ANIMATION

An Overview

In the 1970s and 80s the Zagreb festival was essential in the making of the international animation scene. The festival celebrated its 30th anniversary this year with an impressive list of films and international guests. Scandinavian approach of the program director could be seen in the program of Norwegian animation and the programmed retrospective of Swedish animation pioneer Victor Bergdahl which, unfortunately, wasn’t realized because the Bergdahl films didn’t arrive in Zagreb. Other programs focused on Bosnian, Japanese and Canadian animation. Polish animator Piotr Dumala was honoured with a retrospective of his work and a special program was devoted to the early history of Zagreb animation with films from the Duga film company from 1951 and 1952. This year Life Achievement Award went to Dutch-Canadian Paul Driessen who since the late 1960s has been an internationally acclaimed director, animator and teacher on the international animation scene. In addition, Driessen also made the opening film of the main competition and his Elbowing (1979) was among the 11 films competing as ’The Best of the Best’ — prior to the festival the animation world had voted for ’the best animated film ever’. The feature film Allegro non troppo by Bruno Bozzetto and 10 shorts from Alexander Petrov, Nick Park, Nedeljko Dragic, Joanna Quinn, Frederic Back, Zdenko Gasparovic, Yuri Norstein, The Quay Brothers, Caroline Leaf and Paul Driessen were shown in a special program. The newly established award for special contribution to the theory of animation went to Giannalberto Bendazzi, a distinguished animation critic and historian since the 1970s. A special competition was set up for the many student films that are produced at animation schools worldwide. A most welcome surprise in the student competition was South Korea. The Selection committee gave their award for the best animation schools to the Kaywon School of Art and Design which had two films in the main competition. The audience prize went to Kunjy Chen from Royal College of Art in London for Subida.
The big theme of every film festival on the last evening are the results of the jury’s work. It’s very hard to compare and chose between films like Father and Daughter by Michael Dudok de Wit and Jerzy Kucia’s Tuning Instruments as the target audience for the films are quite different. While Dudok de Wit appeals to a wide general audience, Kucia is clearly an arthouse filmmaker. To give the Grand Prix to Dudok the Wit’s Father and Daughter was a safe audience-pleasing choice. Tuning Instruments was one of the five winners of award for ’outstanding quality at Jury’s discretion’. The other 4 were all animated cartoons as the Grand Prix winner: Still Life with Animated Dogs by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, Bookashky by Mikhail Aldashin an Flux by Chris Hinton. Aldashin also won the audience award while Hinton won the awards given by the Vecernji newspaper and the Design Studies. The fifth special award was with huge response given to omnipresent Paul Driessen for The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg for ’the clarity of visual narration, the fluidity of animation, and the quality of soundtrack’. The student prize went to the Russian Stepan Birjukov for Neighbours while the Zlatko Grgic award for best debut work went to Australian TV commercial director Neil Goodridge for the 2D-computerfilm Pa. The Mexican claymation Hasta los huesos shared the audience prize with Aldashin. This refreshing and fascinating film inspired by the art of Jose Guadalupe Posada and the Mexican tradition of celebrating death, was a clear favourite by the Zagreb audience. Since the beginning of the Zagreb festival, this biannual event has been essential in the building of the international animation scene. The festival of 2002 proves that Zagreb is among those that best continue this proud tradition.

Gunnar Stroem