Last invitation of this year’s AniFest
There’s a sort of sleepy atmosphere right now in Teplice. But if the sun won’t exhaust you completely, there are still screenings going on…the best comes in the end, so don’t miss our last projection in the open air cinema. A real treasure on a big screen under the open sky, that’s Jiří Trnka’s „Midsummer Night’s Dream“ tonight.
If you’re not in mood for the classic after this week full of puppets, you can watch non-narrative films from 18:00 in Cinema Květen.
And that’s really, finally, all from us this year…if you’ll feel nostalgic, you can browse through pictures on our facebook page as well as in our gallery. And looking forward to see you next year!
The exhibition „Film Poet Jiří Trnka“ officialy open
The exhibition in the Teplice Regional Museum, located in the beautiful building of an old castle, opened its doors to the public already a week ago, but today was the day of the official opening. The curators Michaela Mertová and Milan Svatoš as well as members of Jiří Trnka’s family met with international festival guests as well as local personalities and admired the newly restaured original puppets and screenplay sheets. The exhibition will be open till 14 May – and since its an unique occasion to see some exhibits which were never displayed in public before, it’s a must see not only for Jiří Trnka’s admirers.
Thursday at AniFest – let’s start!
Visegrad Forum is in the middle right now, but Thursday is the first „official“ festival day. The jury is here (Sulafa Hijazi was the last to land in Prague) and other guest are also arriving…and the Culture House, Krušnohorské theatre and Duchcov castle are ready for the great event.
So, what programmes you shouldn’t miss tomorrow?
„The Century of Jiří Trnka“ starts with The Emperor’s Nightingale (8:30 a.m., Cinema Květen). In the same screening hall also the competition feature A Cat in Paris (5 p.m.) and the – the event of the day – the premiere of Aardman’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits (9:30 p.m.). In Estrada hall, competition shorts are screened: Short Film A at11 a.m. and Short Film B at 2:30 p.m. In Social club (located on the 4th floor of Culture House), Michael Frierson will talk about clay animation (starts at 4 p.m.). And finally, at 8 p.m., it all officialy starst with the opening ceremony in the Grand Hall of Krušnohorské theatre (this year the Czech TV Hall). And this is just the beginning!
P.S: In case you‘ll really miss something after all, don’t worry – just click on Media/Live to watch videostream from Social club and other places.
Film-maker Jiří Trnka, Estonian Puppets, living history of Duchcov castle and an interactive comics – exhibition at this year’s AniFest
The accompanying programme of this year’s festival is all about puppets – and the exhibitions are no exception.
The Regional Museum in Teplice will on 19 April open an unique exhibition of puppets, sketches, scripts and photographs from family archives of Jiří Trnka descendant’s. The curator of the exhibition, which covers the whole career of „film poet“ Jiří Trnka, is Michalea Mertová from the National film archive.
Puppets will domesticate also the old castle in Duchcov. From March 31 you can visit an exposition of puppets from famous Estonian studio Nukufilm. The exhibition was exclusively lend to Czech Republic on the occassion of the 50th anniversary of the studio and will accompany the retrospective of Estonian animation. Authors as well as the representatives of Estonian Embassy in the Czech Republic will be present.
Together with the Nukufilm exhibition, puppets and complete decorations from the newest film Faruza by Katariina Lillquist will be displayed in the Giacomo Gallery of Duchcov Castle.
And Duchcov one more time – „Laputoids“ is an unique audivisual work designed for the permanent exposition of the castle. North-bohemian landscape and the history of the place are made alive through animation by young Czech artists Martin Búřil and Jan Šrámek.
And finally, back to Teplice – the Gallery in Teplice Culture House will offer first opportunity to see (and touch!) an experimental adaptation of popular children’s book by Ivan Vyskočil „Little Alenáš“. The author of the adaptation is Matyáš Trnka, who also created this year’s festival spot and visual. Original illustrations will be displayed together with an extract of the upcoming digital and interactive version of this unusual comic-book.
THE MAGIC OF FILM PUPPET
Puppet animation, animation of objects, clay animation and other variations from the extensive spectre of stop-motion animation techniques – every each one of them will be the focus of this year’s AniFest. We will look at the magic of film puppet from authorial, technical as well as production point of view.
An unforgettable personality of this animation field is Jiří Trnka
– universal artist, who would have celebrated 100.anniversary this year. We will screen his film from original 35 mm copies, the selection of them curated by the historian Michaela Mertová from Czech National Film Archive and accompanied by various lector’s presentations. An exhibition in the Teplice museum will focus on the process of creating of Trnka’s films and their puppet protagonists.
In the contemporary puppet production, one country excells recently – United Kingdom. AniFest thus invited famous historian and theorist Paul Wells and asked him to prepare a special programme dedicated to British stop-motion animation. His selection will be divided into three thematical units mapping the developement of British stop-motion animation from 1908 till today. The actual and contemporary face of British animation will be presented by the expected feature film from the Aardman studios.
An unique part of this year’s puppet AniFest and British animation profile will be the double-programme of the honorary president Barry Purves (Screenplay, Achilles, Hamilton Mattress). 
A selection of his author puppet films will be accompanied by a lecture on his inspiration sources and Purves will also reveal the „backstage“ of his films by showing some very rare shots documenting the creation of his work.
Also other festival guests will give lectures on the broad possibilities of puppets, for example Will Vinton (Academy Award for „Closed Mondays“), who reached perfection in clay animation and thus created his patented technique of clay-motion. Contemporary Czech puppet will be presented by director and designer Michal Žabka (Mrs. G). Špela Čadež, our Slovenian juror (Lovesick) will also talk about her non-traditionally designed puppets.
Not only puppet films but also their designers and developers will be present at AniFest. Representatives of world famous studios promised to come: Polish SE-MA-FOR (where films of such authors like brothers Quay, Suzie Templeton or Marek Skrobecki are produced), British MacKinnon & Saunders, creators of Tim Buton’s, Barry Purves‘ or Wes Anderson’s puppets, Laika studio, where Selick’s Coraline was born and French company Sophie Roze, responsible for succesfull Joska’s Snails.
AniFest 2012 jury and first programme hints…
Will Vinton – The Great Cognito (1982)
New year has come and the ongoing preparations for AniFest 2012 are getting more and more interesting, so here are some backstage news we wanted to share…first of all, the jury is now complete! And we are honoured to announce that short and feature films will be judged by Will Vinton (US), Igor Kovalyov (Ukraine), Michal Žabka (CZ), Špela Čadež (Slovenia) and Pedro Serrazina (Portugal). The jurors for animated commercials, music-videos, TV and students films are: Ülo Pikkov (Estonia), Sulafa Hijazi (Syria) and Andrew Kavanagh (Ireland). And we are more than pleased to announce also the honorary president of this year’s festival – this task was kindly accepted by famous writer, director and animator Barry Purves (UK). You can find more info about the jury in the About festival section.
And least but not last, when there’s new category, there’s also new jury – non-narrative and experimental films will be judged by Ivana Laučíková (SK), Martin Mazanec (CZ) and Martin Kaňuch (SK).
Year 2012 is a year of film puppet, because in February we will celebrate the centennary of one of the biggest puppet magicians Jiří Trnka. This year’s AniFest will thus bring for example a retrospective of Trnka’s films curated by Michaela Mertová from the National Film Archive, an exposition of scripts, puppets and sketches from the archives of Jiří Trnka descendants or a retrospective of Japanese director and Trnka’s pupil Kihachiro Kawamoto and another independent Japanese animator who is closely connected to Czech enviroment, Nobuhiro Aihara.
Puppets and puppet animation will be the focus of this year’s festival and we will look at the phenomenon of film puppet from every possible angle. Paul Wells is preparing a large retrospective of British stop-motion animation and some of the jurors will also talk about puppets in their programmes (Michal Žabka, Will Vinton, Špela Čadež as well as Barry Purves).
Our Baltic mission is coming to its end this year – juror’s presentation of Ülo Pikkov will thus accompany the retrospective of Estonian animation, the last one left after we’ve been to Lithuania in 2010 and in Latvia last year with Vladimír Leschiov.
Author of this year’s visual and director of the festival spot is designer, animator and a student at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts Matyáš Trnka – you can get acquainted with his work for example at the DVD „From Year Zero“ released by AniFest last year, where his short abstract film Absurp from 2009 was included. For the festival graphic materials, he uses an unusual technique of transluminated spirit paints and as a main component he chose the skeleton of a film puppet – the most important element, which however usually remains hidden to the viewer.
