Animator International Animated Film Festival
The Best of Animator 2020/21 Festival (Poznań, Poland): In the Multiverse of Everyday Life
Friday, 1. 10. 2021 / 11.00 / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
The International Animated Film Festival ANIMATOR is Poland’s biggest festival of animated film. Its first edition took place in 2008 as a culminating point of the celebrations commemorating the sixty years of Polish animation. Over three hundred productions from all over the world are screened during each edition of the Festival, including retrospectives, reviews, premieres or rarely shown works of animation pioneers. So far, the Festival guests have been such eminent global animation artists as Mariola Brillowska, Andrzej Chrzanowski, John R. Dilworth, David Ehrlich, Eric Goldberg, Yoram Gross, Emily Hubley, Igor Kovalyov, Bady Minck, Michel Ocelot, the Quay Brothers, Bill Plympton, Gerald Potterton, Zbigniew Rybczyński and Raoul Servais and major Polish animation masters: Witold Giersz, Jerzy Kucia, Mariusz Wilczyński, Piotr Dumała, Kazimierz Urbański. ANIMATOR has also been frequented by representatives of Polish animation studios and film institutions, animation historians and initiators of other festivals devoted to animation held both in Poland and abroad.
Total runtime: 68'
Ties / Uzi
Dina Velikovskaya (SMPL)
2019, GER, 7’35”
There is a strong connection between parents and their child. A young woman leaves the parental home to see the world. But the world of her parents is so tightly connected with her that by leaving, she puts it at risk. It turns out that this connection can be also destructive.
Dina Velikovskaya
Dina Velikovskaya (Moscow, 1984) is an animation filmmaker. After graduating in animation from the Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK) in 2011, she continued her studies at the High Animation School-Studio SHAR (Moscow). During that time, she made two films that brought her international recognition: My Strange Grandfather (2011) and About a Mother (2015). Her film Kukuschka (2016) has been screened worldwide, receiving many awards and nominations. In 2018, she became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Prince in the Pastry Shop / Książę w cukierni
Katarzyna Agopsowicz (EGoFILM)
2020, POL, 16'
It is a seemingly humorous story about happiness. Because with happiness there are only troubles, says the Not-So-Little Prince, and he multiplies the examples of these troubles.
Katarzyna Agopsowicz
The scriptwriter and the director of animated films. A graduate of the Faculty of Graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In 2005, she graduated Animated Film Studies where she worked under the supervision of Professor Jerzy Kucia. For her diploma film "Tomorrow", she received, among others, the main prize at the Koszalin Festival of Film Debuts "Young and Film". She has collaborated with many filmmakers in the production of films, including as director's assistant and animator on the film "Fugue for Cello, Trumpet and Landscape" by Jerzy Kucia. Scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, the President of the City of Krakow and the Polish Filmmakers Association. Member of the Polish Filmmakers Association and the International Association of Animated Film Makers ASIFA.
Silent Tales / Storie Zitte
Simone Angelini
2020, ITA, 4'35"
A series of short and atmospheric motion comics that leave you with a mysterious laugh. And a cat and an alien, a tyrannosaurus and a sleeping man.
Simone Angelini
Simone Angelini (Chieti, 1980) is an Italian cartoonist, illustrator and animator. Co-creator and designer of the well-known italian comicbook Anubi, he collaborates with Italian and foreign publishing houses, communication agencies, magazines, trade fairs and festivals, also dedicating himself to an experimental self-production that embraces comics, illustration and animation.
Push This Button, if You Begin to Panic
Gabriel Böhmer (Rational Vagabund Films)
2020, UK, 13'
Bartholomew Whisper went to the doctor today. There he met administrators keen on experimental surgery, and lonely MRI machines.
Gabriel Böhmer
Gabriel Böhmer is a UK based artist from Zurich, interested in memory and the absurd. His practice often focuses on passing ideas that arise in mundane moments, but also feel momentous in their own way. Gabriel left a career in management consulting in 2013, following the release of his novel Beetle Days. In 2015 Gabriel published the book of paintings Tomorrow I’ll Go Outside, and in 2017 he began animating his painted stories. His films have received recognition at Winterthur, Fantoche, and Clermont-Ferrand, among others. Filmography: Push This Button if You Begin to Panic – 2020 – short, The Flood Is Coming – 2018 – short, Beetle Trouble – 2017 – short.
Five Minutes Older / Pięć minut starsza
Sara Szymańska (PWSFTviT)
2020, POL, 5'57"
Twin sisters take a trip to spend a lazy summer evening together by the lake. Their bond is so close that there is no telling where one ends and the other begins.
Sara Szymańska
As a self-taught artist, Sara has always looked at drawing as a very intuitive medium: the pencil helped her decompose the world into different matter, from which she got drawn to values she admired: care, tenderness, love, feelings perhaps influenced by her close relationship with her twin sister. Her passion towards tender observation always brought her to unexpected places. She spent some time alone in Israel and Vietnam, isolating herself completely into the foreign and unknown. Currently, she is translating her aesthetics mainly into photography and animated film, which gives the freedom of unlimited artistic expression, and teaches interspersion of artistic forms. She is an animation student at the National Film School in Lodz.
Empty Room
Jakub Baniak
2020, POL, 15'30"
Exploring humans’ relationship with their environment, the film shows the illusory nature of freedom and the consequences of our choices.
Jakub Baniak
Author of short animated films, deals with motion design, film and editing. In his animations, he looks for alternative narrative methods, using both traditional techniques and new digital media - including VR, photogrammetry and motion capture. He graduated from the Faculty of Animation at the University of the Arts in Poznan, where he is currently working as an assistant in the Drawing Animation Studio.
Something to Remember / Något att minnas
Niki Lindroth von Bahr (Malade, Sveriges Television)
2019, SWE, 5’00”
A lullaby before the great disaster. Two pigeons visit a zoo without animals, a snail measures his blood pressure at the doctor, in the CERN laboratory something has gone terribly wrong. Six moments from our age, like memories of the world we leave behind.
Niki Lindroth Von Bahr
Niki Lindroth von Bahr, born in 1984, is an artist and animation director based in Stockholm. She got her master degree in fine art at the Royal Institute of Art in the spring of 2016. Her films BATH HOUSE (2014) and TORD AND TORD (2010) has been screened at festivals around the word, such as Berlinale, Sundance, AFI and Annecy. TORD AND TORD was also nominated as Best Shortfilm at Guldbaggegalan 2011. FILMOGRAPHY: 2017 The Burden / Min börda, animated short, 2014 Bath House / Simhall, animated short, 2010 Tord and Tord / Tord och Tord, animated short, 2007 One Night in Moscow / En natt i Moskva, animated short.