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 a festival with 9 sections and a rich programme of retrospectives and additional screenings, workshops and events, co-produced by the 2 Reels - Association for Reanimation of Storytelling and Kinodvor Cinema. It takes place annually at the Kinodvor Cinema and at the Slovenian Cinematheque in Ljubljana during the second week of December.

Festival sections

Among Animateka International Animated Film Festival's 9 sections, 2 are competitive: the Competition Programme and the Elephant in Competition. The remaining sections – Elephant, Eastern and Central European Panorama, European Student Panorama, Animated Feature Film, Jury Programme, Best of the Rest, a Special Programme which usually includes two sub-sections (Regional Focus, Retrospectives, Overviews, etc.) – offer a diverse and all-encompassing look at the breadth of contemporary animated films.

The Competition Programme's focus on contemporary animated film production from Central and Eastern European countries garners Animateka a great deal of attention in the larger international context, despite the proximity of the much older and bigger Animafest Zagreb which takes place in neighbouring Croatia.

In 2009 the festival introduced the second competition section, the Elephant in Competition which focuses on animated film production meant for young audiences and attracts huge international attention. A non-competition section Elephant has been the most popular among the Animateka audience – it brings a carefully selected educational animated film programme meant for schools and families with children.

The Eastern and Central European Panorama presents an additional programme of Central and Eastern European animated films, while the European Student Panorama features films from European film schools and art academies. In 2009 films from Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, and Switzerland were screened. In addition the Animateka 2009 presented a programme of the MOME Budapest animation school.

Animated Feature Film is a special section dedicated to feature length animated films. Some of those are later included in the Slovene Art Cinema Network's distribution.

The Jury Programme section is one of the great peculiarities of the 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 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.

Special Programmes is the most extensive festival section with several subsections: 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 Stop-Motion Retrospective in 2009, or 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.

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 is able to confer a Special Mention to another film of his or her choice from the Competition Programme. The films Four [Štyri] by Ivana Šebestova, NightStill by Elke Groen, Homeland by Juan de Dios Marfil Atienze, Crocodile by Kaspar Jancis have been among the winners of the Animateka Grand Prix.

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.

In 2009, for the second year, the Animateka festival programme also included a special contest for web and mobile device based animations called AnimaWeb.

Accompanying programme

Animateka festival also brings an abundant accompanying programme. It includes puppet performances, concerts (such as the Katalena Animated audio-visual concert), workshops of animation (for example, a stop-motion workshop in co-operation with Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts), exhibitions of animation related drawings (in 2009 by Katja Tukiainen, Špela Čadež, sometimes also in cooperation and on the premises of the International Centre of Graphic Arts).

As Animateka hosts many authors of the films in competition as well as other guests (around 60 guests in the 2009 edition), public talks, working breakfasts or midnight gatherings are organised at Kinodvor Café.

External links

Animateka International Animated Film Festival

Contents

Festival sections

Festival awards and contests

Accompanying programme

See also

External links

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