POLISH PROJECT AT CARTOON SPRINGBOARD
From November 15 to 17, in Halle, the pitching Cartoon Springboard was held, at which the project "Pengantar" by Maciej Nowak was presented.
Cartoon Springboard is an European conference for young talents. During the pitching, they have a chance to present their projects to the experts from the audiovisual community. For them, it is also an opportunity to develop their creativity as well as to broaden their business knowledge. This year, 24 animated film projects were presented, including the project "Pengantar" by Maciej Nowak.
The eponymous Pengantar is an island where representatives of various cultures, countries and races meet. Its inhabitants consist of humans, halflings, dwarves, elves and even kobolds, making the impression of a very unconventional social experiment. This eclectic community is observed from the perspective of six twelve-year-olds (proportionally, as far as the female elf, the dwarf and the halfling, who have longer lifespans, are concerned) who try to fulfil their dreams, at the same time completing the quests bestowed by the governor of the island, trying not to fall foul of the Resistance, and struggling against various adversities.
Pengantar not only parodies the most clichéd elements of the fantasy genre – first and foremost, it is a story about humans, elves, dwarves and halflings of this world. Seemingly stereotypical, one-dimensional characters turn out to be complex and written in a tricky way, and when we delve deep into their past, it turns out that no one is the person which we expected them to be from the beginning.
Maciej Nowak is a third-year student of English Philology at the Jagiellonian University and the graduate of the animated film course at the College of Further Education Anima Art in Krakow. A long-time fan of animated television series, British comedy, and fantasy, he decided, together with a group of colleagues from the former theatre group, to combine the elements of these genres into one whole in the aforementioned production.
You can read about the recent event and all projects on the organiser's website.