“CRAB” WINS AWARD AT CZECH FESTIVAL
The Golden Slipper for Best Short Animation for Children at the recently concluded 63rd International Film Festival for Children and Youth in Zlín went to Piotr Chmielewski's film.
The Zlín Film Festival was established in 1961 in Czechoslovakia and functioned for years as the International Festival of Films for Children and Youth. In its incredibly rich program, younger and older viewers get the opportunity to watch animated, documentary, and fiction films. One important part of the festival is the meeting between cinema and literature, i.e., screenings of film adaptations of comics, school readings, or classics of literature.
The awarded Crab is an attempt to adopt the perspective of the titular crustacean and discover the worlds it inhabits through its eyes and ears. Animals are mute witnesses of our history; they have accompanied us during humanity's greatest failures and triumphs. Their lives run parallel to ours – we eat them, use them as tools, and sometimes we simply don't notice them. But what would happen if we tried to adopt their perspective? What do the events that we all know from history lessons look like when seen through the eyes of animals?
A list of all awarded films can be found here.