Films Unlike All Others

Short and feature-length films, animations and documentaries; courageous, melancholy, funny, experimental, outlandish and controversial films… Or, simply, Etiuda&Anima!

Find here THE DETAILED PROGRAMME!

The International Film Festival Etiuda&Anima is Poland’s longest-running and most important festival presenting animations and student cinema. Sound a bit pompous? Appearances can be deceptive! Etiuda&Anima promises cinematic experiences you won’t find anywhere else. Here imagination knows no bounds and extraordinary projects are born; films move us, and the intensity of our emotions can surprise even the most seasoned cinephiles.

So what’s coming this year? Six days of competition screenings, meetings with incredible artists and cinema workshops. The 24th Etiuda&Anima is centred around competitions: for etudes created at art and film schools, and for animations made by students and professionals. New this year is a competition for short Polish animations, Anima.Pl. It strives to provide a summary of productions made in the last two years, and as of this year it will be the third permanent competition in the festival programme.

This year’s Special Gold Dinosaur goes to the acclaimed artist and pedagogue Sławomir Idziak – director, screenwriter and one of the most famous Polish cinematographers working today. He is Krzysztof Kieślowski’s main cinematographer, and he has worked with Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda. He has been nominated for the Oscar and BAFTA for Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and the Venice International Film Festival prize for Three Colours: Blue; younger viewers know him from his cinematography for David Yates’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. During the festival, Idziak leads the Cinebus workshops.

One of the key events of the festival will be the review of works by Tony Palmer – a fascinating artist whose work focuses on music groups from the 20th and 21st centuries and author of a popular series of interviews with music stars including John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, Tina Turner and Frank Zappa titled All You Need Is Love.

How are animations made? Guests of the cycle Self-Portraits of Animation Artists will be the Hungarian artist Géza M. Tóth, author of Maestro nominated for an Oscar in 2007, the Russian director and screenwriter Svetlana Filippova, author of Brutus and The Night Has Come, and the Swiss artist Claudius Gentinetta, awarded the Golden Jabberwocky Grand Prix during the 17th E&A in 2010. It will be an excellent opportunity to watch films and learn about the creative process behind them.

This year’s festival also features a section dedicated to European animation festivals (Anima Brussels Animation Film Festival, Volda Animation Festival and Animateka International Animated Film Festival), presentation of the Special Gold Dinosaur for best film school revealed during the 2016 E&A to the Łódź Film School, and the block Marek Serafiński. In memoriam dedicated to the director, screenwriter and producer of animations who passed away in February. We will also see Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz’s documentary on the life and work of Edward Żebrowski – acclaimed Polish director and author of The Hospital of Transfiguration who passed away in 2014.

The festival welcomes special guest Ewa Braun, stage and costume designer awarded the Oscar in 1994 for stage designs for Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. She has co-created settings for countless films by Janusz Majewski, Tadeusz Konwicki, Krzysztof Zanussi and Agnieszka Holland.

During the festival we also celebrate 70 years of Polish animation. Events include celebrations of the 80th birthday of the director, screenwriter and stage and set designer Zdzisław Kudła of the Animated Film Studio in Bielsko-Biała. We will also see ten films selected by Janusz Korosadowicz from animations awarded during the twenty years of the OFAFA Festival of Auteur Animation Films in Kraków (1993-2015). We recall films by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson, legendary stars of avant-garde and animation. Don’t miss the screening of Marcin Giżycki’s Theatrum Magicum awarded best experimental film at festivals including the IFF in Santa Cruz in Argentina. The film tells the story of a performance by an illusionist at a theatre in Łańcut in the late 18th century, using original stage sets from the heyday of the Łańcut court theatre – one of the few surviving in Europe. The audiovisual performance by the Toranoko Performing Arts Company from Japan set against animations by Koji Yamamura also promises to be fascinating.

The festival also presents several feature-length films from last season. If you missed it in the cinemas, the festival is the perfect opportunity to watch the phenomenal Loving Vincent directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, producer of the Oscar-winning Peter and the Wolf. The Polish-British co-production was made by first filming live action, which was then repainted in oil paint using a technique resembling van Gogh’s distinctive style. It took 115 artists from 19 countries two years to paint each frame, second by second. The complete film comprises around 65,000 paintings. The film also intertwines over 120 works by van Gogh himself. Another fascinating item on the festival programme is Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses – a bitter-sweet tale of family secrets and the power of creativity, poetry and dreams. Voiceover actors include Sandra Oh and Ellen Page. Ethel & Ernest by Roger Mainwood, leading British director of animations, is a moving tribute to love and everyday life based on an award-winning graphic novel by the beloved British author and illustrator Raymond Briggs about his parents. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the over-the-top vision created by the leading independent American animator Bill Plympton: his Revengeance is a quasi-gangster story of a hapless bounty hunter following a teenage girl hell-bent on revenge.

Accompanying events also include summaries of the 25th International Animated Film Workshop Kraków – Lanckorona and the Visegrad Animation Forum: New Talents 2017, a screening of a film by Georges Méliès believed to have been lost from the National Film Archive in Prague, and a presentation of the latest “Film Quarterly” focusing on cinematic tricks.

“Etiuda&Anima is a perfect opportunity to learn about and gain skills in cinematic arts. Once again we are hosting animation workshops for kids, lectures for cinephiles and masterclasses for professionals,” promise the organisers. Kaja Renkas and Iwona Pomianowska suggest How To Liven Up Film Posters, while Piotr Szczepanowicz leads animation workshops for the youngest fans. There are the regular Heliograf and Cinebus workshops, as well as the interdisciplinary workshop Meetings With Japan focusing on dance, origami and drawing. The programme also features the conference Twisted Dreams of History. V4 Perspective on Propaganda, Ideology and Animation and screenings of propaganda films from the Visegrad Group. (Barbara Zając)