FESTIVALS

Shadow films without Shadows

Animated Film Festival in Chiavari, Italy (Festival internazionale del cinema d’animazione, Chiavari, Italia), October 21st-25th 2004

Giannalberto Bendazzi, one of the most prominent film historians in the world, started, together with a group of experts and enthusiasts, a new international festival of animation in Chiavari, a small seaside town near Genoa. The festival is organized according to the highest standards of international festivals, especially those like Zagreb Festival: it is a festival directed at illustrating the situation in contemporary artistic animation. Most of the films were invited to the festival, and since the invitation was based on good knowledge of recent animation, the competition program was at the highest level. But Bendazzi and his associates see the trademark of their festival in its research wing, that is, in thematic retrospectives accompanied by published studies and round tables. There was one particularly valuable retrospective in the center of research of the first (’zero’) festival: historical review of silhouette film, or more precisely animated silhouette film, a sub-category of collage film. The retrospective showed that, along with the widely known Lotta Reiniger, there are antecedent authors, as well as contemporaneous and subsequent ones, finishing with our contemporary Michel Ocelot (France) who makes sophisticated silhouette animations. The retrospective was accompanied by the publishing of a capital bilingual book by the French expert Pierre Jouvanceau — Le film de silhouettes / The Silhouette Film (Le Mani — Festival del cinema d’animazione di Chiavari, Genova, 2004), the promotion of the book and the round table about silhouette animation. Apart from this retrospective, the festival comprised two more retrospectives: the retrospective of the work of Italian tandem Emanuele Luzzati and Giulio Gianini, masters of collage animation, and another by the oriental master Takahate Isao. The festival as an event was an obvious success. Bendazzi and his associates showed that enthusiasm and expertise can organize a first-rate festival right away — at least judging by the extraordinary program. The problem of the festival was in limited finances, inadequate marketing both in Italy and abroad, and poor response of local audience. Nevertheless, one of the purpose of this festival is to spread the knowledge of animation in regions and among the audience that hasn’t have a chance to become familiar with artistic animation, and since study orientation may have international appeal, the festival obviously has a deep justification, and we hope that it will live.
ANALITICAL CONTENTS: Silhouette films; The main program and the side programs; The perspectives of the festival

Hrvoje Turković