Anifest

Shelly Wain and I went to Anifest and here we are in the square where there was a screening of The Simpsons Movie.

































Shelly and I were both running workshops at Animate the World at the Barbican Centre in London on Saturday, so we arrived at the earliest opportunity on Sunday. One of the reasons that we targeted Anifest for our animation festival trip was Břetislav Pojar.
Thanks to the driver named Gerry we just arrived in time for the screening of Pojar's films and an audience with him too. It was fantastic to be in Trebon, sitting in the beautiful mint-green theatre watching the works of such a master. He came on at the end but he was just on his own, and obviously uncomfortable and dying to get away. Shelly wanted to know all about his multiplane set up and he threw some light on it, but only to say that there was a mirror involved... It was very mysterious and we are trying to find out more about that.



As you can see from my picture I'm expecting a baby at the end of the summer, so we didn't take things too fast. It went like this: full breakfast, screening, snack, screening, full lunch, screening, lie down, waffle/ice cream, little walk, supper, bed. We were only there a couple of days but we did catch a few screenings. The two films that I particularly enjoyed were KFJG no 5 by Alexey Alekseev, Hungary 2007, a really charming animation with a bear, a wolf and a rabbit in it and The Mouse Story by Benjamin B. Renner from La Poudriere, a really simple adaptation of an Aesop's fable with really great timing and characterisation. It was good to see Franz Kafka's Country Doctor by Koji Yamamura. The film has been winning alot of prizes, and I can see why, it's in a league of it's own. It's an eerie experience, very complicated and detailed, like a Paula Rego print. I'd like to have another look at it in a cinema to pick up some more of that story. He won the big prize, quite right too I think.