One Night in a City wins in Athens
Jan Balej's animated film One Night in a City has received the Grand Prix Athena at the Athens Animfest.
The film is now invited to the third Animart animation workshop, to be held this July in Kalavrita, Greece. Animart is organized by the European Animation Center and Hellenic Audiovisual Institute.
One Night in a City previously won prizes at festivals in Tehran, Bilbao, Lisbon, and Tiburon, USA. At home in 2007 it received a Czech Lion for Best Art Direction.
The stop-motion film is a mosaic of bizarre vignettes. Its macabre scenes and hallucinogenic logic invite comparison to the films of Tim Burton, Henry Selick or, closer to home, Jan Svankmajer.
The director wrote the script with Ivan Arsenjev. DoP Miloslav Spala shot the film, which was edited by Magda Sandersova.
It was produced by Maur Film, the producers behind the commercially successful Fimfarum franchise, in partnership with Hafan Film. Falcon released the film in the Czech Republic in January 2007.
Balej is currently developing a new animated film entitled Little Fishgirl, a modern re-imagining of H.C. Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid. The new project is supported by the State Fund of the Czech Republic for the Support and Development of Czech Cinematography, as was One Night in a City.
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