Animation Festival Screenings

The seventeen programs of this year’s Ars Electronica Animation Festival are once again an international showcase of excellence in current digital filmmaking. Visitors can experience these programs in several screening rooms at the POSTCITY, Art Thinking House.

Art Thinking House

Program

NARRATION

Narration in the classical sense acquires a new dimension in the digital realm and shows laconically in images, what wouldn’t be possible with words. A little girl dreaming of becoming an astronaut, randomly found film footage casting new light on a deceased father, what will happen when a group of people suddenly lose their self-control – just a few examples of this program.

Why are we creative?

Hermann Vaske (DE)

Why are we creative? Does it run in our blood? Do we create in order to make ourselves immortal? Is it a reckless compulsion? Or is it simply a way to make a buck?

ANIFILM PRESENTS: CZECH ANIMATION NOW

In this selection of short films, you can discover brand new Czech creations. It is a very diverse portfolio of contemporary Czech production offering shorts by students, films by experienced authors, and experimental works. Since one of the main goals of Anifilm is to cover all domestic creations, the Czech Horizon (Český obzor) competition category was established recently. All of the films presented here took part in that national contest.

DATA NARRATION

This program seeks to raise some sociological and ecological questions. Visualizations of air pollution, maritime data, artistic research into diabetes, and an analysis of group dynamics are among the topics. It also asks what happens when humans and AI mutate into a single consciousness.

EXPANDED ANIMATION

This compilation assembles works that explore new forms of animated visual worlds far from the usual norm and shows, among other things, an interactive shadow installation, animated MR rooms, an installation combining animated images with a dance performance, a multi-media façade for the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and experimental VR projects.

EXPERIMENTAL

This program presents new innovative trajectories within current cinematography at the intersection of art and science and brings together works with contemporary positions, from computer-generated procedural structures to trailblazing examples of frame-by-frame animated sequences.

ANIMATIONSINSTITUT OF THE FILM ACADAMY BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG

Animationsinstitut, part of Filmakademie Baden- Württemberg, is one of the world’s leading film schools, offering the areas of study “Animation Artist,” “Effects Artist,” “Animation/Effects Producing,” “Technical Directing,” and “Interactive Media.” This screening features some of the latest and greatest student projects realized at Animationsinstitut.

GENDER

This program portrays fairly diverse gender positions: A man and a woman meet each other – an unpleasant yet at the same time provocative situation between attraction and rejection. An experimental animation about gender and sexuality with vagina and penis as its main elements. An analysis of anorexia and a black comedy about a couple with differing attitudes towards gender norms.

DIGITAL MEDIA, HAGENBERG CAMPUS

A behind-the-times fisherman leaves the safe harbor and sets outs to the open sea, two mail carriers deliver a huge eccentric package, a figure with an old-fashioned monitor plays a special version of the game rock-paper-scissors, a woman gets lost in a roundabout, and a gorilla eavesdrops on the conversation of two meerkats. This program features a selection of recent student works, ranging from narrative shorts to experimental animations, from the Digital Media Department at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria in Hagenberg.

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS CREATIVE AWARD

ISCA (International Students Creative Award) is an international arts and information media competition for universities, graduate schools and vocational schools, sponsored by the Knowledge Capital Association. It is an international competition open to students from Japan and around the globe.

JAPAN MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL 2019

The Japan Media Arts Festival honors outstanding works in a wide variety of media in four categories: art, entertainment, animation and manga. This program consists of various excellent films singled out for recognition by the 2019 Japan Media Arts Festival.

LATENITE

The late night program: irreverent, satirical and little indecent. In Late Nite, the films walk the thin line between dead seriousness and biting satire; they are full of philosophical approaches on one side, and trashy humor on the other. Mourning and loss are processed in colorful and brutal cartoon aesthetic, memes and Internet humor thematized in the pixel format, and some of the films will remain a mystery even after thorough reflection.

MENTAL STATES

Mental confusion, fears and dead-end states form the undercurrent of this program. A young woman breaks free of her everyday life and embarks on an uncertain journey. A story about outsiders in a pub, a group therapy session with animals, and a boy trapped in societal constructions.

MUSIC & VISUALS

A dance performance by a group of snails on the wing of an airplane, an indecisive woman sitting in front of her letter of resignation, a car ride through a dreamy desert landscape, aesthetically staged growth processes of organic forms, or dancing mochis. This program contains music videos and various experimental forms of picture-sound synthesis in different animation techniques.

STUDIO FEATURE: PLATIGE IMAGE

Platige Image is an award-winning film production, VFX, animation and post-production company based in Warsaw, Poland. They work for the biggest brands in the world, the best video game publishers and some of the finest film directors. They started out as a studio composed of a dozen or so people producing mainly commercials and music videos. Gradually, they developed their team and expanded their portfolio with short films, cinematics, 3D live theatre sets, VFX for live action movies and special projects, such as museum installations.

STATEMENT

A group of soldiers set off on a peaceful exploration of the city through a war zone in the middle of Manhattan, a game of pretended emergencies, a society that buries its head in the sand. Filmmakers take a stand on various political issues such as censorship in Saudi Arabia or ask questions about staged images in the refugee crisis.

VR SHOWCASE

This program features a special selection of VR works that have been submitted to the Computer Animation category of this year’s Prix Ars Electronica. Visitors can emerge themselves into several presented projects.

WORLD MACHINES

Urbanization and globalization in the digital age is one example. Another one is a movie portraying various traditional patterns of the Ainu people, the native inhabitants of Northern Japan. Seoul City Machine is a city symphony of an urban space of tomorrow, written and narrated by an AI chatbot. Or maybe a city portrait of young people and their personal data.

YOUNG ANIMATIONS

Gifted young filmmakers annually submit their weird, subtle, witty, utopian, critical and dystopian works for consideration to the Prix Ars Electronica’s u19 — CREATE YOUR WORLD category (AT), bugnplay.ch (CH), mb21 (DE) and C3<19 (HU). The greatest hits are featured in Young Animations.

Animation Festival Screenings

Art Thinking House

Program

Hermann Vaske (DE)

OUT OF THE BOX

#arselectronica