Anima Mundi Festival

Anima Mundi 2011 Rio de Janeiro Audience Awards

2011-08-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

Best Feature Film for Children

1. THE MISSED LYNX - Raul García (Spain)
2. HEART AND YUMMIE - Masaya Fujimori (Japan)
3. THE SANDMAN AND THE LOST LAND OF DREAMS - Jesper Mølle e Sinem Sakaoglu (France and Germany)

Best Student Film

1. CHYBICKA SE VLOUDI - Aneta Kýrová (Czech Republic)
2. HAMBUSTER - Paul Alexandre; Dara Cazamea; Maxime Cazaux; Romain Delaunay; Laurent Monneron (France)
3. PARIGOT - Mehdi Alavi; Loic Bramoulle; Alex Digoix; Geoffrey Lerus; Alexandre Wolfromm (France)

Melhor Short Film for Children

1. ORMIE - Rob Silvestri (Canada)
2. BRIDGE - Ting Chian Tey (USA)
3. HOOKED - Friedl Jooste (South Africa)

Best Brazilian Short

1. BOMTEMPO - Alexandre Dubiela (Brazil)
2. FURICO & FIOFÓ - Fernando Miller (Brazil)
3. OBSOLETO - Leandro de Souza Henriques; Victor Mendonça dos Santos; Heitor Mendonça dos Santos (Brazil)

Best Short

1. CAPTAIN AWESOME: THE RUMBLE IN THE CONCRETE JUNGLE - Ercan Bozodgan; Mikkel Aabenhuus Sørensen (Denmark)
2. THE SAGA OF BIÔRN - Benjamin Kousholt (Denmark)
3. FLY de Alan Short (United Kingdom)

Anima Mundi 2011 São Paulo Audience Awards

2011-08-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

Best Feature Film for Children

1. THE MISSED LYNX - Raul García (Spain)
2. HEART AND YUMMIE - Masaya Fujimori (Japan)
3. LIGHT OF THE RIVER - Tetsuo Hirakawa (Japan)

Best Student Film

1. CHYBICKA SE VLOUDI - Aneta Kýrová (Czech Republic)
2. LE ROYAUME - Nuno Alves Rodrigues; Oussama Bouacheria; Julien Cheng; Sébastien Hary; Aymeric Kevin; Ulysse Malassagne; Franck Monier (France)
3. HAMBUSTER - Paul Alexandre; Dara Cazamea; Maxime Cazaux; Romain Delaunay; Laurent Monneron (France)

Melhor Short Film for Children

1. ORMIE - Rob Silvestri (Canada)
2. HOOKED - Friedl Jooste (South Africa)
3. BRIDGE - Ting Chian Tey (USA)

Best Brazilian Short

1. BOMTEMPO - Alexandre Dubiela (Brazil)
2. O CÉU NO ANDAR DE BAIXO - Leonardo Cata Preta (Brazil)
3. FURICO & FIOFÓ - Fernando Miller (Brazil)

Best Short

1. VICENTA - Sam Orti (Spain)
2. THE SAGA OF BIÔRN - Benjamin Kousholt (Denmark)
3. FLY de Alan Short (United Kigdom)

Anima Mundi 2011 Professional Jury Awards

2011-08-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

I NATIONAL COMPETITION OF ANIMATION FOR INTERNET – CCBB - “WATER IN MOVEMENT”

1. ESSÊNCIA - Daniel Rabanéa
2. CACHOEIRA - Rodrigo Eba
3. FÁTIMA! - Jeferson T. S. Hamaguchi

ANIMA MUNDI WEB&CEL 2011

PROFESSIONAL JURY

1. WHEELS AND LOVE - Massimo Ottoni (Italy)
2. VOROBEJ KOTORYJ UMEL DERGAT‘ SLOVO - Dmitry Geller (Russia)
3. AJUDANDO NOSSO MUNDO EM 60 SEGUNDOS - Marlon Amorim Tenório (Brazil)

AUDIENCE AWARDS

1. O FEITIÇO VIROU CONTRA O FEITICEIRO - Bruno Sarracceni Tedesco (Brazil)
2.FAST FOOD - Christiano Borges (Brazil)
3. NUDE - Colin Reid (Ireland)

CANAL BRASIL ACQUISITION AWARD

FURICO & FIOFÓ - Fernando Miller (Brazil)

CAMPINAS ANIMATION CENTER AWARD FOR BEST BRAZILIAN STUDENT
SHORT FILM

OBSOLETO - Leandro de Souza Henriques; Victor Mendonça dos Santos; Heitor Mendonça dos Santos (Brazil)

ANIMA MUNDI FESTIVAL – PROFESSIONAL JURY

Best Film* – PATHS OF HATE - Damian Nenow (Poland)

Best Animation – LUMINARIS - Juan Pablo Zaramella (Argentina)

Best Script – THE SAGA OF BIÔRN - Benjamin Kousholt (Denmark)

Best Soundtrack – DRIPPED - Léo Verrier (France)

Best Design – THE BACKWATER GOSPEL - Bo Mathorne (Denmark)

Best Comissioned Film – LOSE THIS CHILD - Yuval & Merav Nathan (Israel)

*This year the Best Film award was chosen by the ANIMA MUNDI directors and the Professional Jury.

Pixar celebrates 25 years!

2011-08-03T04:47:00.000-07:00

One of the most expected shows of 2011’s Anima Mundi was the 25 years retrospective of the biggest animation studio in the world, Pixar! The Pixar’s animation movies have been part of children and adults life all over the globe for the past one-fourth century. This special session not only represents the history of this important studio, but also shows us the growing process of the digital animation industry itself.

Pixar is an animation studio specialized in high technology for computer graphics. They not only do the animations, but also create the computer tools to develop then. There was a time , thought, where this balance did not exist. Initially, the company belonged to George Lucas, famous for the Star War saga. Lucas was far more interested in creating new computer graphics technologies that he could sell for big studios, such as Disney. For a long time, the company developed only computer programs. The sails weren’t taking of, so a few employees saw an opportunity to start doing what they loved the most: animation. John Lasseter was one of then. Graduated in Cal Arts, his biggest dream was to be able to develop animation through the computer. He found a way to do animated movies, without disobeying his boss: the first short film, Luxo Jr. was a great prototype to be showed for potential buyers.

In 1986 the company was bought by no one less than Steve Jobs and it was renamed after Pixar, a neologism that refers to the action of putting pixels. But not even the owner of Apple could help the company increasing the profits. Maybe because he was try to earn money with the wrong product, as the animation movies were still not consider commercially interesting. In 1991, the company was almost sold, because Jobs was spending too much money on it. Things started to change when they arranged a twenty-six million dollar contract with Disney to produce three animated feature movies. Toy Story, the first of its kind, was launched in 1995, setting the date were Pixar would start to become the giant it is now, winner of Oscars, Grammys and Globe Award. With the success of Toy Story, the doors for computer animations were opened forever and the industry started growing fast. We can see that Pixar is not only another company. It origins carries the very first seed of the dream of developing a computers graphic animation industry and with the stubborn of their employees this dream was turned into a fantastical reality.

The fourteen short movies in the Anima Mundi’s show allow you to take a dip in beautiful childhood memories. We brought films right from the beginning, such as Luxo Jr., the first episode of the life of the little lamp that became Pixar’s symbol, and the company’s first Oscar winner movie, Red’s Dream. The show comes also with some recent productions, like Day and Night. The short movie was produced in 2010 and was distributed to be exhibit just before Toy Story 3 in cinema rooms all over the world. The film is different from everything the company has done before, especially because of the mixing of 2D and 3D animation. Even when they are not using the most advanced technologies available, Pixar stills incredible. But the great surprise is that we brought two new films, never exhibit before: Hawaiian Vacation, a hilarious episode of Ken and Barbie’s frustrated holidays, and the beautiful and delicate La Luna, about the first steps of a little boy towards his adult life. Pixar’s movies continue to enchant kids and adults with its stories and we hope it will stay like this for another one-fourth century. When the time comes, I bet they will be doing 4D films!

Panorama and Portfolio!

2011-08-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

Another session that cannot be lost is International Panorama! This category was created to be a wide open window through which the Brazilian animation fans could check what is being produced in the international circuit. The short movies came from almost thirty different countries and are not part of the festival’s competition. The show is extremely important to improve the cultural exchange between countries. Some of the artists are internationally renowned, but little people known then in Brazil. That is David O’Reilly’s case. His most recent film, The External World, is well recognized abroad. The short movie is remarkable for its sarcasm. The author produces an environment fulfilled with figures that are well know in the animation field. These symbols are visually easy recognized, but when you get a closer look you see they don’t feet the pattern. This loss of reference produces, in a first moment, an apparently disconnect narrative, until you get to see the deep reflection underneath. The film won the 67th Venice Film Festival.

This year the panel International Panorama had a special show that reunited only animated documentaries. All the movies have real themes portrayed in an animation form. The themes are varied: in Migrópolis the audience can take a deep look in the reality of kids that see themselves forced do migrate and in The Greek Crisis Explained you can have a very different economy lesson. It is a very good debate: can an animated image represent the “external world” better than a photographic record? Or can we assume that the animation is even more sincere if we think that this “external” does not really exists? Worth to check and to think!

For the ones that are trying to figure out how to make a living doing what they love the most, animation, of course, there is the session called Portfolio, with the best commissioned animations films in several formats: commercials, corporate videos, music videos, scenes for feature movies and a lot more! This category is judged only by the professional Jury. This year they choose the animated clip Lose This Child as best piece. The music video was built with the construction of figures in the sand, which move under the moon light. The band that plays the song is called Eatliz and the clip was direct by the Grammy winners Yuval and Merav Nathan. Good music and fascinating animation! Another great movie is Ode to a Post-it Note, a commercial for the company 3M’s most famous product. In the film, one solitary Post-it decides to look for his “father” and creator. The movie star is no one less than Arthur Fry, the man who invented the Post-it!

Animation in the classroom!

2011-08-02T06:46:00.001-07:00

One of Anima Mundi’s biggest dreams is to see that the animation is foot by foot taking over the classrooms. That is why the special sessions Future Animator and Animation of Course are so important for the festival. They both represent different evidence of the animation presence and relevance in education, whether it is to form or train new teachers or through the insertion of this type of language in pedagogical initiatives for formal basic schools.

In the Future Animator panel, the short-movies were done by kids from all over the world, who are giving their first steps towards the animated world. We can see works from Argentina, Brazil and even Portugal. There are also films made by young adults who are starting now as well, such as the professors that join us in Anima Escola courses. It is really worth while to see this amazing work.

In the Animations of Course panels, we get in touch with projects developed in specialized animation schools (check a little about some of then here), the main symbol of the process that is leading towards a biggest expansion of the animated know-how. Some of those institutions offer the same technological tools that the big animation studios. When they did not exist, the production of films that were concerned about exploring new languages and techniques was practically restrain to independent animators. The rise of these new teaching spaces allows the production of high technique quality movies without being submit to commercial imperatives. A structural change like this one is central to guarantee the development of new languages and the experimentation of different themes. Some of the movies made in international animation school compete in the same categories as the films produced in big studios, not only in festivals but also in big awards, like the Oscar! Check how many great things have been done by these students!

Chernokids
In an orphanage in Ukraine, children are getting ready for mother's day, their mother being the Tchernobyl Power Plant.

Playing ghost

Five year old Amy and her Mum are divided in grief for Dad, occupying very separate worlds in their struggle to cope. But whilst Mum sinks into numb solitude, struggling to keep to routine, Amy seeks a more magical escape that ultimately has its own perils.

Condamné à Vie
Charles Bonnemort discovers his immortality after he attends to kill himself.

Special (and scary) short-movies shows!

2011-08-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

This year we had sixteen short-movies shows in Anima Mundi. These films were competing in several awards categories . We had two specials: one with only terror movies and one we called Surreal Mundi. They were both scary, but in different ways!

The terror special came with eight frightening movies. The productions were brought from France, South Korea, Denmark, Italy, United Kingdom, United States and Singapore. The styles and themes were varied, but some of then were great movies that showed that animation can function in a several variety of genres. Check a little bit!

The Backwater Gospel
An incredible portray of one of man most natural emotion: the fear of death. In the movie, Gospel and Death walk over the same shadow and when this darkness arrives to Backwater, the citizens watch their most deep instincts coming to the surface. The script conducts the spectator in a subtle and tense way. The design and art are simply amazing.

Hambuster and Junk

In Hambuster, a man is attacked by his own lunch. A metaphor about modernity’s bad eating habits? Technically well done and a little bit disturbing. And it seems that food is really one of the biggest villains nowadays. The film Junk talks about the same theme, focusing on the obsession in junk food. Terror especially for those who want to loose weight!

Metachaos
When two dichotomous and diametrically opposed realities meet and mix, we enter into the Metachaos. Aesthetically rich, the film is fulfilled with futuristic and dark elements creating an intense visual impact.

Another incredible special session is Surreal Mundi, indicate for those who love the surrealistic classics. The audience can fell the absurd generate by the movies Taevalaul, from the Estonian director Mati Küti and Maska from the incredibles Brothers Kay.

Stephen and Timothy Quay, also known as Brothers Quay, are two highly renowned animators, whose specialty is stop motion. The identical twins live in England and work together since high school. They developed a fascinating work, which involves most objects animation. Their film is very strong in terms of image and installs a weirdness aesthetically achieved through the lights and shadows orientations. Deeply admired in Anima Mundi, this time the brothers bring the history of beautiful Duenna, whose duty to accomplish a mission forces her to make a difficult choice.

Fernando Trueba presents Chico & Rita

2011-08-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

This year we had the honor of receiving the recognized Spanish cinema director Fernando Trueba in our Anima Mundi Festival in Rio de Janeiro! He came specially to present and make comments about his new movie, the animation feature Chico & Rita.

Fernando Trueba is the author behind remarkable movies, such as Belle Époque, Oscar winning for best foreigner movie in 1993. He did also a film in Brazil, called Milagre Candeal, a documentary that promotes the encounter between the Cuban musician Bebo Valdez and the Brazilian Carlinhos Brown.

Chico & Rita is Trueba’s first attempt of using the animations language and technique. He told us that the main reason why he decided to do this project was his big admiration for his friend and co-director, Javier Mariscal, a renowned graphic artist from Cataluña who had always dreamed of doing an animation. The film has also a third director, Tonio Errando, Mariscal’s brother, who was in charge of supervising the animations, which were being made in studios spread all over the world. The audience was absolutely enchanted by the movie and its beautiful and sensual images embraced by high quality songs as sound track.

Marcos Magalhães, one of the festival’s director, joint Trueba in the stage after the exhibition of the film to have a little chat with the director and the audience. First, he was curious to know from Fernando which were the advantages and disadvantages of doing an animation movie in comparison to a normal life action film. Fernando said that one of the most difficult aspects of doing an animation is that it takes too much time to be ready. “We are one person when we start the movie and another when we finish it”. In spite of the differences during the production, he said he loved doing it and he has projects to start new animation movies.

To be able to direct the animators, Trueba had to take advantage of his experience with life action movies. So he decided to shoot the whole story with actors, in Cuba, setting also the camera angles. These scenes, however, weren’t reproduced in the animation through the use of rotoscopy. They served only as a reference for the animators to redraw everything and animate. The fact that the animation work would be divided in different studios all over the globe was one of the main reasons for that. The film has scenes that were animated in Spain, Hungry, Filipinas, Lithonia and even Brazil (Lightstar Studio, in São Paulo), so it was necessary to have a clear model to base on as well as a strong reference of the movements and Mariscal’s precision as art director.

Fernando defines the movie as a musical. Normally directors do the screenplay and then, after the film is ready, they add the sound track. Chico & Rita wasn’t made like that. The screenplay was written at the same time the sound tracks were chosen (classics of the Cuban music and the American Bebop), in a way that the lyrics and the songs could help telling and conducting the story. As our other guest, Shinichiro Watanabe, Trueba is a huge fan of music, especially jazz, and for him it was an enormous pleasure to record this amazing songs for the film

We hope that Trueba keeps up doing animations. Chico & Rita has already become a classic! The magic of the movie was spread all over Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, carried by the ones who have seen it and loved it.

Animated Chat Interview: Carlos Saldanha

2011-08-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

Friends always come back. Carlos is an old friend of the Anima Mundi festival. He has participated in the festival several times, as a spectator, an animator and a guest. His first short, Time For Love, was screened in the festival in 1994 and included in our first collection of “The Best of Anima Mundi” (which was still in the VHS format). In 1996 and 1997, Carlos presented seminars in computer graphics, already representing Blue Sky studios, from New York. In 2002, he was invited as a guest in the Animated Chat for the first time. He had just finished directing Ice Age with Chris Wedge. He then went on to direct the Oscar nominated short Gone Nutty (2003) and co-direct the feature film Robots (2005), taking the next step into directing feature films on his own, with two huge blockbusters: Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (2006) and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009).

Carlos Saldanha is the newest national hero, due to his feat of transforming his (our) city into the scenery and character of yet another huge international animation blockbuster: “RIO” (2011). He will share with us, like close friends do, the best secrets in the construction of this hit film.

1. What first spiked your interest in animation?
I’ve enjoyed drawing since I was a little kid. I used to create comics and stories, paint, make caricatures, and I also loved watching cartoons. But my curiosity towards animation only blossomed when I was about eighteen, as I watched shorts created through computer graphics, especially “Luxo Jr.”, by John Lasseter. I was fascinated by the mixture of technology and art. That’s when I decided to go for it.
2. What was the research process for the film “Rio” like?
Having been born in Rio, I already knew a lot about the city, but I still bought dozens of books and DVDs, and did a lot of filming and picture taking around the city, so that I could show it to my crew, which was almost entirely made up of gringos! But this was still not enough, so I had to come to Rio with a small creative crew, to get the “feel” of the city and experience it in the same way as the character Blu. Sharing my emotion of being in Rio with the crew was amazing. We even got to participate in the carnival parade in Sapucaí! It was my first time doing that and it was a wonderful experience!
3. Are you developing a new project?
At the moment, I’ve got lots of ideas under development, but nothing definitive. We’ve bought the rights for the book “Ferdinand”, and we’re writing the script. But all I really want right now is a break!!!

4. What animators and artists inspire you?
I’ve always loved Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. The Disney classics, from the golden days of animation, are also a source of inspiration. Bambi, Dumbo and Pinocchio are unforgettable.

5. Can you tell us a little bit about you relationship with Anima Mundi?
It’s always an enormous thrill and pleasure to participate in Anima Mundi! The festival is an incredible achievement, which I like to come to whenever I can! It has changed the lives of a great number of artists who dreamed of working with animation, like myself, and is still an inspiration to lots of new animators from all over Brazil!
Anima Mundi is just great!!!

Animated Chat 2011: Carlos Saldanha and the Magic of Rio

2011-07-31T10:39:00.000-07:00

In the last Animated Chat of 2011’s Anima Mundi edition in Rio de Janeiro, the Animated Square was full of people eager to listen to one of Brazil’s most recognized animators: Carlos Saldanha, who recently direct the film Rio. Saldanha is an old friend of the festival and this was his second participation in the Animated Chat. He shared with us his own history of success and told us everything we wanted to know about Blu, the male blue macaw, star of the film Rio.

Carlos has been living in the United States for the past twenty years. He left Brazil and his home city, Rio de Janeiro, to do an animation course in New York. He had already studied a bit of computer science and he didn’t want to loose that. In the animation field he could put together his technological skills and art. When he first arrived to America he was shocked with how many computers there were available in the school, something that was rare in Brazil’s reality. He started working day and night and a professor invited him to do his masters in the school. Saldanha decided to stay and started taking lessons about concept and theoretical aspects of animation. Most of the other students came from an artistic graduation, but had difficulty to deal with the technique tools and programs. The digital part was never a problem for him, so he ended up doing two short movies during the masters. One of then, Time for Love, was presented in 2002’s Anima Mundi. “This is one of the very few movies that I can say it is a hundred per cent mine and it is great to have it as a reference and be able to evaluate my own growth process as an animator”, said the director.

Before finishing the masters, Saldanha received a new invitation this time to work in his professor little animation studio, the Blue Sky. Back then, the animation market was starting to boil because the first digital feature movie, Toy Story, was about to come out. The company was not very lucrative, but they decided to give it a shot. For a while they did only commercials, including Big Deal for Bell Atlantic. He told us that he had the opportunity of transforming something complex into a pretty simple and good idea, which for him is one of the most amazing things about animation, the capacity to turn very simple ideas in great contents. The commercial was a success and that helped open new doors to the company. For Carlos that meant the transition from animation to direction. He became after effects supervisor in the next project, the film Joe’s apartment.

With the thirteen minutes of the funny and disgusting animated cockroaches, Blue Sky achieved a new level within the American animation industry, which was going through a series of transformations. The studios were joint together to create big animation complexes and there was a rumor that new features movies were about to take off. Blue Sky ended up joint to Fox and a little while later came the opportunity to do Ice Age. Carlos co-directed the movie with Chris Wedge. A few months before the launch there was a big expectation in the company: if the film succeed, they will for sure be given other screenplays, if not, there was a highly possibility that the studio would be closed. To stimulate everyone in the office, Carlos decided it was the time to get on board in a different and funny project, so he started doing the short movie Gone Nutty. The film stars the squirrel Scratt, one of the most beloved characters in Ice Age. The movie was a hit and ended up nominated to the Oscar. Unfortunately, Carlos didn’t take the award home with him.

After the success of Ice Age, Blue Sky started doing movies without even stop to take a breath. Robots, Ice Age 2 and 3 and Horton Hear a Who were produced during this period. This was also the time when Carlos decided to achieve an old dream: making a movie about Rio de Janeiro. “All of the sudden people were thinking about doing films located in France, China and many other countries and I started asking myself why not a film in Brazil”, said the director. The initial idea was to do a movie about a penguin. “I remember reading newspaper articles about these little penguins that arrived in the beaches of Rio during winter”. In the story, the animal would be locked up by traffickers and would have to fight for his freedom. But the most touching aspect of the movie was not to watch the penguin getting rid off the physical chains, but actually the process of setting his heart free. The Brazilian’s heat would inspire the penguin and melt down his ice cold heart, teaching him how to love.

Unfortunately several other movies about penguins were being produced, so Carlos had to think about something else without loosing the essence of the story. They came up with the idea of using a macaw as character. From there, it was born Blu, who is actually from Rio in the story, but that has never felt his own land’s heat. Saldanha told us that the film has a lot about his personal experiences. “I wanted to reconstruct in animation the feeling I usually have when I first arrive in Rio after being a long time away”, he said. In the movie, it takes a while until Blu finds out his “brazility” and starts considering Rio as his home.

Saldanha wanted a very colorful and happy film, that shown not only Rio’s visual beautiful, but also its cultural diversity, music and carnival. The commercial viability of the movie was important. The film should be didactic and able to talk to everyone. “I was not doing a movie only to Brazil”, he said, “it was a movie to the whole world, so I had to incorporate elements that were familiar, which people would be able to connect even if they didn’t know anything about the city”. That was a challenge even during the production because only three of the team members actually have been to Rio. Saldanha decided to bring six of then to visit the town and find out their own impressions about it. The trip ended up being very positive to the production process.

Six months were necessary to bring the main characters of Rio to life. Blu’s design was outsourced and developed in several different countries, especially in Spain. Before animating the characters, once their design is finished, it is necessary to record the voices of the actors that are going to interpret each personage, so that the flash and bone facial expressions can be introduced to the animation process. After that, some 2D sketches are made and only when they are approved by Carlos, the animators can start transforming it in a 3D reality. Saldanha told us that one of the most difficult aspects of animating animals is the feathers. The Blue Sky team developed a special software just to deal with the fur of the animals in previous movies, such as Ice Age. The program was adapted to be able to animate birds. About five million microscopic feathers were put in Blu’s body. That increased the animation possibilities, making the animal a lot more real. Once finished the body and constitution, the animation challenges of movement starts. One of the biggest concerns was whether they could animate a bird that dances Samba, a typical dance from Brazil that involves several difficult and fast foot movements. In spite of everyone thoughts, it was not a legitimate Brazilian that were able to put his dance in the computer. It was a Finnish animator that had no talent at all to dance Samba, but a lot of ability with his hands to manage to animate the dancing bird.

Animating human figures was also a challenge. Saldanha didn’t want perfect real characters, so the people in the movie have a caricature aspect. He told us that it is very expensive to animate human by human, so what they usually do is create six basic models, in which they can chance the color of the skin, hair and clothes. These six types were used to create the main human characters, but can also be seen in the extras composition. To create crowds full of people, it is the same process. In the last act, for example, when they are passing through the carnival parade, it were necessary fifteen equal modules, with the same persons on each module, to fulfill the four thousand hundred sits bleachers. To create the favelas (slums), one of the aspects the animators were more interested about, the same scheme was used. Several sets of houses were created in 3D and then combined to form a big favela. Many technological tools were developed during the production of the movie to overcome the graphical problems. The animators were very dedicated and wanted to create a perfect picture. There are so many details that if you don’t have a Blue Ray DVD and a very good view you are not going to be able to detect!

Carlos Saldanha joint his computer skills with the passion for his home town to create a delightful and interesting movie. Rio showed a little bit of Brazil to the whole world and the fans are already eager to see the second. “Usually when the film turns out to be a success it is possible that the studio asks for another episode. But we don’t have anything closed, not even an idea for a screenplay”, he said, and add: “I don’t have any project now, I’m going to enjoy my vacations!” Is it hard to guess where he is spending his holidays? In Rio de Janeiro, of course!

A little bit about Shinichiro Watanabe

2011-07-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

Japan invades Anima Mundi once again, with the presence of one of its most renowned and respected directors and authors: Shinichiro Watanabe. Born in 1965, in Kyoto, he is greatly admired for his works, such as the iconic television series that originated the feature film Cowboy Bebop, and the Samurai Champloo series.

Watanabe began his career as an animator at age 20. He joined Sunrise studios as a production assistant, and became co-director of Macross Plus, the continuity of the successful Macross series, in 1994. He began his career as a director with Cowboy Bebop, the series that became a huge hit worldwide and originated the feature film Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, 2001 (which later became known simply as Cowboy Bebop: the Movie). In 2003, Watanabe joined the select group of Japanese directors invited to create their versions of stories based on the universe of the action film The Matrix, in the cult American production Animatrix. He was put in charge of two episodes (Kid’s Story and A Detective Story), which helped consolidate his status as an international animation celebrity. His next work was a series that presented an innovative format, remixing samurai tradition with the modernity of hip hop – Samurai Champloo, which premiered in 2004.

As a matter of fact, remixing is a key concept in Watanabe’s mastery in harmonizing music and image. It is not just a simple mix of styles, but a balanced and intense combination of longstanding flavors, where visual and musical ingredients blend into a refined culinary recipe of a gourmet. The soundtrack commands his narrative, and the rhythm of his scenes varies in intensity and style according to the dramatic moment. This has led Watanabe to recently start working on soundtracks for other directors, an activity that brings him a sense of pleasure and accomplishment. In Michiko & Hatchin, a recently releases series with sceneries and characters inspired by Brazil, Shinichiro Watanabe, as a musical director, uses Brazilian music, of which he seems to be a great expert and admirer.

Cowboy Bebop: the Movie, which we will have the privilege of watching on a big screen, with the presence of the director (in Brazil, it was released as a direct-to-video and DVD movie), is a film where each sequence brings a different and sophisticated mixture of space and urban sci-fi, American jazz (thus bebop) and western movie style violence. Each one of these sequences was planned according to a specific hit song, such as Sympathy for the Devil or My Funny Valentine, or musical genre, ranging from samba to heavy metal.

Watanabe once stated in an interview that he would like to demystify the general idea that Japanese people avoid expressing their feelings. To him, this was true only during certain moments and time periods, such as the Edo period, a time of repression in which he placed the samurais of Samurai Champloo. This is the reason why, in this series, he creates this contrast through the eloquence of hip hop.

During the current reign of Anime, it is clear that the Japanese people, as quiet and shy as they might seem, have a lot to say. So prepare your eyes and ears for the Animated Chat with Shinichiro Watanabe, in the Anima Mundi 2011!

* The presence of Shinichiro Watanabe in Anima Mundi is a result of partnerships with the Instituto Japão POP Br and Dô Cultural.

Animated Chat 2011: Shinichiro Watanabe

2011-07-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

Japan was one of the few countries that were able to build its own animation industry. In those far lands, the animation art end up acquiring original characteristics, that are known as Anime. There is a false idea that the world can be viewed through only one type of lens. That is proved wrong when we find out how rich is the animation language in Japan and how different it is from ours. To increase the exchange with the “oriental other”, Anima Mundi, in partnership with Institute Japão Pop BR, brought one of the most important symbols of the Japanese animation art, Shinichiro Watanabe.

Side by side with his translator (the polite Jo Takahashi, from Dô Cultural), Watanabe started to tell his life story to an audience that was anxious to know more about the director. He said he was also very happy to be in Brazil, a country that since a young boy he has been fascinated with. Deeply appreciator of Brazilian music, Watanabe has always tried to embody the rhythms of our culture to his movies. In one of his films, there is a sequence where we can see three old men sitting in a bar. Curiously, their names were Antonio, Carlos and Jobim.

Watanabe started at the age of twenty with an important doubt: cinema or animation? He told us laughing that back then there was a rumor that working with animation was really easy. He decided to give it a try. From that, he had a good and a bad news: he discovered he had talent to work in this area, but he soon found out that it wouldn’t be easy. In 1994, he was hired by the Sunrise studio, as production assistant. He learned everything he could until he was given the opportunity of co-direct a film, Macross Plus. Shinichiro told us that his part in the job was to give support to the main director, what frustrated him many times because the feature was not coming out as he thought it should. A few years later, he was reward with the freedom to do his own TV serie, Cowboy Bebop, which soon proved Watanabe talent.

In Cowboy Bebop, Watanabe reunited everything he liked in animation. Spike, the main character, is kind of an ideal figure that has profound impact in Sinichiro’s work and is a remarkable symbol to many animation fans all around the globe. He was inspired in the icon Bruce Lee, not only in the way he fought, but also his philosophy. “The way Spike fights is almost choreographed with the music and that is something I took from Bruce Lee”. The TV series became a film in 2001. Nowadays, Watanabe is writing the screenplay to transform Spike into a flash and bone character. Keanu Reeves has shown some interest in playing it. With the typical oriental serenity, he said that there is nothing confirmed. “The only thing I’m afraid of is to do a life action that ends up like Dragonball Z”. We appreciate your concern!

A few years after doing Cowboy Bebop – The Movie, Watanabe was invited to direct to episodes of the American series Animatrix, based on the big hit Matrix. The short-films Kid’s Story and A Detective Story were exhibit during the chat and Shinichiro told us a little bit more about those pieces. He told us that is very common for people to ask whether he used or not rotoscope (technique where the animation is designing over life action, frame by frame) to do the episode Kid’s Story, because of the almost photographical background. Some parts were actually shot with real characters, but the tapes were only used to serve as a reference. The episode A Detective Story was actually an accident. He was invited to do just one, but in the last minute the directors needed another one, so the movie end being produced with one-third of the time available for the first one. They had to cut some action scenes and put more passages without movement, just a quick simulation. This kind of technique, when well used like Watanabe did, can reduce the production time, without any loss of quality.

Shinichiro told us a lot about his relation with music as well. All his films have amazing sound tracks. But the level of involvement between music and director is a lot deeper than simply choose what it is going to be played in each scene. For him, music is a matter of concept. In Cowboy Bebop, he introduces the way of thinking and feeling within the Bebop movement, one of the most important influences in American jazz. Bebop seeks to bring a free halo to music. It is an attempt to break through that believes in the end of the score’s imperative and opens new paths towards improvisation. Sinichiro brought not only the Bebop’s rhythm to his films, but also embodied the very meaning of it into his work. He started to conduct his movies in a more loosen way, accepting advices, tips and suggestions from anyone. During the rehearsals for record the soundtrack, for example, he would let any musician come along at any time. He wanted to make the music richer day by day, introducing new elements. Even in the screenplay creation process, this way of working was adopted. Anyone could help thinking it through and adding new components. A guy who had just started in the studio became main screenplay director because of Sinichiro’s open mind.

None of this would be possible if Watanabe wasn’t a genius in compositing. He has the power to unite several elements and create an environment where they can potentiate one another. The result is a rich and broad product that has no cohesion flaws. This can be clearly felt in the TV series Samurai Champloo (2004). Watanabe puts together the traditional and serene culture of the samurai with the intense modernity of the hip-hop music. In the hands of other directors, the product of this sum would be a hybrid work incapable of inspire due to the disconnection of its elements. With Watanabe in control, we have an integrated narrative flux that strikes our attention from the beginning till the last minute. The harmonic marriage of image and sound is the key to make this possible. The music becomes an important narrative element, where the flux of its intensity and rhythm has the dramatic momentum as center of gravity. Even the series name is a reference to this capacity of integration. Champloo is a typical dish, made in an island on the south of Japan. It is easy to do! All it takes is to put together everything you like in a pan and fry! That is the essence of Shinichiro’s work: uniting all the elements he is passionate about, balancing ingredients to achieve the most tasteful flavor as possible. “I made an animated champloo”, said the director.

Nowadays, Shinichiro has been working as musical producer in the TV series Michiko and Hatchin. The historiy takes place in Paradiso, a country inspired in Brasil. He told us that he invited himself to work in the program when he found out that it had Brazilian elements. Shinichiro said he hopes that some TV channel in our country tries to bring the program here. Then, to finish, Watanabe presented something different from everything he has done before. “In my histories there are too much people killing each other. After thinking a little bit I decided that I wanted to do a movie where nobody dies”, said the director. It came from this decision the delicate and sweet short movie Baby Blue. It was clear that Shinichiro Watanabe is an artist of many skills. His specialty is the ability of working with the most different elements not only adding, but actually integrating. As a result, we see all the initial ingredients and something else. It is within this “else” that lays Shinichiro Watanabe’s magic.

Masterclass: Ryan Woodward

2011-07-30T14:30:00.001-07:00

The last Masterclass was definitely one of the most touching moments of 2011’s Anima Fórum edition, an event specially organized for professional animators. In spite of the “business” purpose of the encounters, the felling and the passion were pretty much alive in all the lectures. This was remarkable in Ryan Woodward’s Masterclass. He is an American animator and storyboards artist, who worked in the films Ironman 2 and Spiderman 2 and 3. He came to Anima Forum to tell us about the creation process of storyboards and animatics for feature movies. And he did not forget talk a little bit about the inspiration and sacrifice demanded to create an authorial short-movie.

Since Ryan was five years old, he already knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. And others already knew that about him as well. In one of his notebooks, a teacher sent his mother a message: “Ryan doesn’t pay attention in class. He draws too much”. In 1995, he started looking for a job in the animation field. Back then, there were no such things as animation courses or specialized schools. The studios would hire you only by looking your portfolio of drawings and then you would learn working. He was hired by Warner and helped doing the feature movie Space Jam.

After a while, the animation industry started to change. New technologies were incorporated and now drawing well was not enough anymore. The animators should have knowledge of computer science and skills to deal with the new advanced tools. Ryan knew that he should learn to keep up with the transformation process. He tried, but he ended up finding out that his heart belonged to the simple pencil and choose to leave the algorithms behind. To stay in the business doing what he wanted, Woodward realized that he would have to find a new area. That is when he started showing some interest in storyboard and animatics’ creation, even thought he didn’t know absolutely nothing about it. He left WB to look for another job, while he was trying to learn more about this specialty.

For someone who used to draw too much since the age of five, learning the proper skills to create storyboards wasn’t that hard. Ryan developed sort of a method to adapt his own mind to the creative process of designing storyboards. He pointed out that one of the most important things is to always carry a sketch book, so then you can be able to draw pretty much everything that crosses your eyes. The purpose of this is not to improve aesthetics drawing abilities, but to stimulate the artist’s capacity of observing and documenting the biggest variety of situations as possible. “Then, when a director asks you to draw a man in a bike, for example, you already have a memory to rely on”. This way, the artist is amplifying his horizon of creation possibilities.

Another important advice given by Woodward is the necessity of training that part of your brain that is responsible for creativity and imagination. He told us that he usually draws figures based on living models, in a realistic perspective, copying in the paper what he sees. He call this an “academic” portray. After been bossed around by his eyes, he says he likes to let his imagination fly free, with heart and feeling. “I like to be able to interpret the model in a creative form”. So he draws the figures again, but now in exaggerated and deformed ways, that doesn’t correspond to the “reality”. This process, according to Ryan, activates the part of the brain that is responsible for creation and not only copy. In long term, this would make your mind a lot more reactive in moments of creation demand, where you have to draw something you are not actually familiar with or that you have never seen. He found out, working as an animation teacher, that the students that are more concerned about making a photographical copy of their models are the ones that have the biggest difficulty when it comes to creation. Woodward believes that drawing is a constantly journey through your own mind to find ways that allows you to think things in different frequencies and perspectives.

All these methods could only be discovered after years of practice. After living Warner, Ryan went to work for Sony, where he drew the storyboards for the last two Spiderman’s films, directed by Sam Raimi. Ryan told us that he learned a lot with the director. “The best type of director you can possibly work with are the ones that let you participate of the creative process”. Raimi used to come to Ryan and say: “I had an idea”, then he would describe something completely fantastic and would always finish with the sentence “draw that for me?” For Ryan, working like this is a million times better than to just receive a screenplay and an order to draw letter per letter.

All this time working in constantly communication with the director, made Ryan realize which skills make a good storyboard artist. He believes that is not the artist job to judge what can work in the movie, because the person doesn’t see the full picture as deeply as the one who is directing. The important is to give support and stimulate the expansion of the director’s ideas. The storyboard artist needs to add value to the initials thoughts and suggest new ones, to complement. The purpose should always be to add, never to compete. There is also the other side that should be kept in mind: the producer’s. The directors don’t spend their time worrying about logistics and budget. It is the producer job to make the film economically viable. Ryan pointed out that is important to have good-judgment and be able to balance creativity and possibility, so you don’t transform the production team’s life into a living heal.

Another important skill is the capacity of thinking the narrative arc of the film and its continuity. You can be able to do amazing figures inside every single board, but it is necessary that the scenes work in a harmonic and cohesive way, board to board. For that, it is central to know a lot about cinematography, which means actually knowing how the camera conducts the story. It is important to also think about the actors, recognize their possibilities and let they participate of the creative process. To cut a long story short: the storyboard animator is an artist of balance. He walks upon the tightrope, sustaining white china plates full of creativity, narrative, draw, cinematography and many other ingredients of the creation process.

Ryan Woodward seeks for balance within his professional life in Hollywood. But he is also trying to reach an internal balance. “I have a lot of fun working in these commercial projects, but it comes a time that something starts itching on the inside and you have to do something of your own, otherwise it will eat you alive”. From time to time, Ryan takes a breath from Hollywood to dedicate to something he really wants to do, something to feed his soul. Once he did a comic book and then he started doing short movies about things he liked. In this last creative momentum, Ryan produced one of the most amazing pieces that are being exhibit in this edition: the short-movie Thought of You. The inspiration came during a flight. He was feeling very tired, physically and emotionally for be working too much. All of the sudden, the music “Thought of You” started to play in his IPod. That minute he knew he must do something with it.

Simple, delicate and remarkable for a sweetness that brings the pain attached, the human figures’ dance of Thought of You translates the history of those who are watching. Ryan put together some of his greatest passions: drawing, 2D animation and contemporary dance. “I made a movie for me in a way that is almost a little selfish”, said the artist. “It is an attempt to solve some internal issues. But I would never reveal what the movie means to me. What I hope is that each and every single person who watches it can be able to find a little bit of their own life inside this animation”.

The lecture ended up with the audience applauding endlessly. It weren’t only the good advice he gave about designing storyboards or the beauty of the short-movies produced with the soul. It was the reunion of all these elements that can be resumed into one thing: the passion for animation.

You can check here the official website of Thought of You and watch the film and the documentary that tells its story, besides more information about the project Conté Animated.

Animated Chat Interview: David Daniels

2011-07-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

When he turned eight, David Daniels had in insight as he and his sisters played with modeling clay: while cutting a block of clay with a sharp knife, he was enchanted by the forms that appeared in each slice. He carried that impression with him for fourteen years, until he went to study at CalArts and produced his final project film, Buzz Box, in the technique he named Strata Cut. The images fuse together and transform into other images in a rhythmic frenzy, as if they were moving oil paintings. From then on, David began perfecting and expanding his technique and the art of telling stories through slices of modeling clay filmed frame by frame. He applied this technique to several of his works, such as the Pee Wee’s Playhouse television series, Peter Gabriel’s award winning music video, Big Time, and ABC’s retrospective on Michael Jackson, Moonwalker. In 2002, David opened Bent Image Lab with Chel White, an award winning independent studio, known for its films and spots created with mixed media animation. In 2006, Tsui Ling Toomer joined the company, of which the Brazilian director Nando Costa also became an associate in 2009.

1. What aspects of your life converged to make the creation of the strata-cut technique possible?
When I was a small child, I paid a lot of attention to very small details and textural things. I was given the time just to look, think, and amuse myself without too much interference, and I spent long stretches very focused in my own world. My adult life is so cluttered it’s hard to have time for truly original thoughts, but as a kid, I could stare at light hitting lint balls on the carpet with my face sideways to the ground for half an hour. My mother allowed me almost unlimited to ‘play with clay’ from the age of five, along with my two sisters, Shelley and Cary. She let us use a dedicated room and table to just this … a play room whose only purpose was to sit and create clay sculpture. The table this all took place we named ‘Claytown.’ Stories and imagination were of course a great deal of what came out of that time, but my fascination with how things are sculpturally shaped was ‘in my blood’ from my earliest memories. The germ of ‘Strata Cut’ came to me in an instant one birthday when I was eight years old. I don’t think it was my birthday, I can’t remember. We had the party, then went back to Claytown and made a crude cake out of modeling clay in imitation of the party cake. When my sister sliced open a piece of clay, and all the buried colors and shapes were still inside … that instant was a moment frozen in time for me. The cut made the image so fresh. It wasn’t dull, or blurry. it was magically clean, and clear, and precise. We went on to experiment with a clay hard boiled egg (with the hidden yellow yolk) and sure enough the slice revealed everything buried again. I knew this was special. I did not have any idea how to ‘use it’ at that age, but I filed it away forever as something I vowed to ‘return to.’ This revelation was something never to let go of and always to remember. So nothing was done at that moment, but the insight and determination to do something that became Strata Cut was absolutely born from that experience. I also had a young interest in architecture until I realized I could make all the building shapes I wanted, but they would just sit there and never really change or move or do anything. I dropped architecture around age 11, and when I was given a super 8 camera by my mother as a birthday present. I began to make stop motion movies, and one of them was good enough to win several awards when I was 13. This brought me some decent prize money when I had little, and an all expenses paid trip to New York, which definitely opened my eyes. I was impressed. I think I realized I a living could be made in this thing they call ‘animation,’ and have gravitated back to that feeling of adventure ever since. Animation = travel and running around money is the equation that formed my life. I worked on a lot of my own stop motion and low end live action shorts for the next nine or ten years, but never forgot ‘to go back to it.’ I vowed to always go back to those sliced images and really discover their secret. The time finally happened the summer before I went to Cal Arts, when I was 22. I had waited fourteen patient years when everything clicked.I was supported for expenses by my family and rent by my girlfriend for this entire summer. This is when I sat down and methodically sculpted and cut, and angled and sliced clay every which way, trying to develop a set of rules, a vocabulary for the use of this technique. It was all figured out by trial and error over 6 weeks. Without this lucky circumstance of free time without other school or job obligations, I don’t know that I ever would have followed up on my 8 year old insight. I was very lucky to have the time and the skills at that point to finally re examine the insight of hidden sculptural images. In my years at Cal Arts, I was given a massive studio space, the so called ‘phone closet’ to work in. No other student was given a space so large. This was in fact a hellishly noisy area that no one else wanted to work in, but the room was enormous. I could spread out and really paint with strata cut (Van Gogh style clay) and experiment with the emerging style demands and evolving look of things and everything about it. I was very lucky to have this circumstance, since it took several years to develop create and execute Buzz Box during the night, while doing my normal class work during the day. The constant extreme background noise of this environment drove me somewhat crazy, and accounts for some of the extra bit of angst expressed in the already visually aggressive movie. I was lucky that Drew Neumann did the sound for my first strata cut, and developed a cutting edge musical and sampling style (remember this was 1984) that fit the kind of happy/horror visual madness of the piece so perfectly. The soundtrack supports the uniqueness of the images that just any score would not have done.Since that time, I think I’ve developed an immense understanding and control of strata cut that never existed before I took up a fascination with time sculpting, and controlling the predictable outcome of the buried shapes that reveal hidden animation. In the years after Buzz Box, someone pointed out Oskar Fischinger to me … I knew his general work, but not about his abstract wax cutting machine. It’s a giant blade cutting a frame at a time, but it’s not what I would call strata cut. It’s mechanical abstraction without any of the controlled animation, the precise motion design or time sculpting language that I developed. 10 years ago, I somehow saw a few seconds of a silent movie Russian wax cut from the 20’s that was earlier than his abstractions. This clip was a simple figurative extrusion, I think it was of a cat or horse silhouette, but I don’t know who did it, and I have been unable to find it since.The abstract idea of cutting a clean surface pattern with a blade has been with us for thousands of years. The example of ‘Millefiori’ is an ancient sliced pottery pattern technique similar to ‘Fimo’ beads. Controlling the animation within a sliced substance to create narrative storytelling events at the level I do, is a whole other ballgame. Developing that ability to structure figurative animation as pre built extrusion blocks, and naming this new thing ‘strata cut’ has defined my unusual journey through life.

2. What have you been working on these days?
For almost thirty years, I have made my living as an animator/cameraman, then as a commercial director for character and mixed media Live/Animation work. I developed and helped launch the M and M candy characters for CG, and I directed their animation spots for several years. I still do a lot of commercial character work as a result of that. The past decade, I have been consumed with fostering my own animation production company. This is collaboration with several partners, and a great group of talented artists and producers who make up Bent Image Lab. Along with my family, this intense creative clubhouse takes most of my time. Sometimes I do a little directing as I used to do, but just as often my time is a blend of art, people, and business development. I prepare and pitch a lot of jobs, and I help others who are directing or working on projects. This can be exciting, but it is hard to explain and impossible to show as any result. During these years, I still have creative whims that end up as visionary feature scripts that never seem to get finished or filmed, and sculptures or paintings that I never mount at any gallery. I always seem to run out of time to do more personal work, before my kids and my job come back and take over. There is one pet project that shows some promise. I am closer to getting a proper program to do good CG strata cut than I have ever been. One of my sons is a budding programmer, and he is helping me realize this software, and currently test it out with several interested CG art students who are helping us part time. CG strata cut demands the same ‘mental muscle’ and it fits my way of thinking. It has much wider possibilities than clay, yet very different artistic restrictions and constraints. You can tell all kinds of extruded live action stories which would be impossible in clay, but if you allow things to seem too finished, people will feel it’s just computer generated, so there is no ‘magic’ in the mind of the viewer. Storytelling in such a strange and weird world is both daunting and thrilling. The technical obstacles are enormous, and they still slow everything to a crawl. CG Strata Cut has 3d animated texture blocks that run through the entire sculpture, so the need for RAM is immense. The results looks interesting so far, but it will be awhile before I have a real show piece. CG time extrusion animation demands a really different artistic sense, with different visual rules, and therefore demands I come up with different results and different storytelling than the analog primitive narrative from I originated. It’s also expensive, and requires a team, which is hard to keep when there is no money in it yet. I think I’ll finally have something worth presenting this time next year. I’ve been thinking I want to do a stereoscopic conventional clay strata piece, but one that has more character storytelling, as well as more mixed media. I think caves, valleys, open clay design with mixed objects, and radical timing changes is a very interesting way to keep progressing with basic hand made clay strata cut. I also want to stop ‘the fuse’ more often. Stop the progression of cutting, and do other things, before the cutting begins. Cutting at strange angles is also something to explore more … to vary the speed and angle of the knife to make an ‘animated’ blade, and not be consistent. There are more surprises still ahead, should I get the time to enjoy making them. I also want to someday do a short stereo pixilation piece. I believe stereoscopic viewing allows humans animated one frame at a time to become a whole new vivid re invention of traditional Pixilation.

3.What artists inspire you?
Peter Jansen: Brilliant. Gregory Barsamian: Genius. Jan Van Holleben: Great. Ron Mueck: Astonishing. Julian Beever: Get’s to blow minds while working outdoors. In common, they sweep away all preconceived expectations of spatial and temporal convention, and bring a level of private dream out into the daytime. They do this with excellence, panache, and fresh insight. They all possess a grace and flair to their work that goes beyond the technical magnificence that sits on the surface idea.I’m truly inspired by dozens of other artists every year. Some of those who do work for my studio have inspired me like Pascal Campion, Carlos Lascano, Colin Batty, and Portland’s own Brett Superstar who deserves a wider following than he get’s now, and has a look that will be discovered. I also love several of the Brazilian motion graphics gurus like Guilerme Marcondes and Nando Costa.

4. Have you been to Brazil before? How do you imagine Anima Mundi to be like?
No. I have visited both Argentina and Uruguay, but never yet Brazil. I have been all over the world and each time I am in some fresh new place very different from where I grew up, or where I live, I feel the experience to be a kind of revelation for me. I enjoy the excitement and thrill of new culture, geography and history (I really enjoy history) so I greatly look forward to this, as a great country with such a different story to tell. Brazil is something I should already have done a long time ago, but now I get the chance. Anima Mundi is one of the biggest and best festivals of great animation in the world. I am greatly honored to be a part of 2011. It brings an inspired focus to the artistic trust we keep in each other, but don’t always open up about. We are fellow travelers who share a common fascination with designed motion. One of the greatest joy’s I feel, is the reaction of other people who have gotten something special from my work. I hope to see that wonder in a few new faces who are unaware of what I do, and that will give me a chance to smile back, knowing their reactions are what make the whole trip worthwhile. I very seldom have time to visit festivals or get out from my work, so this is a rare occasion I passionately look forward to.

Animated Chat 2011: David Daniels and the Strata Cut

2011-07-30T10:59:00.001-07:00

The first Animated Chat of 2011’s edition was with the American artist, David Daniels. The conversation was funny and delightful, just like Daniel’s work. He shared with us important moments of his childhood, which have determined the great artist that he is nowadays. One look to a cake made of clay might have changed the way he uses to see and think the world through. As he said in his interview, this epiphany took many years to be transformed into something real, that he could actually work on. He developed Strata Cut during vacations and his first attempt to put it in practice came with the production of the film Buzz Box, a very dense piece of art. After that, he did other films using Strata Cut, such as Journey from a Melting Brain and Freaked. In need of paying the bills, he end up walking away from his clay blocs and started his own firm, the Bent Image Lab.

We were really excited to see all this colorful blocs of clay. The magic was going to happen in front of our eyes and we thought that we were going to be able to see how he does that. People always say that a good magician doesn’t reveal its tricks. Well, David did try it, but no one understood a thing. He has been improving Strata Cut’s technique since the 80’s. His work involves the calculus over the velocity of the cut and the how many degrees must the knife be in relation to the clay to create one specific design. To cut a long history short: it is very complicated. The audience was really surprised to see how David could think all that through. It almost looks like he thinks in a different frequency. We all see the world through different lens from each other, but it seems that Daniels could face everything from a structurally different point of view. It is not a coincidence that, in thirty years, he has never been able to teach this technique to anyone. Maybe the long time between having that first epiphany and actually develop the technique, must have prepared his mind to this new way of thinking.

The most incredible part is trying to understand the theory behind the simple cut of clay. It is not only about doing beautiful images, there is a whole concept underneath the process that relates to the way the artist thinks space, time and even life. Strata Cut blocs of clay are an attempt to transform time into something physical and make us able to see it, simulating the fourth dimension into a 3D structure. He says that we are all blind because we cannot see the process, which he calls extrusion. We humans are only capable of seeing the image that appears when the knife cuts the clay bloc, which he sees as the “present”, but we cannot actually see the process. Strata Cut tries to reveal physically the extrusion of being in time. Extrusion is the name of a mechanical process that gives substance an oblong shape. To understand this process check Peter Jansen’s pieces of art. This artist was Daniel’s biggest inspiration when building Strata Cut.

David has been long gone away from animating Strata Cut films by hand. His is now working in a computer program in the attempt of digitalizing clay, adding new possibilities to the technique. What excites him the most is that, if the project works, he will be able to cut the clay in unthinkable angles. He confessed to us that Anima Mundi Festival and all the talking with other animators who admired his work have made him willingness to do Strata Cut movies again. We hope to hear from him in the festival next year!

To know more about David Daniels's work and philosophy, check the interview recommended by the artist!

Miwa Matreyek talks about her work Mith and Infrastructure

2011-07-29T05:01:00.000-07:00

We don’t need words to describe an image like this. Anima Mundi 2011 has a very special guest: Miwa Matreyek, who brought her performance Mith and Infrastructure. Graduated in Experimental Animation in CalArt, Miwa is an animator, designer and multimedia artist. Her capacity to integrate different artistic aspects is an important component of her work. In Mith and Infrastructure we can see the presence of art, animation and music, all united in a place where the absence of natural laws makes it hard to tell the difference between real and unreal. For the artist, the point is exploring how animation and reality can influence each other. Check out the interview we did with Miwa, in partnership with TV Brasil' program, Animania!

How was your first contact with animation?
Miwa: I arrived to animation by making collages and then making the collages move with music. Some of the earlier inspirations were Brothers Quay, where there is a lot of work with collage, as well as with stop motion. I have a real interest in music and animation sort of working together, creating this dance. My works often tends to be choreographed to the music as well.

What is the performance idea? Where did you get the inspiration to do it?
Part of it came from being in school at CalArts. I began taking classes in the theater school, especially a little bit with puppetry, what really opened up what I was doing with animation. I was interested, even though my performance was on the screen, in taking animation and transforming it into a more physical sense. And I hope that in my work, by mixing my physical body with my animation, the animation becomes a little bit more real and my body becomes a little bit more fantastical, into this sort of strange illusion combination world.

How do you transform your body into an animation? Can you explain a little bit more for us?
In my work there is a lot of play with scale. The animation would be a city and I’m walking in the city, and all the sudden I’m this giant, walking into the city. Animation kind of has this way where it can transform time, where something can be speed up or something can be slow down. And what does it mean for a real body to be in that space? I’m interested to see how the laws of physics kind of don’t apply in this body, in how gravity doesn’t work either, because there is sort of this floating way the body can move within animation. I’m not sure if I’m explaining it right. It is hard to explain because it is more like a feeling.

Can you tell us little bit about CalArts?
CalArts is an amazing school. It was actually founded by Disney, to be the animation school for the Disney’s animators and now it is becoming like a full art school, that has dance, theater, writing, music, animation and fine art. They really encourage collaborating across disciplines. So, you know, you meet with the dancers, then you create something new and then you meet with the musician and they help you with your film. So it’s very inspiring in that way. And being at this animation festival right now, kind of reinforces all this in me, because a lot of people here went to CalArts, like Léa Zagury, one of the founders of Anima Mundi. The history is very deep in the animation world with CalArts. And I’m really excited to be a part of it.

Did you produce the animation in your performance? Do you like to do only animation? Which are you favorite styles or techniques?
I studied animation and I primarily consider myself an animator and a performer second. I don’t really want to be recognized as a performance, I’m shy about it. In animation, I usually most after affects, a lot of compositing life video elements with sort of collagen images, like photography that I take from around the street.

What other artists inspires you?
Someone that really inspires me is Michel Gondry. In my work there is a lot of puzzle solving: figuring out how the layers are gone work together with the body, for example. There are a lot of small puzzles that I have to solve. I think that Michel Gondry has also a lot of puzzles that he solves. Of course there is also the music and the images kind of combine together into this really beautiful dance. His work really inspires me, especially his broadness of experimentation.

Does your performance try to show that animation can be more than the films we set on the screen? That the horizon can be amplified?
I’m not sure if that is what I’m trying to show. There is a lot of figuring out the puzzles in my work. It actually works as these little vignettes that I string together and I hope that there is sort of a narrative arc, at least the feeling that I’m taking the audience somewhere.

What touches you in this work? What moves you to do it?
For me the most important is really the puzzle solving. There is a lot of things that I find fascinating, you know, baking, cooking and just look outside of my window, things that inspires me everyday. It is about imagining the image and wanting to create and actually play with it through animation. And then making the images through shooting video and compose it. It is like a collage of layers, my body is part of the collage and the two projections are combined with my body to create an image.

Did you performed in other countries? How are people receiving your work?
I’ve been touring this piece around. I’ve been to France, England, Beijing, Norway, and Canada. This is the first time in South America, even in the southern hemisphere. The reception has been pretty great because I think that is really universal. There are no words, just sort of a happy feeling and that translates into any country.

Do you know other artists that are also trying to cross the line between animation and other kinds of art?
It seems that projection mapping is really taking off in terms of projecting into buildings and transforming the buildings, which is also very interesting when it is really done well. PikaPika definitely is part of this movement. I’ve also seen interesting zootropes, like 3D sculptural zootropes. There was someone named Gregory Barsamian that I was in a festival with and he made this really amazing sculpture with strobe lights and the sculpture keep spinning really fast, which is probably dangerous, but creates this really visceral and beautiful animation in front of you. That is so much more striking than see 3D films with glasses on. It seems like that the film festivals have been more open to not just film, but film and installation or film and performance. There is this move of opening it up and take it to this whole new thing for the audience, what is very exciting. And it is also very interesting because most of the artists that do things like that are not necessarily animators or film makers, but they arrive to film and animation via being a sculpture or a photographer or something else, like a digital media artist. It is very interesting to see film and animation from a different perspective.

Anima Mundi Web and Cell: choose your favorite!

2011-07-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

Anima Mundi has always been ahead of its time. Even before digital revolution spread itself in Brazil, the festival was already trying to promote the expansion of animation towards several different platforms. That is why, besides the film competition, two other contests were created. Anima Mundi Web focused in animations specially design for internet and the other one, Anima Mundi Cell, for cell phones. The point was to encourage the animators to learn how to deal with the new media technologies, letting then not only prepared, but also guarantying the possibilities of animation within every kind of platform.

Nowadays, the need of learning this kind of skills is even stronger. In one of Anima Forum’s lectures, Exporting Animation, Kevin Geiger, president of Magic Dumpling Entertainment, pointed out an important issue for those who wants to transform animation into a lucrative business: adapt to the revolution in distribution. Kevin believes that copying the mainstream American model is copying something that is dying. The advice is to be transmedia, create interactive contents and develop alternative forms of advertisement and marketing.

Following the modern tendencies of convergence, the competitions were put together, creating Anima Mundi Web & Cell. The videos are judged by the professional and the popular juries. You can check all the works that were sent here and choose the one you like the most!

2011-07-27T20:56:00.001-07:00

Last year was Anima Mundi’s 18th birthday. During all this time, the festival has grown side by side to Brazilian animation industry, which has only achieved the status of solid economic sector in recent years. Nowadays, we can affirm that the animation produced in Brazil is high qualified, what allows us getting new responsibilities. On the other hand, we are now mature enough to identify the obstacles and challenges that remain in the horizon, separating us from being an international platform of animation content. We have grown, yes. But that doesn’t mean that we are ready. So the question is: what now?

Trying to solve this tuff puzzle was Anima Forum’s job. This four day event runs at the same time than Anima Mundi and is specially designed to professional animators. Besides open debates about Brazil's animation industry and ways to develop it, the participants also learn a lot in the Masterclasses. “Teachers” from all around the world come to share a little bit of their experience in the animation field. This year we had American David Daniels, who invented an incredible technique with clay, called Strata Cut, Tom Cordone, who came to talk about the movie Rio’s design and art project and Ryan Woodward, a storyboard artist that has made draws to films like Ironman 2 and Spiderman 2 and 3.

In 2011, our main priority was to create a space where free speech could flourish and in which we were all able to discuss what should be done to guarantee the rights achieved so far. In many ways we have achieved this goals and now is time to put then in practice and stood up for the things we believe. Animation is one of modern life’s main cultural spots and is very important that we fight to maintain it. In the next posts you can check more information about the classes and lectures of Anima Forum.

Getting to know a few more about Brazil

2011-07-26T14:44:00.000-07:00

We dedicate special sessions for foreign movies, but we are very proud to also display what is produced here. Our feature movie invited for the session Panorama in 2011 is Morte e Vida Severina em Desenho Animado, directed by the Brazilian Afonso Serpa. The film is an animated version of the book Morte e Vida Severina, Brazilian writer João Cabral de Melo Neto’s master piece. The movie has already been adapted to the theatre, the television and was even transformed in music by the world-famous Chico Buarque. In 2005, the text became a graphic novel, illustrated by Miguel Falcão and then was brought to life in Serpa’s animation movie. The soundtrack was idealized by Lucas Santanna and the voice of the main character belongs do the Brazilian actor Gero Camilo.

The film, a P&B made with 3D technology, portrays the harsh life of Severino, a migrant that leaves the dry northeast area of the country because of the poverty and lack of opportunities. In Brazil, the hunger and malnutrition that has made tons of victims in the lasts centuries is not a matter of climate conditions, is actually the result of the almost eternal Brazil’s concentrate land issue, a reality that remains strong until today. The art design of the movie embodies the roughness of the dry place where Severino live and walks upon and the simplicity of the pencil’s trace makes it hard to define what is land and what is person. The character is practically molten to the land that he will never be able to call his. The movie is not only a tribute to one of Brazil’s most recognized writer and poet, but also a wake up call that shows that this unfair situation has never left us, in spite of how much money our economy makes.

A window to the rest of the world

2011-07-26T13:05:00.000-07:00

This year’s edition of Anima Mundi is more international than we usually see. Besides the movies that came from all over the world, we had two specials shows from oversees. One of then is the Session Chilemonos. Every kind of animation in Chile is known as “mono”. In the last ten years, Chile’s animation industry has grown severely, with the production of tv series, short and feature films. Chilemonos is a project developed by the group Spondylus Producciones. Their main concern is to make sure the world knows Chile’s animation contents. There are six short films being exhibit in Anima Mundi, which were never displayed in Latin America before. They were first seen abroad by the Europeans in the 2011’s Anima Festival, which took place in Brussels. The “monos” surprised by the great variety of genres and techniques that were explored in the movies. The films embodied modern tendencies of animation mixing then with traditional elements inspired by American indigenous culture.

France is also well-represented in Anima Mundi this year. Two feature films were made available by the French Embassy in Brazil. Chronopolis were produced in 1980 and mixes objects animation with the still undeveloped 2D technology. The film tells the story of Chronopolis, a city lost in time, where the citizens lived immerse in their own immortality. The film was directed by Piotr Kamler and took more than five years to be finished. Purely visual and full of attempts to break the formal temporal logic, the film echoes in the cinematography the central point of the screenplay. Anima Mundi is also displaying the film La Planète Sauvage produced in 1973 and exhibited in Brazil in the end of this same decade. The movie, directed by René Laloux, portrays the story of a planet where human beings are brutally infantilized and oppressed.

Anima Mundi Festival in one of the most important windows for the Brazilian animators not only to check everything that has been create all around the world, but also to show all the great stuff that are being produced here. This international exchange is one of the richest things about the work we develop. If you have any doubts or whishes to see your country represented in our festival please do not hesitate to contact us.

Making animation films in Anima Mundi's workshops!

2011-07-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

Anima Mundi’s Festival is an event that takes over the city of Rio de Janeiro, bringing lots of colors, joy and fun, as if it has life of its own. And the festival has a heart: the set of locations composed by Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil, Centro Cultural dos Correios and Casa França-Brasil, all located in the city centre. Between this last two, there is a small square, usually empty in normal days. During Anima Mundi, thought, the square comes to life and transforms into Praça Animada. They built a very big tent there and everything looks magical as the first time we go to the circus. Inside this tent there is a huge cinema screen. This is the place where the films that win the competition are exhibit in the end of Rio’s festival.

In Casa França-Brasil’s and CCBB’s halls there were the animation workshops. The most famous one is called Pixilation, where you can self transform in a character of a stop motion short film! The participants put on costumes and do some sketches. Instead of filming the scene, the monitors take several pictures and then join everything together, creating a small movie. The magic relies on the in between: you can make hats disappear, transform guys into frogs, and a whole lot more interventions that will look like specials effects in the screen.

The others workshops taught us how to make our own animations with several different techniques. The most well-know is draw in paper. You need approximately twelve pages with different draws of a sequence of events. They are all photographed and put together in sequence to create the illusion of movement. The clay workshop used the same logic. The kids built up clay toys and animated then using a photo camera to create the stop motion. The interaction between the kids and their characters is very important because they are free to think their own stories and create a mise-en-scene, in which they can easily move and interfere. You can do animation even with sand! All it takes is to find a bunch of it and spread it all over a smooth surface. With a paint brush, you slowly draw something or write your name, taking pictures of every single transformation in the sand. In the end, you will see the words appearing like magic.

You must be asking yourselves how the kids put together all this photographs to create a film. Easy! With MUAN (Animations Universal Manipulator), a free software created by Anima Mundi’s team of animators, developed by INPA (Applied Mathematics Institute) and sponsored by the company IBM. MUAN is specially designed to children, so his computer interface is very simple and intuitive to make the job easier. Small kids can easily find out how to work on the program by themselves. The software organizes the photos in sequence allowing a little film to be formed. The biggest conquer of developing this program is that it can put more people in contact with animation, once there is no need of spending lots of money to buy advanced programs and to pay lessons of how to use then. You can download MUAN for free! Just check here!

Last but not least, we have the “analogical workshops”, the ones that did not require the use of digital equipment. Animation is a very old art, since 1833 exists, for example, the zootrope, the first equipment which was able to produce the illusion of movement. Everyone was able to check and use this amazing object. Another analogical workshop is the one that uses the Moviola, an old school film editing machine created in 1917 before the dawn of non-linear editing suites. The participant receives a 35mm film and draw direct into it, using a special pen. After that, the film can be seen in the Moviola.

Anima Mundi is not only a world famous animation festival. It is also an event that cares to inspire the kids in Brazil not only to like to watch animation movies, but also to want to make it.

The Magic Place for Children

2011-07-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

The 19th edition of Anima Mundi is now leaving Rio and heading to São Paulo. If you couldn’t be here to check this amazing festival, our blog will bring the news for you! In 2011, Anima Mundi’s film selection pleased the kids (even thought we know there isn’t a limit age to love animation). Check the children’s favorites!

We started on friday with The Missed Lynx, 2011’s feature film winner. The film follows the misadventures of a group of animals to escape from being kidnapped by an unscrupulous hunter, hired by a “benevolent” millionaire, named Noah. The eccentric old man, aware of nature's deterioration hatches a plan: to build a new “ark” and keep a pair of animals for each endangered specie. He recruits Newmann, a cool blooded hunter. But even the best hunter in the world will face endless problems as he try to capture our animal heroes under the leadership of Felix, a jinxed Lynx.

The winner of the silver medal was the very delicate Japanese movie Hearth and Yummie. The animation film tells the story of Heart, a T-Rex who was found still inside the egg by an herbivorous female dinosaur, which raises him as her own baby. The film questions the existence of something we call “essence” in a very beautiful way.

We also had a special show for the Aardman’s most famous character: Shaun the Sheep, with bright new episodes. Shaun is the leading character of this British tv show. He and his friends turn the farm they live upside down in hilarious adventures.

Besides the feature films, we had a session only with short films for children, called Comkids – Prix Jeneusse. The seven short movies were reunited by Midiativa – Brazilian Center of Midia for Children and Adolescents. The premier concern of this institute is to develop audio-visual programmes for children with high quality contents. They work like an observatory, analyzing and mapping every program that is specially designed for children in Latin America. They also look forward to increase the public debate within this field of animation. This special show makes us think about the power of animation when used such as an educational tool. We can point out the short films Things you Think – Love, made with several children’s illustrations about what they see when they think about love, and Paul and the Dragon, the touching story about how kids face harsh realities. And we couldn't forget the amazing Juan Pablo Zaramella with the movie Trip to Mars, elected best short movie by the Popular Jury in 2005.

Another great session especially design for children is Panorama 6 – Child TV. Anima Mundi brings seven episodes of children’s TV series from many different parts of the world, including Brazil. The idea is to show what is being produced internationally and at the same time provide fun as big as the cinema screens to the kids. The show comes with episodes from United Kingdom, Check Republic, Taiwan and Colombia. An episode of the program Trank Train, one of the first TV series that were created and produced entirely in Brazil and was actually exhibited in national channels, had a granted spot in the show!

For those kids that are already drawing and thinking about animation, the tip is to go and see the show Future Animator. The panel reunites films produced by children and adolescents that are starting to discover the magic in the animation world. The films are made in schools or at home. In the next post you will hear more about MUAN, a very simples and easy animation software developed by Anima Mundi’s team, and then you can start doing animations with your own kid!

Anima Mundi is a place for children and their families. Check in the next post everything about all the animation workshops available for the public and more details about how you can do it at home!

Could we wait any longer?

2011-07-16T03:29:00.000-07:00

The 19th edition of Anima Mundi started today in Rio de Janeiro! In a dreamy and joyful environment, so well portrayed in the illustrations of Priit Pärn, we had a slightly taste of the next ten days. Inside the familiar cinema tent and enjoying a tasteful combo of popcorn and guaraná, a typical brazilian drink, the faithful audience of the Festival was feeling again almost at home. The expectation was big: the four directors of Anima Mundi, Marcos Magalhães, Léa Zagury, César Coelho e Aida Queiroz hurried up theirs speeches, but without forgetting to highlight the most important events that will be happening in this year’s schedule, which you can check here.

The first session of films inspired the best emotions in all of us. The next ten days are surely going to be very exciting. If unfortunately you couldn’t be here to see the place that inspired Carlos Saldanha’s blockbuster, don’t worry! Come and check everything here in our blog. Let the Festival begins!

19th ANIMA MUNDI Starting!

2011-07-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

The 19th edition of ANIMA MUNDI is about to start! From 15 to 24 July, the festival takes over Rio de Janeiro, in Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Centro Cultural Correios, Casa França-Brasil, Odeon BR, Arteplex Botafogo and Oi Futuro Flamengo and Ipanema. Then it moves to São Paulo, from 27 to 31 July, in the Latin American Memorial, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Espaço Unibanco Augusta and Cine Livraria Cultura.

To resume, we have short and feature films for children, adults, art films in the Gallery, student films and even films made by big studios such as Aardman ( Shaun the Sheep show) and Pixar (with a special screening for its 25 anniversary!).

We have many international guests, beginning with the Animated Chat with Brazilian Carlos Saldanha the director of Ice Age 2 & 3 and RIO, then moving to David Daniels (inventor of the fantastic technique of clay animation, strata cut ) and the cult Japanese director of animes, Shinichiro Watanabe, author of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Shamploo.

RyanWoodward will give a masterclass on storyboards and animatics, and Tom Cardone will teach about the art and design of features such as Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, Disney's Beauty and the Beast and Blue Sky's RIO.

We will be back soon with more info!

Record-Breaking Submissions!

2011-05-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

Due to the huge number of submissions this year - its a record! - the notice of selection is postponed to may 20th, this Friday.

2011-04-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

Direct call from Anima Mundi selection:

1,256 DVDs are already circulating on Anima Mundi "Babel Tower". Only 200 are missing to the end of receipts! Very very soon we'll have the list of selected films of this year!

And already a record was broken: 17 feature films submitted this year!

Anima TV on air!

2011-04-16T19:01:00.001-07:00

This Sunday (April 17), Trunk Train and Duck-ticks and Catapults, both carried out by AnimaTV program, will debut on TV Cultura and TV Brasil. This will be the first time ever that national television channels will air an animated series entirely created and produced in Brazil.

Anima Mundi closely followed the progress of this important project for the deployment of Brazilian animated series on national open television. Those who have attended the panel "Anima TV - an assessment" in Anima Forum 2010 may have heard producer Marta Machado, president of ABCA (Brazilian Association of Animated Cinema), recalling that AnimaTV project started to be planned in the 2008 Anima Forum. The director of Trunk Train, Zé Brandão, said the seed of the series was born when he was attending a masterclass of Anima Mundi.

Among the positive points raised by the participants of the discussion in Anima Forum, the stimulus to formation is one of the most important. Cristiana Oliveira, executive coordinator of AnimaTV, highlighted the great opportunity offered through workshops on the methodology of producing an animated series.

But today we really want to congratulate the producers of the debutting series, Copa Studio and Zoom Elefante. We wish success and continuity for this season and for the next ones!

Visit the blogs of Trunk Train (http://www.trombatrem.blogspot.com) and Duck-ticks and Catapults (http://www.tvbrasil.org.br/animatv/carrapatos-catapultas/index.php).

AnimaTV, First Program for Production and TV Broadcast of Brazilian Series, is a realization of the Audiovisual Secretary - SAV and the Department of Cultural Policy - SPC, the Ministry of Culture - MINC, Brazil Communications Company – TV Brasil, Padre Anchieta Founding - TV Cultura, the Brazilian Association of Educational and Cultural Public Broadcasters - ABEPEC, with the support of the Brazilian Association of Animation Film - ABCA.

Priit Pärn art at Anima Mundi 2011

2011-04-15T06:17:00.001-07:00

The art of this year’s festival, created exclusively by Priit Pärn, the most famous cartoonist and animator from Estonia, is already at the Anima Mundi site (http://www.animamundi.com.br )!

Pärn is an international animation celebrity and was our guest in 2009 for the Animated Chat!

Priit Pärn has been present with his work in Anima Mundi since 1999, when an Estonian Retrospective featured three of his movies: Kolmnurk (1982), 1895 (co-directed with Janno Põldma, 1995) and Night of the Carrots (1998). In 2006, Frank ja Wendy, Hungerburg (2004), co-directed with Priit Tender, Ülo Pikkov and Kaspar Jancis, was screened at the Short Film Competition, as well as Tuukrid Vihmas (2009), co-directed with his wife Olga Pärn, in our 2010 edition.

In 2009 Anima Mundi had the honor to receive Priit and Olga Pärn in person for the Animated Chat, with a retrospective session that exhibited 1985, Remix (2000), Oiva (2001), Karl and Marilyn (2003) and Ma Kukla Tunnen Eluaegset Kuula... (2007, co-directed with Olga Pärn).

Pärn has also been an Animation Professor for 18 years, art director of the Department of Animation Art Academy of Turku in Finland and art director and animation school Joonisfilm of Tallinnfilm Studio.

As the recent Priit Pärn films, the illustration for Anima Mundi was also made in collaboration with his wife Olga. We have asked the artist to portrait his impressions of our festival and Brazil, so different and distant from Estonia… The result brings us the same irony and irreverence that characterize his animations. Thanks, Priit and Olga!

"Rio", by Carlos Saldanha

2011-04-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

"Rio" debuts in Brazil as the animation feature most expected ever by Brazilians. Everybody here is curious to watch the adventures of Blu, a male macaw supposed to date the last female of his species, traveling through the postcard sceneries of our wonderful city.

Carlos Saldanha, director of the film, was born in Rio and is a longtime friend of Anima Mundi! Carlos attended the festival since he was a student in New York and spent his holidays in Brazil. After that, representing the studio Blue Sky, he presented a seminar on computer graphics in 1996 and another in 1997 called “Light. Camera & Action”. In 2000, Blue Sky won the Best Portfolio prize and in 2002, after directing "Ice Age", Carlos Saldanha came to participate in Animated Chat by telling the audience about his career as animation director.

Those who attend the festival for a long time will certainly keep with care a VHS copy of the "The Best of Anima Mundi Vol.1" anthology, featuring Saldanha's graduation short film, "Time For Love" (1994).

We look forward to receive Carlos Saldanha again in Anima Mundi 2011 to celebrate together the success of "Rio"!

Submission numbers

2011-03-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

Directly from Anima Mundi “Tower of Babel” enrollment the first numbers come:

1451 submitted films

Of these, 325 are Brazilian!

And the mountain of films’s only growing. Until now 760 DVDs are reached.

Submissions are closed

2011-03-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

Animators on hold?! That's right. Once the rush of festival entries is over, now is the time to wait for the selection.
But the Anima Mundi crew never stops, never sleeps, and spends the days in office walking up and down a Babel Tower of emails and DVDs to be registered. Aanimation from all over the world, all over the place!
Soon, great surprises will shine on the festival screen.

Last day for registration

2011-03-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day for registration at Anima Mundi:

http://www.animamundi.com.br/

Don’t miss it!

Annecy´s shorts selection!

2011-03-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

The selection of shorts of Annecy International Animation Film Festival came out. The oldest animation film festival in the world chose 178 films for the competition (Short Films, Graduation Films, Music Video, Advertising Films, Educational / Scientific / Industrial Films, TV Series and TV Specials) and 35 films out of competition.

Among the 43 films selected for Short Films Competition, at least four of them were in Anima Mundi 2010: The Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation (Germany) by Martin Wallner and Stefan Leuchtenberg, Schlaf (Switzerland) by Claudius Gentinetta and Frank Braun, Something Left, Something Taken (USA) by Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata and Zbigniew's Cupboard (Poland / Great Britain) by Anna Magdalena Osinska. Between the 60 films in Graduation Films Competition, one also were in Anima Mundi last year: Serenade (South Korea) by Lee Han Bit.

Tempestade - César Cabral

But our greatest happiness is in the Out of Competition selection. Between the 35 films selected, three were at the Anima Mundi 2010, and one of them is Brazilian! They are: Babioles (France) by Matthieu Auvray (Matray), Muzorama (France) by Elsa Brehin, Raphaël Calamote, Mauro Carraro, Maxime Cazaux,Davaud Emilien, Laurent Monneron and Axel Tillement, and our Storm (Brazil) by Cesar Cabral. And as a joy never comes alone, another Brazilian also participates in this section: Timing (Brazil) by Amir Admoni.

Feature films selection will be released in March 15th.

The Lost Thing won the Oscar for Best Short Animated Film

2011-02-28T14:21:00.001-08:00

And the Oscar for Best Short Animated Film went to The Lost Thing, by Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan!

The film won the Professional Juri award for Best Soundtrack on Anima Mundi 2010.

Watch the trailer below and remember it!

The Oscars are coming!

2011-02-25T10:58:00.000-08:00

The Oscars are coming! Sunday (February 27th), the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will award the previous year's best films. Among the animated films selected by the Academy are some that have been brought to Brazil by Anima Mundi - and three of those have been awarded here!

In 2010, Anima Mundi screened the French short Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage,which won Anima Mundi Directors' Award and Best Art Direction Award by Professional Jury. The Gruffalo was one of the favorites of the public and it was chosen by the Jury in 1st place as Best Short for Children and SP in 3rd place in Rio. The Lost Thing carried the trophy for Best Soundtrack by the Professional Jury.

See the list of nominees Animation 2011 and place your bets!

Animated Feature Film
Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich (USA)
How to Train Your Dragon, Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders (USA)
The Wizard of Sylvain Chomet (France / England)

Short Animated Film
Day & Night (USA), Teddy Newton (Pixar)
The Gruffalo (England / Germany), Max Lang and Jakob Schuh
Let's Pollute (USA), Geefwee Boedoe
The Lost Thing (Australia / England), Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan
Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage (France), Bastien Dubois

Anima Escola 2010

2010-11-17T09:49:00.000-08:00

This blog may seem in a halt after our 18th festival edition in last July. But the truth is Anima Mundi team hasn't stopped a minute since then!... In addition to the preparation of our next edition(s), we have every year to deal with a big commitment with Education: our project ANIMA ESCOLA (Anima School).

In 2010 we started with a double challenge: besides the municipal schools in Rio de Janeiro, with elementary and middle schools, we are also present in the State of Rio network of public schools, dealing at this time with four high schools, introducing teachers and students to the animation language.

From August to December, there will be several workshops and courses training more than 200 teachers in Rio de Janeiro City and State. As a result, many films will be produced with technical and artistic support of our team.

We will be soon posting more details about all this!

Stephen Hillenburg at Anima Mundi

2010-08-11T12:21:00.000-07:00

One of the most anticipated meetings in this year's festival was the Animated Chat with Stephen Hillenburg, held at the Animated Square in the penultimate day of the festival in Rio. The inspired creator of SpongeBob shared with the audience a little of the trajectory of one of the most successful animated series of all time. And apparently the source could not be different: it all started in the sea.

Graduated in marine biology in the 80s, Stephen has created an educational comic book called The Intertidal Zone, where life in the oceans was presented by... a sea-sponge! Later, he joined CalArts, where he completed master's degree in experimental animation in 1992, and directed two short films which run festivals around the world: the political satire The Green Beret and the abstract Wormholes, with insights inspired by Albert Einstein's the theory of relativity.

Stephen presenting his Wormholes

His early work has served as an entrance to work at Nickelodeon, where he joined the production crew of Rocco's Modern Life. It was there that his colleague Martin Olson discovered Hillenburgs's and suggested the biologist and animator to create a series of marine animals. The result is a blockbuster that won Emmys and Annies in several seasons in the last 10 years.

Whenever asked about what is autobiographical in character SpongeBob SquarePants, Stephen, although denying any conscious intention, revealed: he showed a picture of a child and put it side by side with his famous creation.

About his direct influences, the animator recalled adult characters with child personality such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. According Hillenburg, the dynamics between Laurel and Hardy is a pillar of this kind of humor.

At the end of the screenings, Hillenburg also answered some questions from the audience, mostly made by small fans of the series. And he could not avoid one of the most insidious: what is the secret recipe of Crab Burger. And the animator ran way: "I don't not know , it's is a secret even to me. But nice try!"

Anima Mundi Web & Cel: the winners

2010-08-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

The winners of the Web & Cel contest were were also announced São Paulo, check it out:

Popular Jury

DINGBATS - Henrique Kopke - Brazil. Watch here

Professional Jury Award

COLORFUL EU) - Peter Vadocz - Hungary. Watch here

18th anniversary Award

There's Bliss in the Kiss - Melanie Beisswenger - Germany; Singapure - Watch here

Anima Mundi 2010: São Paulo awards

2010-08-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

Check out the films chosen by the public in São Paulo:

BEST SHORT FILM

1. DER KLEINE UND DAS BIEST - Johannes Weiland; Uwe Heidschötter - Germany

2. LA DAMA Y LA MUERTE - Javier Recio Gracia - Spain

3. LOGORAMA - François Alaux; Hervé de Crécy; Ludovic Houplain - France

BEST BRAZILIAN SHORT FILM

1. IMAGINE UMA MENINA COM CABELOS DE BRASIL... - Alexandre Bersot - Brazil

2. POMBINHA BRANCA - Fernando Augusto Dias da Silva - Brazil

3. EU QUERIA SER UM MONSTRO - Marão - Brazil

BEST FEATURE FILM

1. MARY E MAX - UMA AMIZADE DIFERENTE - Adam Elliot - Australia

2. BOOGIE EL ACEITOSO - Gustavo Cova - Argentina

3. THE APPLE & THE WORM - Anders Morgenthaler - Denmark

BEST STUDENT FILM

1. DER PRAEZISE PETER - Martin Schmidt - Germany

2. MOBILE - Verena Fels - Germany

3. FORMIC - Roman Kaelin; Florian Wittmann - Germany

BEST SHORT FOR CHILDREN

1. O GRÚFALO (THE GRUFFALO) - Jakob Schuh; Max Lang - UK

2. SIM, VIRGINIA (YES, VIRGINIA) - Pete Circuitt; Bitstate - USA

3. POMBINHA BRANCA - Fernando Augusto Dias da Silva - Brazil

ANIMA MUNDI DIRECTORS' AWARD

MADAGASCAR, CARNET DE VOYAGE - Bastien Dubois - France

NÚCLEO DE ANIMAÇÃO DE CAMPINAS AWARD - BEST BRAZILIAN STUDENT FILM

POMBINHA BRANCA - Fernando Augusto Dias da Silva - Brazil

Sao Paulo Awards and more...

2010-08-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

Ufff...! One more edition is over, everything was a total sucess, a new record in the audience attendance (114 thousand people!)!
Now our team is happy and exhausted, but you can know who were the winners in Rio and Sao Paulo by clicking here.
We'll be back soon with more retrospective posts about this unforgettable Anima Mundi 18 years edition!

Anima Mundi 2010: Rio de Janeiro Awards

2010-07-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

The awarding of Anima Mundi 2010 best films happened this Sunday, July 25, with the prizes from the popular and professional jury closing the Rio de Janeiro's phase of the festival.

And one of the most exciting was the announcement of the winner of the best Brazilian short: Marão's I wanted to be a monster. Here's the entire team receiving the trophy:

Once again, the directors took the opportunity to thank the participation of all, and spread some good news: the public this year in Rio was a record: about 70 000 spectators came to see the festival, 30% more than the 2009 edition - another good reason to celebrate these 18 years of Anima Mundi!

Check here the list of winners::

Juri Popular Rio de Janeiro

BEST SHORT FILM

1 - LA DAMA Y LA MUERTE - Javier Recio Gracia - Spain

2 - DER KLEINE UND DAS BIEST - Johannes Weiland; Uwe Heidschötter - Germany

3 - LOGORAMA - François Alaux; Hervé de Crécy; Ludovic Houplain - France

BEST FEATURE FILM

1. MARY E MAX - Adam Elliot - Australia
2. BOOGIE EL ACEITOSO - Gustavo Cova - Argentina
3. THE APPLE & THE WORM - Anders Morgenthaler - Denmark

BEST BRAZILIAN SHORT FILM

1. EU QUERIA SER UM MONSTRO - Marão - Brazil
2. IMAGINE UMA MENINA COM CABELOS DE BRASIL... - Alexandre Bersot - Brazil
3. POMBINHA BRANCA - Fernando Augusto Dias da Silva - Brazil

BEST STUDENT FILM

1 - MOBILE - Verena Fels - Germany
2 - DER PRAEZISE PETER - Martin Schmidt - Germany
3 - POMBINHA BRANCA - Fernando Augusto Dias da Silva - Brazil

BEST SHORT FOR CHILDREN

1 - YES, VIRGINIA - Pete Circuitt; Bitstate - USA
2 - EU QUERIA SER UM MONSTRO - Marão - Brazil
3 - THE GRUFFALO - Jakob Schuh; Max Lang - United Kingdom

CANAL BRASIL ACQUISITION AWARD

IMAGINE UMA MENINA COM CABELOS DE BRASIL... - Alexandre Bersot - Brazil

PROFESSIONAL JURY

Best Animation - VIDEOGIOCO A LOOP EXPERIMENT - Donato Sansone - Italy
Best Script - DER KLEINE UND DAS BIEST - Johannes Weiland e Uwe Heidschötter - Germany
Best Soundtrack - THE LOST THING - Andrew Ruhemann e Shaun Tan - Australia, United Kingdom
Best Art Direction - MADAGASCAR, CARNET DE VOYAGE - Bastien Dubois - France
Best Commissioned Film - XIXI NO BANHO - Fernando Sanches - Brazil

And the vote of the popular jury for the Web & Cel 2010 contest will continue until next Saturday. The result will be announced at the awards ceremony in Sao Paulo, on August 1. And now, the festival is packing for São Paulo!

Horror Panorama

2010-07-19T17:45:00.000-07:00

Les Bessones del Carrer de Ponent (2010), Marc Riba & Anna Solanas

The International Panorama program aims to bring the Anima Mundi audience the most interesting animations made recently in the world. Within this proposal, we created a special selection with the horror theme. Divided into two programs, Horror Panorama offers the animated thrills from different countries like Spain, Belgium, South Korea, France and UK.

In Horror Panorama 1, the audience will see the Joris Leopold's Blue Awaking, where a singer loses control of his voice when the devil himself take over the band's drum sticks. For Horror Panorama 2, those who are a fan of George Romero's zombie movies will surely enjoy House Guest, the story of a duck who has just died and returned to life planning an unusual revenge against the hunter who killed him.

Ben Mitchel's House Guest(2010)

Check out the Horror Panorama schedule:

Panorama Terror 1: Teatro II CCBB 16/07-20:00; 18/07-12:30 Cinema 2 CCBB RJ 17/07-16:30; 25/07-18:30 Fund. Memorial da América Latina - Sala 3; 29/07-13:30; 01/08-21:30;Auditório CCBB SP 30/07-19:30

Panorama Terror 2:

Praça Animada 18/07-21:00 Unibanco Arteplex Botafogo 21/07-22:00; Cinema 1 CCBB RJ22/07-17:30; 25/07-19:30; Cinema Odeon BR 23/07-20:00

The Apple and the Worm

2010-07-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

There's something new in the state of Denmark: The Apple & the Worm is one of the attractions today in the Anima Mundi. It's an animation feature film drawn completely in tablets and then finished with the software TVP Animation. The film tells the story of Torben, who, like any other apple, is anxious, cynical and afraid to get sick. His greatest ambition in life is to be the most perfect apple from the supermarket. But an unexpected problem - the kind os problem that comes from inside a fruit - may hinder their plans.

Watch the trailer here (and improve your Danish!)

Those who do not speak the language can rest easy, the copy at exibibition in the Anima Mundi is subtitled in portuguese :)

Mary & Max

2010-07-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

For those who stay late at CCBB and Casa França Brasil for the screenings and workshops, here's the good one: at 21:00, there's a screening of Mary & Max in the Animated Square. Written and directed by Adam Eliott, Mary and Max is done entirely in stop-motion, and tells the story of a lonely girl from the suburbs of Melbourne who starts a long-distance relationship with Max Horovitz, a heavyset man who lives in the chaos of New York with Asperger Syndrome, and dreams of "living on the moon, to avoid contact with people." Without losing the humorous tone, from the friendship relationship between the two, the film deals with serious topics such as autism, alcoholism, obesity, kleptomania trust, religious differences and even "where the babies come from ".

The film features the voices of Bethany Whitmore in the role of Mary as a girl, Toni Collette in the adulthood, and Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Max. Director Adam Eliott already won a prize in Anima Mundi's 2004 edition, for his short film Harvie Krumpet.

Pixilation and Graffiti at Oi Futuro

2010-07-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

The Anima Mundi workshop Pixilation gained an ally at Oi Futuro, in Flamengo: the graffiti. Graffiti artist and animator Meton Joffily is finalizing today a background on which the public can interact with Pixilation animated scenes and stickers that will be bonded to the graphite (Mamemu, the Meton's crew, is calling it 'Sticker Animation'). There will be a demonstration for this technique to the public, followed by animation with Anima Mundi's crew. Always from 12:00 to 18:00. Take a look at the first drawings:

That's the way the graffiti scene was at the end of Friday 16th, but the workshop just opened!

Anima Mundi 2010: the opening session

2010-07-18T08:15:00.000-07:00

It's about time! We can say that last Friday the Anima Mundi came of age, celebrating his 18 years through all the program (you can check it here). But last Monday, directors, sponsors, and some guests of the festival could already watch at the Animated Square a little of what comes ahead in an opening session. Conducted once again by actor and director Fernando Caruso, who already has a history with the festival, the session gave a brief overview of the Anima Mundi has to offer among the special exhibitions and competitive program.

Aida Queiroz, Marcos Magalhaes, Cesar Coelho, Léa Zagury, directors of Anima Mundi, gave their messages before the session begun. Aida presented some statistics that show how the animation industry in Brazil has grown along with the festival. A recent survey revealed that in the period between 1910 and 1992 about 171 animated films were produced in Brazil, including features and shorts. Since 1993, the year of the first Anima Mundi, and until this year, the festival received entries from more than 2600 animations, a concrete evidence of the strength of the festival by the Brazilian industry of animation. "As animators we are, is a great emotion," she added.

Cesar Coelho took the opportunity to remember the beginning of the festival: in 1993, only two rooms were used at the CCBB for the first edition of the event - that crowded. The following year, the Cultural Center of Correios gave its partnership. From the third year, the public could see the largest sessions in the first version of the Animated Square. And the rest is history. Marcos Magalhaes didin't forget to celebrate the anniversary, and wished that everyone can feel as if had 18 years in this issue, and Lea Zaguri thanked the fundamental presence at the festival: the animators.

Marcos Magalhães, Léa Zagury, Cesar Coelho e Aida Queiroz, the Anima Mundi directors

Among the films, the audience watched the Brazilian Anjos do meio da praça, derected by Ale Camargo e Camila Carrossine, an impressive work of 3D computer animation; Der Da Vinci Timecode, from Gil Alkabetz, where the image of one of the most famous paintings in the world is fragmented to form movements secret and unusual; the institutional Rise Above Plastics, from the Surfrider Foundation and the exhilarating Runaway, from Canadian Cordell Baker, one of our guests this year. All of them, of course, can be found here. Schedule up!

Alê Camargo and Camila Carrossine's Anjos do meio da praça

Feature Film: Boogie, el aceitoso

2010-07-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

In this edition, Anima Mundi presents in its feature program the 2D animation Boogie, el aceitoso, the first Argentine film to use stereoscopic 3D technology, adapted from a comic book created by Argentine cartoonist Robert 'el negro' Fontanarossa. Boogie, el aceitoso is the second meeting of the Brazilian public with the unmistakable trace of Fontanarossa: in 2009, Anima Mundi screened the animated feature Martin Fierro, adaptation of the Argentine classic epic poem in which Fontanarossa collaborated in script and character design.

Boogie, a violent mercenary and ruthless killer, began to be published in Colombia's El Tiempo in the 1970s and later in Mexican newspaper Proceso. The character was also present in several Argentine publications, such as Mood and La Maga. Twelve 12 albums were released by Argentina's Boogie Ediciones de la Flor, who also publishes some of Argentina's finest, such as Quino and Liniers. Boogie had editions in Italy, Colombia and Brazil, where it was published by L&PM as Boogie, o seboso.

Roberto Fontanarrosa became internationally known for his work on cartoons and comics. His other famous characters include the gaucho Pereyra Mendieta and his dog Mendieta. Fontanarossa died on July 19, 2007, at age 62.

Marcelus Gaio

viewmasterblog.wordpress.com/

Watch the official trailer here:

Schedule:

RJ:

Centro Cultural Correios - Praça Animada 16/07-21h, 23/07-21h

Unibanco Arteplex Botafogo 17/07-22:00

Cinema 1 CCBB RJ 20/07 - 17h30

Odeon BR 24/07/2010 - 20h

SP:

Fund. Memorial da América Latina - Sala 2 29/07 - 23h

Fund. Memorial da América Latina - Sala 1 30/07/2010 - 20h

Special Showcase: International Schools

2010-07-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

Aiming to promote the animation industry in Brazil, Anima Forum invites all kinds of market professionals for lectures and discussions during four days at Anima Mundi. This year, besides the Masterclasses, we'll have members of three international schools of animation as special guests: Eric Riewe, from Gobelins, in France, Maureen Furniss, of CalArts (USA), and Marlene Nascimento, from the Image and Sound Course at the University of Buenos Aires. As a complement of their visit and the debate, the festival will present showcases of graduation films by former students of these schools.

Gobelins

Gobelins' animation department, l'école de l'image, was founded 30 years ago, and prepare artists for the growing need of the French animation industry in the 1970s. Today, students from Gobelins are present not only in animation studios all over France, but also in major international labels, such as Dreamworks, Sony, Disney, Pixar and many others, and they are recognized for their technical excellence and creative for its high professional level.

The Gobelins program in Anima Mundi presents short films made by its students during the last two decades. The first of them is the segment that serves as an introduction in all official sessions of the International Festival of Animated Film in Annecy, France. In the sequence, the short films made for the final projects of the course, made in 2D or 3D. Three of these films include a making of the production process.

Anima Facta Est (2007), animação coletiva da escola Gobelins

Henry Sellick (Coraline, Nightmare Before Christmas), Brenda Chapman (Prince of Egypt) and Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall.E) are among the "notable students" from The California Institute of the Arts. Since 1961, the Calarts maintains its tradition of promoting a unique and privileged environment for students from all areas of art live together closely, in full collaboration.

Part of the former students attended the Department of Experimental Animation (Experimental Animation), created by Jules Engels. This department focuses on the practice and principles of visual arts, including animation as an art form dynamic and constantly evolving. Other former students, now influential in the animation industry today, formed by the Department of Character Animation (Character Animation) created in 1975, in which the main focus is training in classical animation connected to a deep understanding of the art of acting, also applied to modern techniques like computer graphics.

The "Calarts... and its Distinguished Alumni" Showcase will be divided into two sessions at the Anima Mundi, alternating between the two visions of the course, reflecting the coexistence of stimulating experimentation and application of the art of animation, as in day-to-day school campus in Valencia.

Wormholes (1992), from Stephen Hillenburg, the brilliant creator of SpongeBob,

UBA

Within the course of Image and Sound Design at the University of Buenos Aires, the discipline Audiovisual Design 3 - Animation is offered to the students, and it deals with basic concepts of animation and its various techniques. The training includes the management of production and resource management in order to develop films and the possible absorption by the market, in private and public sectors. As the final course, students perform a short film individually or in groups, with free choice of technique and theme proposed by the Chair.

The current professor of animation course, our guest Marlene Nascimento, made a selection with some examples of work developed by students for the third special session of the schools in the Anima Mundi.

Our guest Marlene Nascimento, the current professor of the animation course, made a selection with some examples of their works for the third special session of the schools in the Anima Mundi.

Florencia Blanc's Un Pequeño Vagabundo (2008),

one of the short films from the UBA program

Check here the locations and schedules of special exhibitions of the schools of animation:

Gobelins: Rio de Janeiro - Sat 17 - Cinema 2 CCBB - 18h30 / Sun 18 - Oi Futuro Ipanema - 15h30 /

Mon 19 - Arteplex - 14h / Sat 24 - Teatro II - 17h30 / Sun 25 - Odeon BR - 18h30 São Paulo - Sat 31 - Memorial Video - 15h / Sun 01 - Memorial 2 - 19h

Calarts:

Program 1

Rio de Janeiro - Fri 16 - Oi Futuro Flamengo - 13h30 / Sat 17 - Teatro II - 14h / Sun 18 - Cinema 1 CCBB - 19h30 / Fri 23 - Cinema 2 CCBB - 16h30 / Sat 24 - Teatro II - 12h30 / Sun 25 - Odeon BR - 15h30 São Paulo - Wed 28 - Memorial Video - 18h / Sun 01 - Memorial Video - 15h

Sessão 2 Rio de Janeiro - Sat 17 - Oi Futuro Ipanema - 13h30 / Tue 20 - Cinema 2 CCBB - 18h30 / Fri 23 - Cinema 2 CCBB - 18h30 / Sat 24 - Teatro II - 14h / Sun 25 - Odeon BR - 17h São Paulo - Wed 28 - Memorial Video - 16h30 / Sun 01 - Memorial Video - 16h30

UBA: Rio de Janeiro - Sat 17 - Teatro II - 10h30 / Sun 18 - Oi Futuro Ipanema - 13h30 / Wed 21 - Arteplex - 14h / Sat 24 - Teatro II - 15h30 / Sun 25 - Teatro II - 14h

São Paulo - Wed 28 - Memorial Video - 13h30 / Sun 01 - Memorial Video - 18h

Animation and documentary

2010-07-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

In 2009, the presence of Priit Parn in Anima Mundi revealed to the Brazilian audience that Estonia is very well situated on the animation's world map. Maybe we can find the largest population of animators in its 45,000 km square, producing some of the wildest, most innovative films of the genre.

In this edition, we prepared a special screening of Mait Laas' documentary The kings of time (Aja Meistrid), aiming to show how traditional the culture of animation in Estonia is. In a mixture of archival footage and animation, the film reveals the story of two great names of Estonian animation, Elbert Tuganov and Heino Pars, who have become masters of their craft. Tuganov is the creator of Ott in Outer Space (1962), a puppet animation who achieved international notoriety. Heino Pars, who started as an assistant Tuganov, is also a pioneer: Nael, his 1972 feature film, is one of the first Estonian animations to present an abstract content. The social satire, frequently targeting the Soviet political system, was also prominent in the work of these two creators.

Mait Laas' The Kings of Time (2008)

And the International Panorama program also reserves a special selection of films in which the documentary language is blended with animation techniques. Panorama Documentary will present six short films demonstrating that the animated film can deal with the straightest form of reality, sometimes even more efficient than photographic images. Among the short films selection includes Samantha Moore's The Beloved Ones, about the difficulties of two Ugandan women living with HIV; Tanko Bole Chhe, which reveals the art and the passion of Kutch's artisans in the region in India, and Rattus Rattus, a Brazilian animation about the sanitary campaign made by Oswaldo Cruz in the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

Nina Sabnani's Tanko Bole Chhe (2009)

South Africa in exhibition

2010-07-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

The Tale of How (2007), a film by Ree Treweek and Jannes Hendrikz
featured in South Africa special exibition

As Soccer fans, we are profoundly sad about Brazil's departure in World Cup. But, if there's any consolation for us, we can say that Brazil is always very well represented every year in Anima Mundi. And in this edition the same applies to the venue for the 2010 World Cup: the South Africa special program will offer a sample of what is best in animation from the country, revealing the variety of styles and aesthetics of this industry in development .

Brent Dawes' Because You’re Gorgeous (2007)

South Africa is still relatively unknown in the world of animation. But that is about to change, and we hope that this collection of films (the first of its kind outside the country) highlights the diversity of this growing industry. Altogether, the program presents 28 South African animations, including short features, video clips, commercial and institutional films, compiled by Animation SA, a nonprofit organization that represents the animation in South Africa.

Anthony Silverston's The Slipper Cycle (2003)

As examples of the animation in South Africa is booming and deserves to be seen, three features are in production now in the country, to be released next year: The Lion of Judah, Jock of the Bushveld and Zambezia. And for those who work in local industry, we hope that 2010 is also remembered as the year that the local animation has become world famous!

Jacquie Trowell's Beyond Freedom (2006), an animation that mixes

different techniques to discuss about the struggle toward democracy and freedom.

By the way, we also would like to show some sportsmanship here at Anima Mundi: Netherlands brings 10 productions to the festival this year, and five of them are in the competitive program :)

Anima Mundi 2010: the films

2010-07-03T20:21:00.001-07:00

Brazil, Australia, France, Canada, Denmark, Ukraine, Japan, Cuba, Switzerland, Latvia, Argentina and another 35 countries: you can already check the complete list of Anima Mundi 2010 films on the website.

In the following days, you will find more details about some of them here, begining with the feature-length movies. Stay tuned!

Anima Mundi Masterclasses

2010-06-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

It's been five years since the Anima Forum, event that happens along the Anima Mundi program, gives signs that the animation industry in Brazil is growing more and more. With this growth, demand for skilled professionals in the animation market also increases. So, as a novelty this year, the Anima Forum will present three masterclasses with distinguished experts in different areas related to animation. This activity replaces the traditional one themed workshop offered in the latest years at the festival.

On July 21st, in Rio de Janeiro, the Spaniard Jordi Grangel will illustrate the development of a feature film in The Creative Process on the Character Design of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. Grangel is co-director of a studio with the same name in Barcelona, along with his brother Charles . They provide production services of classical and digital animation for clients like DreamWorks, SKG, Sony Pictures, Warner, Universal and Walt Disney and Consumer Publications Products.

On day 22, the Canadian Andy Malcolm shows their specialty: creating and recording all kinds of sound effects, essential for any type of movie. Foley for Animation is the name of his masterclass, in which the audience can participate in the creation of creative sounds that are recorded and time synchronized with a scene of animation. Acting in the area of sound design since the 70's, Andy has worked with some of the most acclaimed directors of animation and live action in the world, and is now has his own studio, the Footsteps, in Toronto.

The last masterclass in Rio will take place on July 23, with Guilherme Marcondes talking about the design of films that mix animation techniques, animation on the border in Frontier animation: Developing projects in the limit between techniques. Gulherme works with animation and design, and his film Tyger, an original blend of 2D animation techniques, 3D, puppets, live action models, was elected one of the best shorts by popular jury at Anima Mundi 2006.

Tyger (2006), de Guilherme Marcondes

The masterclasses will take place in São Paulo too, in July 29 (Jordi Grangel) and 30 (Guilherme Marcondes). More information about the program you find here.

Alê Abreu in Anima Mundi 18 Years

2010-06-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

Only 20 days left to Anima Mundi 2010! Just for warming up, we will start revealing some details from this 18 year edition of the festival. Starting with the visual identity that can be already be seen here on the blog and on our website, the art is authored by illustrator and animator Ale Abreu, who has been present in Anima Mundi since the very beginning of the festival.

Ale began studying animation at age 14, and in 1993 released his first short film, Sirius. In 1994, he started working in his second work, Espantalho (Scarecrow), an animation film that gained, among 12 other awards, the best Brazilian film award in Anima Mundi 1998. Garoto Cósmico (Cosmic Boy), his first feature, was one of the highlights of the Anima Mundi 2007, where Alê also had a retrospective and participated in Papo Animado (Animated Chat). In 2008, he participated with the short feature Passo (Step), and his new work, Vivi Viravento, (one of the 17 Tv series pilotes of the AnimaTV program), is on our program this year.

Cósmico, Luna e Maninho, characters fom
Alê Abreu's Garoto Cósmico, featured in Anima Mundi 2007

About the illustration done for the Anima Mundi 2010, Ale said: "In order to create the imagery for the 18 years of Anima Mundi, I tried to represent the intense desire for liberty and dreams, common to all young people. Anima Mundi is this little colorful planet, where there is a great vibration, a meeting point for wondering beings in a rich and vast universe of styles, techniques and languages. In 2010, Anima Mundi celebrates its 18 years of existence, and I begin a new cycle in my journey."

New Rules for ANIMA MUNDI WEB & CEL!

2010-04-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

New Category! Films on any Theme will also be accepted, in the category "General Theme"!
Thanks to convincing requests, we have just made some changes in the Rules of the ANIMA MUNDI WEB & CEL 2010 Contest.

The theme proposed by the Contest this year will keep being "18 Years", for the category with this same name.
The inspiration for this theme comes, of course, of the 18th Edition that Anima Mundi Festival will celebrate this year. But we are not expecting films about our festival! The idea is to illustrate through the animation language the sensations one may experiment at 18 years old: i.e. freedom, responsibility, youth, action, emotion, boldness, initiative, etc, etc, etc!

We believe this theme is wide enough and applies well both to abstract and narrative works.
The animations selected by the Contest selection committee for the "18 Years" category will compete to 3 Prizes: The Traditional Public and Professional Prizes, and the Special Extra "18 Years" Prize, also awarded by the Public Jury.
That means films in the "18 Years" category can win 3 Prizes!

But anyway the Contest will keep also open to works in any theme, in the category "General Theme". Animations in this category will not be eligible, of course, to the "18 Years" Prize. But they can win both the Public and Professional Awards!

Each of the 3 Awards consist in a 2 thousand reais cash prize and an Anima Mundi Trophee.

Oh, there's something else yet: deadline is extended up to June 14th!
Prepare your animations. Each entrant can send up to 3 works.
(Already existent works can be submitted too).
Please find the new rules here!

Now it's time for WEB & CEL - 18 years!

2010-04-02T05:51:00.000-07:00

It's like that every year: as soon as the submissions for Anima Mundi Festival are closed (we had more than 1400 entries this year!) it's time to start receiving animations for our Internet and Mobile Phone Contest: ANIMA MUNDI WEB & CEL 2010.

Submissions are already open in the online entry-form in the Personal Area of the ANIMA MUNDI website! Professional and amateur animators have until May 29th to create, animate and send their works under the theme "18 YEARS".

Who doesn't want to be 18 years old? That magic age when one conquers freedom and autonomy, with the full power of youth... What kind of dreams, desires and anxieties take place in the mind of a 18 year old mind? And what better way to represent it all than Animation?

Each participant may enter up to 3 different works, that may have from 30 seconds to 10 minutes lenght. The animations will be sent online within the entry-form, already converted (by the entrant) to SWF (Flash) or FLV (Flash Video) files - with up to 10Mb weight.

Two cash prizes and Anima Mundi Trophees will be awarded to the winners chosen by the Public and professional Juries!

Please read the Rules here and participate!

EXTENDED DEADLINE

2010-03-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

The deadline for submitting films to ANIMA MUNDI 2010 and to the Anima 18 competition have been postponed to March, 31st.

To participate you must login to the ANIMA MUNDI COMMUNITY n our website.
This is also the deadline for sending your preview DVD and promotional material.

Don't miss this opportunity! Sign in and participate!

You saw it first in Anima Mundi (and chose it too)

2010-02-25T13:39:00.000-08:00

Have you already sent the names of your three favorite films you want to watch again in Anima Mundi 18 Years programme? It's undestood that your participation really matters for us. You can see by the popular jury award that happens in Anima Mundi: the films you choose every year frequently succeeds in other festivals.
Here's some examples:

The third edition of Animasivo animation forum that takes place in Mexico will have a special programme of Brazilian animation films this year. The Anima Mundi was invited to present this session and selected these ones:

Josué e o pé de macaxeira, directed by Diogo Viegas (Best Brazilian Animation by the popular jury in Rio, 2009)

L.E.R.,directed by João Angelini (Best Brazilian Animation by the popular jury in São Paulo, 2009)

Tyger , directed by Guilherme Marcondes (2nd Best Brazilian Animation by the popular jury in São Paulo, 2006)

Ratos de rua, directed by Rafael de Paula Rodrigues (Travelling Anima Mundi Prize 2003)

Vida Maria, directed by Márcio Ramos (2nd Best Brazilian Animation by the popular jury in Rio, 2007)

O bloqueio, directed by Claudio de Oliveira

Pax, directed by Paulo Munhoz (Best Brazilian Animation by the popular jury SP/Rio, 2006)

Muragens - Crônicas de um muro, directed by Andrei Milhara Padilha Duarte

Qualquer nota, directed by Marcelo Ribeiro Mourão (2nd Best Brazilian Animation by the popular jury in Rio, 2005)

Mexico's Animasivo also promotes many other activities: there's a mexican animation retrospective, an international award and special programmes. Like us in Anima Mundi, they also offer converses with animators and animation workshops in their agenda. You can learn more about Animasivo in http://festival.org.mx/main/animasivo

The portuguese animation festival Monstra will happen next month in Lisbon and will have an Anima Mundi special screening too. Besides Josué, Vida Maria, L.E.R, Qualquer Nota and Muragens, the Monstra selection includes:

Como surgiu a noite, directed by Andres Lieban (3rd Best Animation for Children by the popular jury in Rio, 2005)

Dossiê Rê Bordosa, directed by César Cabral (Best Brazilian Animation and Best Short Feature by the popular jury São Paulo/Rio, in 2008)

Papercut, de Pedro Eboli

The Monstra festival happens in a biennial basis and offers a great overview of what's new in animation. During the festival, children can also check the Monstrinha segment, with educational activities with the purpose to show the interdisciplinary features in animation. The official website is: www.monstrafestival.com

As you can see, these selections are made by films you awarded. Considering the quality of the jury's choice during Anima Mundi Festival, its possible to see how special the 18 Years screening is going to be.

Vote now!

2010-02-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

The special form for you to choose your three favorite films in Anima Mundi is now avaliable on the website. As we said before, the 18 most voted will be part of Anima Mundi 18 Years special programme in this year's festival. If possible, send us the complete information with Title, Author and Country of each film. But if you don’t remember everything, no problem: just send us the best description you can make of the film, and we will find a way to identify your choice. It's really important that you help us to choose! The form is avaliable for everyone who is logged on the Anima Mundi Community section until March 23^rd. Among the participants, 18 will be awarded with special invitations to the festival, including, of course, tickets to the 18 Years Screening!

In case you need some help to remember all Anima Mundi editions, please check the Animemory section in the website. We are waiting for your vote!

Up wins the Annie Award

2010-02-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

The animated feature Up is really flying high. The movie was the winner for best animated feature at the 37th annual Annie Awards, and director Pete Docter also won the award for directing in a feature production. Coraline, another big favorite, featured in the last year's Anima Mundi, took the prizes for best soundtrack, best production design and best character design.

Te ceremony also gave honors to Tim Burton, Bruce Timm, from Batman - The Animated Series, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, cofounder of DreamWorks. They have received the Winsor McCay Awards for their career achievements in animation.

The Annie Awards is considered a preview for the Academy Awards animation categories, and just one year the Annie Winner didn't take the Oscar too. And this time Up also runs for the Best Picture in the Academy Awards!

Anima Mundi 18 years

2010-01-29T10:40:00.000-08:00

What have you done (or what you'll do) at the age of 18? Took your driver's license? Got into college? Apart from the usual changes, the 18th anniversary comes along with many rites of passage, and some of them only each one of us can tell. And the same goes for a festival. In 2010, the Anima Mundi turns 18 and wants to give a big party. And one of the news in this year's edition is that everyone can participate of the program!

Anima Mundi 18 years

Help us choose the 18 best films of the 18 years of Anima Mundi!

Login to our website personal area, find the special form and send us your message with up to three of your favorite films you want to watch again in 2010. If possible, send us the complete information with Title, Author and Country of each film. But if you don’t remember everything, no problem: just send us the best description you can make of the film, and we will find a way to identify your choice.

Please send us your vote before March 23^rd. Among the participants, 18 will be awarded with special invitations to the festival, including, of course, tickets to the 18 Years Screening!

ENTER YOUR FILM!

2010-01-22T14:57:00.000-08:00

You may already submit your film for the pre-selection of ANIMA MUNDI 2010.
The Festival will take place in Rio de Janeiro from 16 to 25 July and in São Paulo from 28 July to August 1st.
Deadline for submissions is March 23rd.
Please find entry-forms and rules at
www.animamundi.com.br

And the "European Oscar" goes to...

2009-12-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

The end of the year comes, and with it the awards for the best films of 2009. Last december 12 it was time for the prestigious European Film Awards, that took place in German. And the winner in the Animation Category of the year was ... Mia et le Migou, by Jacques-Rémy Girerd!

Mia was competing with other 17 finalists, and the jury was composed of more than 2,000 professionals of all Europe. Not just anything, isn't it? According to Jacques-Rémy, via email, the ceremony was "touching, funny and great". And he added: "Rio gave the signal ! Merci"
That's it, in Anima Mundi 2009 in Rio the film got its very first award! Mia et le Migou was elected the Best Feature Animation by the public vote both in Rio as in São Paulo!

In the official website of Drôme department, you wil be able to watch a revealing photografic essay on how the Mia et le Migou was made - pratically a handmade animation.

Coraline leads the Annie Awards nominations

2009-12-09T10:07:00.000-08:00

The zoetrope-shaped
Annie Award trophy

Henry Selick's Coraline is the favorite animation for the 37th Annie Awards, a prize given by the International Animated Film Society. The english feature received 10 nominations, beating Up and The Princess and the Frog. In this year edition of Anima Mundi, the audience had the opportunity to see a special presentation of Coraline and have a conversation with the animation crew of Laika Studio, who worked on the puppets and de stop motion animation of the movie. Here in the blog, you can see how was the presentation here, and also check an interview with Scott Tom, one of the coordinators of the studio, here.

Coraline

Other contenders for the Best Animated Feature prize include The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Cloudy With a Chance of MeatBalls.

Saludos del Planeta Bacán

2009-12-06T15:47:00.000-08:00

The partnership between MUAN, Anima Escola and the Planeta Bacán project was a success! Our friends from Chile said they've been surprised with the quality of the short films produced by the students from the schools included in the campaign. According to Cecília Anriquez, from IBM Chile, "great part of this success comes from the preparation process given to the educators. And, from now on, the students will certainly wish to participate in the next edition of Anima Mundi!" :)

Watch here the competition winner short film, En el amor y en la guerra todos reciclamos:

The films were always produced under the theme "An intelligent planet". And the result was really clever, isn't it? You can check all the other shorts (and also improve your spanish) in Planeta Bacán website's gallery.

Anima Escola 2009

2009-12-01T15:15:00.000-08:00

Está em pleno curso o Anima Escola 2009, um programa de capacitação na linguagem da animação especialmente concebido para as escolas. Pelo 8º ano consecutivo, o projeto é realizado em parceria com a Secretaria Municipal de Educação do Rio de Janeiro, e busca desenvolver nos alunos e professores sua própria expressão artística, construindo sua consciência crítica frente à massiva utilização desta linguagem pelos meios de comunicação. Além, é claro, de proporcionar aos envolvidos a experiência de criar seus próprios filmes animados!

Mais uma vez, o software MUAN é parceiro na empreitada, facilitando o processo e "revelando" com agilidade o resultado final dos trabalhos para os alunos. E mesmo depois de finalizado o projeto, o professor pode continuar trabalhando com seus alunos, criando e produzindo filmes de animação.

Aida Queiroz, uma das diretoras do Anima Mundi, no processo
de capacitação dos professores da Rede Municipal do Rio

Apesar de não ser o objetivo final do Anima Escola, alguns dos filmes produzidos pelos alunos acabam ganhando visibilidade fora do programa. Foram os casos, por exemplo, do Pequeno Cordel do Sapo Voador, que ganhou o prêmio de melhor roteiro no Festival MostraMundo de Recife, em 2005, e do divertido (e talvez assustador) Baletéia e a Boneca Misteriosa, filme criado na oficina realizada no Núcleo de Artes Alencastro Guimarães (RJ), que ganhou menção honrosa no 13º Vitória Cine Vídeo, em 2006.

Cena da animação Baletéia...,
que pode ser assistida aqui