ANIMATION

Scent of the SeaFILMS – ZADAR 2004

42nd Children’s Film and Video Festival, Zadar, June 3rd-6th 2004

Croatian Children’s Film and Video Festival in Zadar confirmed traditionally growing presence of some genre models and pointed out this year’s dominance of certain topics. Thus, following the example of Croatian Television, in documentaries most participants confuse the difference between a reportage and a documentary, and most often speak about violence in schools, cheating at tests or some other regular school activities. In implementation approach reporting is more dominant then recording-displaying of a problem, with prevalence of reportages that, in its form, remind us of visually staged A-student’s essay, the fact which is not stimulating for the audience. Obtrusiveness of texts that bombastically follows average picture scene is often felt in films. Although the documentary reportage form with ’talking heads’ is omnipresent constant in international film production, at this production levels of creativity the shift from the usual should be stimulated, even if the final result is poor.
Two forms that sometimes meet each other prevail in feature film. The first has characteristics of a parody, and the second of romance. Mockery in performance seems far more interesting for both the audience and authors themselves, and effort made can be really impressive. But the storytelling approach to love stories lacks imagination and young authors, more often than not, resort to the naïve stories with often dramaturgically unjustified and unselective use of music. Among young animators, those from Čakovec are the best storytellers, and animations from Zaprešić (Shade and peace) and Koprivnica (Lady Akra Bat) stand out because of unique pictures and animation realization

Slaven Zečević