1. MATADERO MADRID
  2. Prensa Matadero

Matadero Madrid center for contemporary creation

Prize-winning animator Michaela Pavlátova and Mamoru Hosoda’s acclaimed film ‘Belle’ are just two of the highlights of this edition of ANIMARIO

Tickets now on sale
  • With premieres, retrospectives, official selections, and master classes, the Madrid International Festival of Contemporary Animation will take place over five fun-packed days at Cineteca Madrid and various spaces in Matadero and CC Plaza Río 2, from 10 to 14 November, and will be available online on the Filmin platform until 21 November
  • The festival will be kick-started by the screening of ‘‘My Sunny Maad’ by Michaela Pavlátová, which tells the story of a young Czech girl in Afghanistan and will come to a close with ‘Belle’ by Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda, with this futuristic version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’
  • Collage animation will steal the limelight this year with pieces by filmmakers Dalibor Barić, Aria Covamonas, Stacey Steers, and Colin Raff who will visit Spain for the first time. What’s more, the public can also try their hand at animation at the 2nd Animation Challenge-Plaza Río 2, with the help of Elena Duque and her easy-to-follow tutorial
  • The Official Selection of films includes 22 shorts, one of which will make its world premiere, seven will make their debut in Spain and 14 in the city of Madrid
  • This edition’s special sessions will include the world premiere of ‘Las Alturas’ (The Heights) by Alejandro Salgado, winner of the previous edition of the ANIMARIO-Plaza Río 2 Production Award, and the presentation of the renowned filmmaker Gonzalo Suárez’s ‘Alas de tiniebla’ (‘Wings of Darkness’)
  • Tickets are on sale at www.mataderomadrid.org and www.cinetecamadrid.com

 

The Cineteca Madrid film archive and Matadero Madrid, as part of Madrid City Council’s Arts, Sports and Tourism Department, present the fourth edition of ANIMARIO, the Madrid International Festival of Contemporary Animation, in collaboration with the Plaza Río 2 shopping centre, located opposite Matadero Madrid, and the nearby Madrid Río Park. This yearly festival for animation lovers will take place from 10 to 14 November 2021 at various locations in the city, and will also feature an online programme available until the 21st on Filmin.

In the words of Carolina López, the curator of ANIMARIO, “this edition of the festival recognises the diversity and richness of topics, genres and styles on the contemporary animation scene.” She adds, “the public should expect to find films made using analogue techniques such as drawing, cut-out and stop motion, alongside digital 2D and 3D animation and even virtual reality films, in a programme that brings a wide variety of artists to a diverse audience.”

Some of the highlights of this fourth edition include its opening and closing ceremonies, which will welcome screenings of films by Michaela Pavlátová and Mamuro Hosoda, respectively. The Czech animator Pavlátová will kick-start the festival on 10 November with ‘My Sunny Maad’, the story of a Czech girl who falls in love with an Afghan man with no idea of what kind of life awaits her in Afghanistan or the family she is about to join.

The Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda will present ‘Belle’, his cyber take on the tale of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at the closing ceremony for the festival’s in-person events on Sunday 14th. Among this film’s outstanding achievements since its premiere is a 14-minute standing ovation for the filmmaker at the latest edition of the Cannes film festival. It is said to be one of the greatest ovations in the history of the festival.

 

Dalibor Barić, Aria Covamonas and Stacey Steers, plus Colin Raff’s first visit to Spain

This year, the ANIMARIO spotlight will be on collage animation, with a section named ‘No te cortes’ (‘Don’t hold back’). This animation technique takes inspiration from artistic avant-gardes of the past century, interweaving the use of new digital tools with an extraordinary revolutionary and appropriationist spirit. All eyes will be on the decisively experimental film by Serbian animator Dalibor Barić named ‘Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus’. This section will also include screenings of various films by renowned animators who use appropriation and animated collage as their main form of artistic expression.

The spotlight will also be the work of Aria Covamonas, the most unpredictable contemporary collage artist, whose films merge drama, politics, humour, philosophy, and gender perspective; Stacey Steers, whose work has featured at the Sundance, Locarno and Rotterdam festivals, at New York’s MoMA and the National Gallery of Art in Washington; and the work of German-based American artist Colin Raff, creator of a uniquely strange universe available to all online, who will visit Spain for the first time to talk about his remarkable pieces and to share them (also for the first time) on the big screen.

What’s more, this year’s attendees also have the chance to become a ‘guest artist’ thanks to the 2nd Animation Challenge-Plaza Río-2, which invites members of the public to create a short collage animation film at home and post it on social networks. For the contest, Animario has invited filmmaker and animator Elena Duque to develop a step-by-step tutorial for fans to create a simple animation studio at home following this technique.

 

Official selection of 22 short films and the world premiere of ‘Las Alturas’ by Alejandro Salgado

The previously mentioned Michaela Pavlátová will join animators Geoffroy De Crecy and Paulo Mosca as part of the judging panel for this edition’s Best Short Film Award, with a winning prize valued at €5,000. The judges will choose from 22 short films, one of which will make its world debut, seven films will make their debut in Spain and 14 will be shown for the first time in Madrid. This year’s selection of short films brings together a variety of projects by creators who are freely exploring and pursuing new methods and forms of inspiration.

In this edition, the public will also have the chance to see a hand-picked selection of animation feature films. In addition to the opening and closing films, there will be screenings of ‘Archipel’ (Canada, 2021) by Félix Dufour-Laperrière, an animated essay of a symbolic journey brimming with philosophy and poetry; ‘You Son of a Bitch’ (Philippines, US, 2020) by Avid Liongoren, a vibrant, entertaining animated soap opera set in Manila — the ‘enfant terrible’ of Philippine animation; and ‘Snooty Boy’ (Austria, Germany, 2022) by Marcus Rosenmüller and Santiago López Jover, a comedy about the life of a teenager with a good dose of critique towards the puritan society in which he lives.

What’s more, Rodrigo Blaas, Chelo Loureiro and Alejandro Salgado will judge the 4th ANIMARIO-Plaza Río 2 Production Award, with a view to supporting independent short films already underway on the national animation scene. The winning artist, selected from a total of 13 films, will receive a grant of €18,000 and have the chance to complete their project with the help of the award. What’s more, the chosen film will feature as part of the 2022 festival programme.

The festival will also stage the world premiere of ‘Las Alturas’ (‘The Heights’) by Alejandro Salgado. This short film by the Sevillian production company La Maleta Films won the 2020 Animario-Plaza Río 2 production award. In this piece, the filmmaker captures the harsh reality of the atypical trade that takes place on the borders of Ceuta and Melilla, which separate Africa from Europe. The starting point for the film is the cyclical journey that many women make on a daily basis, carrying supplies from one side of the border to the other. In this way, it reflects on the significance of what these women carry, the impossibility of prosperity, slavery, and acceptance.

ANIMARIO will also screen the documentary film ‘Barzaj’ for the first time in Madrid, which will be shown alongside ‘Bolingo’ and ‘Las Alturas’ to form a trilogy.

 

Special sessions: new illustrated cinema by Gonzalo Suárez and a stroll through the Czech Republic

The special sessions of this fourth edition of the festival will be topped off with a retrospective screening of Michaela Pavlátová’s previous films in an event open to the public. Her 1991 Oscar-nominated ‘Words, Words, Words’ will be shown together with other distinguished prize-winning pieces, including ‘Repete’, which gained her a Berlin Golden Bear, and the Annecy Cristal Award-winning ‘Tram’. What’s more, the Parisian film producer and animator Geoffroy de Crécy –winner of the Animario award at the last edition of the festival with the film ‘Empty Places’ – will present his independent projects and teach a master class.

The renowned film director Gonzalo Suárez, after turning to illustration in his most recent project, will also present his latest film ‘Alas de tiniebla’ (‘Wings of Darkness’). The filmmaker will attend the festival alongside Anne-Helene Suárez, the author of the story behind the film, and illustrator Pablo Auladell, recipients of the National Translation and Comic Awards, respectively.

The spotlight will also be on the animated films of one of the oldest and most prestigious film schools in Europe, Prague’s Famu (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts). This edition of the festival will feature some of the school’s impressive, award-winning films, such as ‘Daughter’ by Daria Kashcheeva.

And to round off this year’s overview of projects by European schools and emerging talent, the festival will bring together a selection of films from Spanish and French film schools, with a special screening of students’ graduation projects.

 

Workshops for all ages and a virtual reality journey

The collective Dedociego, formed by Joaquín Urbina and Ana Gale, will run an experimental animation workshop for adults, with a view to approaching audiovisual language from graphic, institutive and manual perspectives. In this way, the public will learn how to create loops and visual rhythms that generate a direct dialogue between moving images and sound, using ‘graphic accidents’ as a fundamental tool in the creative process.

What’s more, on the first floor of the Plaza Río 2 shopping centre, visitors can discover a new Virtual Reality feature and delve into the world of immersive animation with three pieces from the Berlinale and Cannes film festivals and more. The films ‘Otawamure’ by Japanese animator Yoriko Mizushiri (Japan, 2019), ‘Paper Birds’ by Germán Heller and Federico Carlini (Argentina, 2021) and ‘Replacements’ by Jonathan Hagard (Japan-Indonesia-Germany, 2020) will be shown in their original format and can be viewed with VR glasses.

Plaza Río 2 will also stage the family activity ‘¡Un cielo lleno de vida!’ (‘See the Sky Come Alive’) by the Broomx team. This interactive attraction invites visitors to colour in and scan their drawings, before watching their creations bring the animated sky to life over the city. And Lourdes Villagómez’s workshop is perfect for those who want to learn the basics of film collage and let their imagination run wild with animation.

This year’s family-friendly programme will be rounded off by the screening of a range of short films by international artists at Cineteca Madrid and the Intermediae space at Matadero. Within the framework of the artistic installation ‘The Leaf’, there will be two screening sessions under the name ‘Pequeños descubrimientos: animación para disfrutar en familia’ (‘Small Discoveries: Animation for the Whole Family’) and ‘Amo la Tierra: animaciones de Kati Egely llenas de música y color para disfrutar en pañales’ (‘I Love the Earth’: animations by Kati Egely brimming with music and colour for little ones’).

 

Animario on Filmin

In addition to the screenings and activities held in person at Cineteca Madrid and Matadero Madrid, Animario 2021 will offer a range of films online on the platform Filmin. Thanks to this year’s hybrid format, a larger audience will have the chance to enjoy the festival and discover films both on the big screen and at home. The public can watch this year’s Official Selection of Short Films, in addition to the kid’s selection, either at live screenings or on this on-demand platform.

What’s more, Filmin subscribers can also watch the official selection, the selection of kid’s films and the special screening of short films dedicated to Michaela Pavlátová, after the festival from 15 to 21 November.

 

ANIMARIO 2021
MADRID INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY ANIMATION

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