POLISH ANIMATION SCREENINGS AT THE FESTIVAL IN VARNA

Today begins the 9th edition of the animation festival in a Bulgarian coastal city of Varna. The festival’s programme includes two special screenings of Polish animated films.

In the international shorts competition, Poland will be represented by – “Ex animo” by Wojciech Wojtkowski. “Ex animo” is an animated impression, where the drawings released from the hands of the animator create their own, two-dimensional reality. The film was produced by Warsaw based FUMI STUDIO. The 32 films listed for the shorts competition will be judged  by an international jury consisting of five members: the animation directors Jiri Barta (Czech Republic), Theodor Ushev (Bulgaria/Canada), Priit Pärn  (Estonia) and Tsvetomira Nikolova (Bulgaria), as well as an academic lecturer and the author of several books about animation Jonathan Murray (UK). The winners will be announced on Friday.

The non-competetive sections will provide the festival’s audience with two special programmes presenting the Polish animated cinema. In the course of the first one, “Polish surreal and abstract animation”, the viewers will watch a variety of films from the ANIMATOR 2013 festival. Among them „Banner of Youth” and „House” by Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk,  „There and here” by Andrzej Pawłowski,  „Sweet rythms” by Kazimierz Urbański, „Oh, I Can’t Stop” by Zbigniew Rybczyński, „Block” by Hieronim Neumann and „Freedom of the leg” by Piotr Dumała. The programme will be screened on Thursday at 2:30 p.m.

The second, retrospective show will be dedicated to the work of Jan Lenica. Six of his films will appear in this set – “Labirynth”, “A”, “R.O.Island”, “New Janko the Musician”, “Monsieur Tete” and “Requited Sentiments”, as well as a documentary “The Island of Jan Lenica” directed by Marcin Giżycki, an art and film historian, filmmaker and director of the “Animator” International Animated Film Festival, who’s also curating both screenings. Jan Lenica’s retrospective will be screened on Friday at 4 p.m.

To read more about the programme of the festival, visit its official website

Above - a screen from "Labirynth" by Jan Lenica (1962)