Animateka International Animated Film Festival

Animateka International Animated Film Festival is a specialised competitive festival which focuses on Central and East European animated film production. Although formally established in 2004, its roots go back 6 years earlier to when the Slovenian Cinematheque introduced a special monthly programme focusing on animated film. Today Animateka is co-produced by the 2 Reels - Association for Reanimation of Storytelling and Kinodvor Cinema. The annual festival takes place at the Kinodvor Cinema and at the Slovenian Cinematheque in Ljubljana during the second week of December.

Festival sections

The Animateka International Animated Film Festival has 9 sections, 2 of which are competitive. The main festival section, the Competition Programme, focuses on contemporary animated film production from Central and Eastern European countries. This fact garners Animateka a great deal of attention in the larger international context although the much older and bigger Animafest Zagreb takes place in neighbouring Croatia. The second competitive section, the Elephant in Competition, attracts even greater international attention. A previously existing section which became competitive with the 2009 edition of the festival, the popular Elephant in Competition section focuses on animated film production meant for young audiences.

The Eastern and Central European Panorama section is an extension of the main competitive section as it broadens its overview on Central and Eastern European animated film production. With its European Student Panorama section Animateka festival gives a special focus also to the animated film production by European film schools and art academies. As its name suggests, the Best of the Rest section presents a carefully selected programme from other parts of the world, bringing the attention to well-known directors and awarded films. The Jury Programme section is one of the great peculiarities of the Animateka festival: each member of the main international jury is given the possibility to direct the attention of the audience to a certain director or to a certain tendency in the past or to contemporary animated film production. In the past years the Animateka festival screened several amazing personal retrospectives including ones of Koji Yamamura, Georges Schwizgebel, and Osvaldo Cavandoli, respectively.

The most extensive festival section is the Special Programme section as it incorporates several subsections. Those subsections are usually retrospectives, overviews of certain national animated film productions, or festival programmes, regional focuses, etc. In the past years there were some excellent programmes such as a retrospective on Stop-Motion, focuses on Polish, Basque, Norwegian, Canadian, Yugoslav, and Finnish animated film production, and a special programme on animated films linked to the topic of human rights.

A special section is dedicated also to feature length animated films. Some of those films are later included in the Slovene Art Cinema Network's distribution. The final section of Animateka festival's programme is also one of the most popular among the audience – this is the the Elephant section which brings a carefully selected educational animated film programme meant for schools and families with children.

Each year's Animateka festival also brings a rich and diverse Accompanying Programme. It includes puppet shows, exhibitions, concerts, workshops, and meetings between artists, scholars, festival curators, and the audience.

Festival awards and contests

Each year an international 5-member-jury, composed of artists, festival curators and/or scholars confers the main festival award and five special mentions (one from each member). The main festival award, the Animateka Grand Prix, goes to one or two selected works from the Competition Programme, whilst each member of the jury has also got the right to confer the Special Mention to another film of his or her choice from the Competition Programme. Among the winners of the Animateka Grand Prix were the films Four [Štyri] by Ivana Šebestova, NightStill by Elke Groen, Homeland by Juan de Dios Marfil Atienze, Crocodile by Kaspar Jancis.

The jury composed of selected representatives from the audience bestows the Maestro Audience Award (to any film from the whole festival programme), while the children’s jury grants the NLB Vita Award for the selected work from the Elephant Children's programme. Recent winners of these two awards include the films Log Jam: The Snake by Alexei Alexev, Vasilisa by Darina Shmidt, Tôt ou tard by Jadwiga Kowalska, Land of the Heads by Céderic Louis and Claude Barras.

For the second year the Animateka festival programme has also included a special contest for web and mobile device based animations called AnimaWeb.

External links

Animateka International Animated Film Festival website

Animafest festival website

AnimaWeb contest website

Animateka International Animated Film Festival

Contents

Festival sections

Festival awards and contests

See also

External links

Operated by

Financed by