My ANNECY 37th edition Animation Film Festival impressions

Last week I decided to sit by an idyllic lake and drink rosé in the sun without a care in the world.

Of course, this is only partly true.

I also went to Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2013 to drink in some wonderful animation.

And to be part of the FIPRESCI Jury.

During the festival the beautiful town is utterly overrun by the geek-chic elite with matching backpacks and anaemic studio skin.

Faces that have previously only embraced the glow of a lightbox/elaborate monitor setup suddenly feel the rush of a year’s worth of vitamin D flooding their systems.

With a medium age of 17....(or 7?)...

 

I felt instantly at home...

 

 

Unravelling serious desk-hunches, I collected my festival passes and programmes and did my best to peel away from the postcard scenes outside, and get into some screenings…

My favourite animation was without a doubt this crazy short called “Autour du lac” by Carl Roosens and Noémie Marsily.

I knew that I was in for a treat when the short film commenced with a duck upending itself in a sudden and comedic fashion.

This minor duck-foolery begins to seem increasingly sensible as the film unwinds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://youtu.be/sUjg47Y0OuA

 

 In a week that was spent mainly marching autour du lac (walking around the lake), this song was pretty much on loop in my head the entire time.

Occasionally it was ousted by the “Annecy Bizness” animation that played at the start of each screening.

Here is an extract that spares you the unfortunate sexism:

 

http://youtu.be/VsCp012ScMo

 

Of the other films that I enjoyed were “La Grosse Bête” (The Big Beast)   which tells of a beast that will come to eat you if you stop thinking about it.

As this clever film progresses the message becomes clearer as the townsfolk create their own monster.

The dialogue was particularly amusing.

A precise allegory in a world debating civil rights vs. security.

The timing and direction are flawless and masterful.

 

I was moved to the bone by “Feral” by the American Sousa. Daniel Sousa is an artist who is not afraid to delve into fantasies and fables to present his animated vision of the world.

 

In Feral, a wild boy is found in the woods by a solitary hunter and brought back to civilization. Alienated by a strange new environment, the boy tries to adapt by using the same strategies that kept him safe in the forest.

The beauty of this film lays in its fragility,  such as the loneliness of its main, repressed character.

 

 

 The seesaw between civilisation and (human) nature is not alien to David Sousa.

In his "Minotaur" (1999) he presents an ancient Greek myth, where the beast Minotaur has to compete with the rational human mortals -and dies.

 

 Daniel Sousa is also an active academic, teaching at various colleges in the US. Since 2001, he has been teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design.

http://youtu.be/9aIKK-8Uuy4

Awarded with  a mention by our Jury, "Feral" was a harsh to chose award.

Just as it was our main FIPRESCI recipient: "Gloria Victoria", by the Bulgarian emigrated to Canada, Ushev. There are few abstract animations that can create in the eye of the audience what the director wishes to feel. Marrying a plethora of stylistic representations with the perfect soundtrack  (Shostakovitch), Gloria Victoria manages to display the forces of the 20th century with such passion.

“Boles” by Špela Čadež is the eerie story of a poor writer and his mysterious red-headed neighbour. Impressive puppet-handling and lovingly created sets in this one.

 

 

 

“Les Voiles du partage” (The winds of share) by Pierre Mousquet and Jerome Cauwe ,2013
Mad Max meets Charles Bronson for a fast-paced dystopian satire. An ultra-violent, super cool and very funny tale of Mafia and… landsurfing?

http://youtu.be/4P6RiZmPCuA

 

And Chris Landreth’s Best Short winning “Subconscious Password,” an absurd film about the perils of forgetting an aquaintance’s name.

 

Hilariously funny and peppered with celebrity cameos.

All in all it was a wonderful trip.

It affirmed my suspicion that animators are a pleasant bunch.

A lovely, unpretentious species that dance as if their moves were originally worked out in the bathroom mirror for a cartoon character.

 

 

Here is the complete list of the 2013 Annecy Prize winners:

 

Best Feature
Uma historia de amor e furio (Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury)
By Luiz Bolognesi (Brasil, Buriti Filmes, Gullane)

Best Short
Subconscious Password
By Chris Ladnreth (Canada ONF, Copper Heart Ent. Productions)

Best TV Production
Room on the Broom
By Jean Lachaeur, Max Lang (U.K. Magic Light Pictures)

Best Commissioned Production
Dumb Ways to Die
By Julian Frost, (Australia, McCanne Melbourne)

Special Distinction
My Mommy Is in America and She Has Met Buffalo Bill
By Marc Boreal, Thibaut Chatel (France, Luxemberoug; Label Anim, Melusine, Studio Canal)

Audience Award
O Apóstolo
By Fernando Cortizo Rodriguez (Spain, Artefacto Producciones)

Short Films

Special Jury Award
The Wound
By Anna Budanova (Russia, studio Ural-Cinema)

Distinction for a First Film
Trespass
By Paul Wenninger (Austria)

“Jean-Luc Xiberras” Award for a First Film
Norman
By Robbe Vervaeke (Belgium, Cinnamon Entertainment)

Special Distinction
The Triangle Affair
By Andres Tenusaar (Estonia) estonia

Sacem Award for original music
Lonely Bones
By Rosto (Netherlands)

Junior Jury Award for a Short Film
Feral
By Daniel Sousa (USA)

Audience Award
Lettres de femmes
By Augusto Zanovello (France, Pictor Media, XBO Films)

Special Award for a TV Series
Tom & The Queen Bee
By Andreas Hykade (Germany Studio Film Bilder)

Award for Best TV special
Poppety in the Fall
By Pierre-Luc Granjon, Antoine LanCiaux (France, Foliascope, Carpediem Film & TV, ONF)

Commissioned Films

Special Jury Award
The Lion
By Benjamin Scheuer (U.K., Peter Baynton)

Graduation Films

Award for Best Graduation Film
Ab ovo
Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi (Poland, The Polish National Film, TV and Theatre School)

Special Jury Award
I Am Tom Moody
By Ainslie Henderson (U.K., Edinburgh College of Art)

Special Distinction
Pandas
By Matus Vizar (Slovakia, BFILM, FAMU)

Junior Jury Award for a Graduation Film
Rabbit and Deer
By Peter Vacz (Hungary, Mome)

Unicef Award
Because I’m a Girl
By Raj Yagnik, Mary Matheson, Hamilton Shona (U.K.)

Fipresci Award
Gloria Victoria
By Theodore Ushev (Canada, ONF)

Fipresci Special Mention
Feral
By Daniel Sousa

CANAL+ Creative Aid Award for a Short Film
Autour du lac
By Carl Roosens, Noémie Marsily (Belgium,Zorobabel)

Festivals Connexion Award
Feral
By Daniel Sousa (U.S.A.)

Funniest Film According to the Annecy Public∙
KJFG No 5
Alexey Alekseev (Hungary, Studio Baestarts)

 Giulia Dobre

 

Autour du Lac, the boundless story

…The breath of a blue jogger…a disemboweled ants nest…a puddle…on a bench a few abandoned sandwiches…a squirrel… a dead and worm full duck…fragments of life (and death) that embark us on a tireless walk around the lake, following a merciless text and an entire song. A song where the musicians seem to have abused a little of the bottle, hence the sincere and unabashed, dada like, in vino veritas expression.

“Autour du Lac” (Around the Lake) is a short animated film written and directed by Carl Roosens and Noémie Marsily, presented in the Short Films Competition at Annecy 2013. It is a film swarming of life and sweat.  This utter visual and sensorial gem uses a mixture of pencil and ink and it has been created during a very vibrant residency at the Abbey of Fontevraud in May 2012.

It is a unique project, initially designed only to strengthen the link between image and the music composed by Carl and his band:”Carl et les hommes boîtes”. The result though has a strong visual identity and goes far beyond the initial statement. It is a wet and crudely poetical manifesto for a new naturalism, aiming at cleaning up and building above the trivial and the decayed.

“Autour du lac” is ultimately a story in itself. In barely 4 minutes and 20 seconds it tells it all about our eternal (con) damnation as sagacious and inquiring human beings, to always “turn around” our destiny, in a Sissify like quest. Not solely enclosed in a carton box from where we would observe the world through a tiny snatch (in synthony with the name of the band and with the inspiring novel of Kobo Abe), we are truly confronting this world.

 

A depraved and often absurd world, alternating images of high beauty, moving colors, and ridiculous situations or characters, weak spots and troubling extreme moments.

The vibrant pencil and ink visuals of the two authors are reminiscent of the dismay of the Weimar generation…Distorted faces as in Otto Dix or  Grosz’s works, illogical associations are to draw attention on the bleak and less seen or thought of sides of life, unsparingly depicting a latent kind of violence encountered at every step, unavoidable, suffocating.

The text is chanted, told, sometimes sang. It says about the images we see, about people’s backs, about walks around the lake, about bellys, about daytime

frustrated dreams, about smells that open interior landscapes, about lost items, lost impressions and attempts to recover those…It tells  about intrusions…

The music is a hybrid of a mutant kind of electronica and some grotesque brass band, creating the convenient path for the narrator’s story to evolve and leave us in a state of pure amazement. As “Autour du Lac”, in 4minutes and 20 seconds, says it all!

 

Giulia Dobre

FIPRESCI Jury at Annecy 37^th International Animation Film Festival

 

Giulia Dobre is a Film Critic for the Romanian National Radio and a screenwriter. She trained as a PhD in French Litterature at the University of Bucharest and a PHD in Visual Anthropology at the San Francisco State and Berkeley University of California.