Cinephiles, animation enthusiasts and avid consumers of entertainment are awaited again in the cinemas this fall: the International Animation Film Festival Anim’est, the only festival in Romania exclusively dedicated to animation films, is back with its 11th edition between October 7th and 16th.
Every fall, for a decade now, Anim’est has brought to Bucharest the most celebrated animation films, together with workshops offered by representatives of renowned international studios, presentations given by specialists in fields such as video mapping or gaming, installations and concerts. This year, the organizers of the festival promise as rich a programme as the previous years, and a novel theme : edition number 11 is dedicated to those cats that conquered the screen decades before conquering the internet.
The Anim’est 2016 programme will include a series of special screenings, showing fantastic micro-universes created around the best loved felines: from iconic feature films like Gay Purr-ee (d. Abe Levitow, 1962) or The AristoCats (d. Wolfgang Reitherman, 1970) to more recent productions, such as A Cat in Paris by Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol, a film that was nominated to an Oscar in 2012. A highlight of the programme is the special selection of short animation films featuring Felix the Cat, the famous antrophomorphic black cat drawn by Otto Messmer during the era of the silent cinema, known as the first animated character popular enough to attract the film crowds. In fact, cats will make appearances in all the sections of this year’s edition, from children’s animation films to those meant exclusively for adults, such as Fritz the Cat (d. Ralph Bakshi, 1972), the first animated film to receive an X rating in the U.S., based on the comics drawn by Robert Crumb.
La Tortue Rouge/ the Red Turtle opens the Anim’est 2016 edition
This edition of the festival opens with the most important animated feature of the year: La Tortue Rouge/ The Red Turtle, a France-Belgium-Japan co-production directed by Michael Dudok de Wit, who previously earned an Oscar and a BAFTA for Best Animated Short Film (Father and Daughter, 2000). The Red Turtle is his debut in feature animation and it follows the thread of important events in one’s life, told from the perspective of a man shipwrecked on a tropical island populated by turtles, crabs and birds. The animation premiered at the Film Festival at Cannes this year, where it was awarded the Special Jury Prize within the section Un Certain Regard and it also inaugurated the International Animation Film Festival at Annecy. In Romania, this feature film will be distributed by Independenta Film, a partner of Anim’est from its first edition on.
This is not the only Belgian delight to be screened at the cinemas that host the festival. Belgium is the special guest country at Anim’est 2016, a feat achieved with support from the delegation Wallonie-Bruxelles. The public will get a chance to watch a charming retrospective of Belgian animation, with the support of the International Animation Film Festival Anima Bruxelles, retrospective that will include some of the most relevant feature and short animation films produced in a country with a rich tradition in the animation industry. The participants to the 11th edition of Anim’est will also be able to watch a selection of the school films produced at La Cambre, one of the most important institutions of art and design in Belgium, present this year at the festival. The person invited to speak about the school, whose animation department has been functioning since 1958, is Vincent Gilot, head of the animation department and producer of most of the films made there. In addition to this, one of the most important animation studios in Belgium, Walking the Dog, will also be presented by one of its founders, producer Eric Gooseens. The public will recognize some of the most acclaimed animations produced by this studio, among which Les Triplettes de Belleville (d. Sylvain Chomet, 2004) which was nominated to two Oscars, The Secret of Kells (d. Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey, 2009), named Best Animated Feature Film at Anim’est in 2010, Jack et la mécanique du coeur (d. Mathias Malzieu, Stephanie Berla, 2014) or Le Jour des Corneilles (d. Jean-Cristophe Dessaint, 2011), winner of the prize for Best Animated Feature at Anim’est in 2014.
The eleventh edition of the International Animation Film Festival Anim’est will take place between October 7th and 16th, 2016, at Cinema Pro, Cinema Elvire Popesco, Cinemateca Eforie, The Cervantes Institute, CINETic Center, Club Fabrica and Club Control. Tickets will be available soon on the website www.eventbook.ro and also at Cinema Pro, Cinema Elvire Popesco and Cinemateca Eforie throughout the festival.
The International Animation Film Festival Anim’est, a member of the pan-European network Cartoon, is organized by the Este’n’est Association, with support from the National Center for Cinematography, the Ministry of Culture, the Administration of National Cultural Funds and the Cineasts’ Union in Romania.
Partner institutions: Cinetic – the International Center for Research and Education in Creative and Innovative Technologies, the National University of Theatre and Cinema „I.L. Caragiale”, the Delegation Wallonie-Bruxelles, the French Institute, the Cervantes Institute, the Hungarian Institute, the Czech Center, the Romanian Cultural Institute.
