Best of Annecy 2015

Among the award-winning works at the 2015 Annecy Festival, Edmond (2015, director: Nina
Gantz, 9’) offers a vision of a journey taken into the depth of the soul, enriching the subject
with grotesque humour, the bizarre hero of which, created with stop-motion animation, walks
the road of regression and reaches the deepest point of his self and existence. Guida (2014,
director: Rosana Urbes, 11’), which champions the diversity of artistic depiction is the
glorification of feminine beauty evolving and transforming in time, not free from lyrical tones
and irony, with virtuosic character drawings and a watercolour painting-like background
world. My Dad (2014, director: Marcus Armitage, 6’) summarises how a child sees his father
in a collage-like vision also containing expressive chalk drawings. Mynarski chute mortelle /
The Mynarski Death Plummet (2014, director: Matthew Rankin, 8’) evokes the self-sacrifice
of the title hero in a situation of war catastrophe with fascinating avantgarde animation and
rough black and white images and whirling colour cavalcade. Rhisome (2015, director: Boris
Labbe, 12’), which is reminiscent of the art of the Whitney brothers, is an abstract animation
searching for the connection of the micro and macro cosmos, building on miniature image
elements with hypnotic effects, accompanied by murmuring noise compositions. Isand / The
Master (2015, director: Riho Unt, 18’), a two-character chamber piece, which can be related
to absurd dramas, is about a dachshund and a chimpanzee forcedly confined together: the
former loyally waits for the master, and the latter imitates it as a malformed caricature what it
is like to be human. World of Tomorrow (2015, director: Don Hertzfeldt, 16’), playing with the
genre of sci-fi, confronts a little girl with her adult self – that is with her third-generation
clone, who tells her about the future; the stick characters and the abstract image elements, as
well as childish naivety and the sterile futuristic world create a thought-provoking contrast.

Best of Annecy 2016

Among the award-winning works of the 2016 Annecy Festival, Periphery (2015, director:
David Coquard-Dassault, 12’) and Balcony (2015, director: Dávid Dell’Edera, 6’) escalate the
social perspective-less world to a potential end-of-the-world vision: in the deteriorated
housing complex jungle of the former humans cannot be seen, only roaming-running dog
packs appear; however, in the latter human frustration and agony can be the spark of change
that turns the world around, if the thread breaks. The Reflection of Power (2015, director:
Mihail Grecu, 9’) also appears to be a negative utopia, with its vision of the simultaneousness
of world devastation and the rituals of power. The vibrating painting animation building on
the animation associative image series of How Long Not Long (2016, director: Michelle and
Uri Kranot, 5’) grabs our multifaceted and whirling world. Frankfurter St. 99a (2016,
director: Evgenia Gostrer, 5’) also builds on the animation of painted images, the “lighter”
and fragmented visuality of which is paired with a subjective narrative mode. The New York
Times: “Modern Love – A Kiss Deferred” (2015, director: Moth Collective, 4’) embeds the
recollection of personal memories in a historical context and pairs it with a vision of a
minimalistic approach and colour world. While the puppet animation Stems (2015, director:
Ainslie Henderson, 2’) is self-reflexive finger exercise, The Head Vanishes (2016, director:
Franck Dion, 8’), building on stylised drawings, invites the viewer to a journey rich in
grotesque humour. The (self) reflexion is also dynamic in the cases of Blind Vaysha (2016,
director: Theodore Ushev, 8’) and Mr. Sand (2016, director: Soetkin Verstegen, 8’): the former
depicts the story of a woman who can see the past and the future – but not the present in the
style of Van Gogh and wood engravings, while the latter connects the birth of cinema with the
legend of the Sandman by utilising the plurality of animation techniques.
Cartoon d’Or 2016
Four among the animations of the Cartoon d’Or selection of last year is taking place around
family relationships, however, the fifth one offers an end-of-the-world panorama free from all
human presence. The latter is Periphery (2015, director: David Coquard-Dassault, 12’), in
which the dreary environment and the deteriorated medium of a one-time housing complex
are a true post-apocalyptic milieu, suggesting that the whole world has got to the devil – its
moving and acting actors are exclusively stray dogs, they take possession of the desolate
fields. In the strangled atmosphere of the animation titled Machine (2014, director: Sunit
Parekh, 19’) also a depressive mood reigns: its bizarre characters try to cope with tragic
experiences; the family grief enfolds with intermittent narration, repetitive images and surreal
momentums. Under Your Fingers (2014, director: Marie-Christine Courtès, 12’) depicts grief
in a totally different way, by connecting the female members of several generations: the
characters and the aquarelle-like backgrounds seem to merge together, and past and present
are also connected – while in the work of grief dance is given an important role, which
combines the serious subjects with light imagery solutions. Sibling relationships get into the
focus in the three-character, grim chamber drama of Yùl and the Snake (2015, director:
Gabriel Harel, 13’): the stylised monochrome world is stirred up by the appearance of a
colourful snake – with its help the abused child victim can avenge his abuser. In the CGI
animation of the bittersweet Alike (2015, director: Daniel Martínez Lara & Rafa Cano
Méndez, 8’), depicting the relationship of father and son, there is the most joy and harmony:
although the father is exposed to the jeopardy of going grey and making grey at his
workplace, and the little boy at school, their will of freedom, their imagination and their love
for each other still protect them from losing their personality.