Animac celebrates the 26th edition in Lleida

March 8 2022

The 26th International Animac Animac Festival of Catalonia opened on Thursday 3 March with a celebratory session at the Teatre de la Llotja in Lleida, Spain, where the 2022 Honorary Award was awarded to the prestigious Swiss creator Georges Schwizgebel, for his originality and virtuosity that distinguish him as an icon of expressive animation.

Two Schwizgebel short films were screened during the inauguration: Erlkönig (2015), based on a poem by Goethe with music by Schubert and Liszt, which included a live soundtrack performed by the young Catalan pianist Emma Stratton, and the Spanish premiere of Darwin's Notebook (2020), a short film about colonialism, tribes and the oppression of white supremacists, which last year won the Swiss Film Award for best animated film.

While Animac highlights the power of animation in this edition, the festival presented a comprehensive retrospective of Schwizgebel's most significant shorts, all of which feature an original style of fiction and animation. These were complemented by a masterclass on Sunday, which allowed animation lovers to get a glimpse into Schwizgebel's creative universe.

Emma Stratton performed the live score for Georges Schwizgebel's Erlkönig at the Animac opening ceremony. The Swiss entertainer received the festival's 2022 Honor Award. (Photo courtesy of Animac)

Also during the opening ceremony, the Animac 2022 Animation Master Award was presented to American visual effects master Phil Tippett, who accepted the honor with a video speech. The Californian creator recently completed his love work, Mad God, an experimental film set in a world of monsters, mad scientists and war pigs and artisans with technology spanning the entire history of cinema over the course of 30 years. . The film screened at the Animac, and Tippett connected to the festival again on Saturday for a live conversation from his Berkeley studio with friend and animator Sam Orti (Conflictivos Productions) and Animac director Carolina López.

The opening night of Animac presented two world premieres: the short film Baroudeur (2022) by the Swiss-based Italian animator Mauro Carraro, who came to Lleida to present the film and give a lecture; and No Ordinary Joe (2021), the new film by British stop-motion animation master Barry JC Purves, which has garnered more than 60 international awards for his films.

adventurer

Completing the inaugural screenings was Au revoir Jérôme! (2021) directed by Adam Sillard, Gabrielle Selnet and Chloé Farr, the International Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the recent Berlinale and A Film About a Pudding (2021) by Roel van Beek.

Other special guests of Animac this year include Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels (Oh Willy…, This Magnificent Cake !, The House Chapter 1), Javier Mariscal (They shot the pianist, in production), Chelo Loureiro (Valentina, recently Goya winner for best animated film), Alberto Vázquez (winner of three Goya awards for Birdboy, Decorado and Psychonauts, discussing his new feature film production Unicorn Wars) and Rafael Esteban Trujillo "Rafillo" (creator of the web series Querida Conchi, which attracted the attention of TV channels such as Cartoon Network and Fox).

Chelo Loureiro, director of the Goya Award-winning film Valentina, was one of the esteemed guests of Animac 2022. (Photo courtesy of Animac)

Over four days, Animac presented 251 films in its Short Films, Future Talent, Little Animac, Monographs, Retrospectives and Feature Films programs, as well as lectures by esteemed national and international professionals. These established talents have mingled with promising young creatives participating in the Future Talent and Animac Talent.cat sections, or seeking expert advice on their projects in the Incubator, as well as university students in the Animacrea space to experiment with different techniques.

The Official Short Films Section, a selection of the best and most recent animated shorts in the world, consists of five sessions with a total of 38 films from 19 different nationalities. Two recently nominated Oscar-nominated short films are part of the selection: Bestia by Hugo Covarrubias (Chile), which delves into the life of a secret police officer during the military dictatorship in Chile, and Affairs of the Art by British director Joanna Quinn, which received an Honorary Award to the latest edition of Animac. Also on the program is the short film nominated for a César Précieux by Paul Mas.

Uncle

Other highlights of the section include The Last Matador, the latest short film by Finnish screenwriter, director and producer Katariina Lillqvist, winner of the 2019 Animac Master Animation Award and one of the longest-lived women in European independent stop-motion animation. In this film, Lillqvist offers a fanciful story with a bullfighter skeleton and a Russian tourist with a striking resemblance to Vladimir Putin, who feels an urgent desire to try his luck as a bullfighting hero. The audience was also offered to Tío by Juan José Medina, one of the luminaries of Mexican stop-motion and winner of three Ariel awards from the Mexican Academy.

Narrative and visual experiments were on display in the Shorts 5 White Cube session, such as Yoriko Mizushiri's disturbing and sensory Anxious Body; Renee Zhan's Soft Animals, which explores the repressed emotions, memories and desires of two former lovers; o L'écrivain aveugle by Georges Sifianos, based on blindfolded drawings. The Future Talent section for student work has added up to three sessions with a total of 32 short films selected from 14 different nationalities, including France, UK, USA, Switzerland, Czech Republic and China, among others.

Animac 2022 was held in Lleida from 3 to 6 March; online programming is running until 13 March. Visit animac.cat for more information.