Student films and animated cinema brought together in Krakow
The 18th Etiuda & Anima Festival will run until November 24 in Krakow. It is the oldest Polish festival that sets films from film schools around the world against animated works.
At the opening evening, on November 18, the audience discovered the restored, colour version of Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902, pictured), with a soundtrack by French duo AIR, and Dennis Tupicoff’s The First Interview, a film narrated by Agnès Varda in which the photographer Nadar puts questions to the scientist Michel-Eugène Chevreul in 1886. On the same evening, there was a screening of Joann Sfar’s animated feature The Rabbi’s Cat [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the story of a cat, in Algiers at the start of the 20th century, which can talk after swallowing the parrot.
The festival’s main focus is the two international competitions, Etiuda and Anima, which will award the Dinosaur and Jabberwocky prizes, respectively. A total of 34 films from film schools around the world have been selected in the Etiuda line-up, with Poland represented by the Andrzej Wajda Master School, Lodz Film School (PWSFTViT) and Warsaw Film School. Screening in the Anima competition are 61 films, a mix of student shorts and professional animated works.
Among the animated films in competition, noteworthy titles are Tchaikovsky - An Elegy by famous British director Barry Purves (who will receive a Golden Dinosaur in Krakow) and international production The Lost Town of Switez by Kamil Polak.
Set to screen out of competition are films from the Polish School of Animation, a movement that began last century, in the 1950s, centred around masters like Lenica, Borowczyk, Giersz and Szczechura.
There is also a special section bringing together the best Belgian films selected by Raoul Servais, a former Palme d’Or winner and legendary animated filmmaker who worked with the painter René Magritte. Servais has put together a line-up blending recognised directors and youngsters on the threshold of their career. This section includes multiple award-winning titles like Gérald Frydman’s Scarabus (1972), Jonas Geirnaert’s Flatlife (Jury Prize at Cannes in 2004) and Nicole Van Goethem’s A Greek Tragedy (Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 1985).
(Translated from French)
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