor Kubal have been digitally restored by the Slovak Film Institute. This collection subsequently competed at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, the festival of restored and archival films. Anifilm will screen the iconic feature film Brigand Jurko from this collection.

Kubal was inspired by the legend of Slovak highwayman Juraj Jánošík and filmed new adventures of this hero. Legend has it that Jánošík ‘robbed the rich and gave the loot to the poor’ and Kubal, who’s known the legend since he was a child, looked at it from a different perspective. ‘Back then, there was only one textbook and one local history and Jánošík was everywhere. On top of that, I spent several years in school in my aunt’s village of Terchová and then I would spend my summer holidays there. There was nothing that would stick in my memory as much as the stories and tales about this hero who was born in Terchová,’ explained Kubal, who started working on Brigand Jurko in 1974. The visual form of the film is characterised by his caricature-like artistic style, which is the foundation of his humour (Kubal is one of the founders of modern caricature). Brigand Jurko is an original and ambitious film made using simple, accessible yet thorough animation. However dramatic, romantic and slightly pathetic it may seem, humour always prevails.

Viktor Kubal (1923–1997) was not only the founder of Slovak animated film, but starting in the mid-1960s, its leading figure. He was a prolific filmmaker who made almost four hundred animated films (short, television and feature films) and was known for his incredible versatility – in his films, he often took care of the script, graphic design, animation, editing and cinematography.

Martin tried to fight the system, and now he's on the run. Sara is a conceptual artist. Together they join a revolutionary commune in the countryside. The police are on their trail. Inspector Ambroz knows the right questions are more important than the answers. Because maybe none of this is true. 

This captivating experimental and visually refined film with a retro style skilfully uses period graphics and symbols as well as archival or found footage ‘for its own purposes’. The film, requiring a daring audience, is one of the films that are no longer made today, and regular audiences have no chance of finding out that such films exist. A revelation in contemporary animation.

The Los Angeles Times described the film as ‘A surrealist noir film resembling the retro futurism of Alphaville’ and Variety as ‘vibrant and alive in a way that few films falling under the wide umbrella of animation even attempt to be’.

It’s Christmas time and the streets of Tokyo, illuminated by commercials featuring happy families with children, are swarming with people. But Hana, Gin and Miyuki can only dream about the ideal life seen in the commercials. After all, they’re not even related. They’re homeless and it’s their dismal lives that have brought them together, so their ‘family’ is built on something other than genetic kinship. Together, they experience a real Christmas miracle when they find an abandoned newborn in a dumpster. And so begins an extraordinary comical story (despite the film’s theme) of the trans-gender woman Hana longing for a family, the loser Gino, who has alienated his own family, and the young girl Miyuki, who ran away from hers. Despite their different points of view, they eventually decide to find the baby’s parents. This unusually narrated film was made by the late Satoshi Kon and it’s one of his films in which heated and crazy situations play a part equally important to coincidence, which often reveals more details about the three main characters, their troubled past and prospects of a better future. Anifilm screens the film with the latest redacted version of the English dubbing (with Czech subtitles). It was created by the company GKIDS with extra emphasis on the language and factual accuracy of the reality of the trans character Hana, voiced by American transgender actress and activist Shakina Nayfack, while her nightclub patron is voiced by dramatist and gender theorist Kate Bornstein.

Wacky, hard-to-grasp, utterly disgusting and more or less perverted stories aren’t limited to just short films. Particularly in recent years, attempts to find out what viewers can stomach can also be seen in feature films. The authors of the Korean film Beauty Water describe their film as ‘the most grotesque horror film of all time’. It was screened in Annecy, and despite its scruffiness, it explores a serious topic.

The film’s plump and unattractive heroine, Ye-Ji, sees a beauty product called ‘Beauty Water’ online and finds out that the journey to find beauty can lead straight to hell. The product is promoted by a woman who shows on a video that when you use Beauty Water, your face will become beautiful. Ye-Ji is hell-bent on doing anything for good looks but when a serial killer suddenly appears, she finds that the more she desires to be beautiful, the more her life is in danger.

This strikingly relevant and visually lively film explores plastic surgery in order to show where a perverted desire for good looks can lead. The film will overload the viewers with fidgety and restless images, disturbing stimuli and dismal sounds accompanied by an atypical and alarming horror story.