Anim’est in Bucharest

The International Animation Film Festival goes online in Bucharest

Corina Sabău, 20.06.2020, 14:00

Anim’est,
the International Animation Film Festival in Bucharest, invites film lovers from
everywhere to take a virtual tour of the best short-reel animation films in the
entire history of the festival. Under the circumstances, going online is the
best solution until the grand reunion proper with cinema-goers takes place later
this year. Animest, the International Animation Film festival, is Romania’s only
festival exclusively dedicated to the animation film. Anim’est was inaugurated
in 2006; it brings hundreds of films from all over the world on the big screen.
There are six competition sections, retrospectives, there are also programmes
dedicated to famous schools of animation films, genre festivals, programmes
dedicated to the great names in the animation film industry.

The 15th
edition of the festival is scheduled in Bucharest, over November 9 and 15,
2020.

The
director of Anim’est, Mihai Mitrica:

It’s our spectators we had in mind all along, the public of Anim’est, and
we thought we could make the most of the online opportunities we have, of the
site and the Anim’est application, thereby offering spectators some sort of
revision of what Anim’est has been in the last 15 years. Because I am certain
not all of our spectators have watched all
the short-reels of the festival. And that’s how what we labelled UnitedShorts
took off, as this year we launched the logo of the festival, in the sheer hope
it would be a perfect opportunity to keep the Animest community on its toes until
the forthcoming edition of the festival is staged this coming autumn. Our selection includes
films we have screened form the early editions of Anim’est, first of all we
selected the award-winning productions, those that have been part of Anim’est
track record. There are films made by students, but also films made by the
studios that were invited to take part in the festival, and I might add that
until the forthcoming edition of Anim’est begins, we shall post 50 short-reels
of thereabouts. That is the short-reels with the greatest number of awards in
the festival’s previous editions. We will also have a selection of entertaining
short-reels, funny films, films with topics and stories created to amuse the
Anim’est community, there’s a very long list that we have.

One of
the festival’s most important missions is that of resuscitating and promoting
the domestic animation film industry. The local competition as part of the
festival has become stronger since 2007, when the competition was launched. The
new generation that participated in the workshops organized by Anim’est already
includes professionals working in animation film studios countrywide, but also
students pursuing programmes with Europe’s noted universities. In recent years,
Romanian animation films have been shortlisted and received awards in important
festivals.

The director of Anim’est, Mihai Mitrica:

It was one of our purposes, one of the main reasons for which we
initiated the festival: we wanted to support Romanian animation, at once having
the public rediscover the author-based animation and not only that, because I
cannot say all these years we have screened only author-based animation films.
We also had guests from the great studios, Pixar, Disney, Laika, they offered
Masterclasses and tried to explain how a film was made, to meet that level. At
any rate, I am happy that, apart from the number of spectators we had and which
has been growing from one edition to the next, the number of animation film
makers has also been on the rise. I remember that, in 2009 or 2010, many
directors said they were making a film just to check if they would be
shortlisted for Anim’est’s following edition, they said they made a film
especially for the festival. And that, in fact, is what we wanted, what we
hoped would happen.

There
is also another noteworthy point about Anim’est; the festival rediscovered
Romanian animation filmmakers who were the founders of the genre in Romania.
Anim’est also provided digital versions of some of their films. Among the
recipients of the Anim’est lifetime achievement awards were Ion Truica, whose
short reel Hidalgo was shortlisted for the 1976 edition of the Cannes Film Festival,
Luminiţa Cazacu, Zeno Bogdănescu and Isabela Petrasincu.

Mihai Mitrică:

We also have a few regrets at this point, since there were a great many
filmmakers who worked with the Animafilm studio, a studio which was operational
from 1964 to 1989. Unfortunately, we haven’t had enough editions so far whereby
we could rediscover them all and bring their films back of the big screen. Our
regrets are even deeper as some of them are no longer among us and we didn’t get
round to compiling a retrospective of their work, but we shall make it up to
them, that’s for sure, by all means we shall have a retrospective in the coming
years. On the other hand, it is this reason for joy that we had, we, the organizers of the
festival, we managed to have some of the works screened as part of the
festival, works belonging to some of the most notable animation film makers,
animators of Animafilm’s older generation. We brought them in front of the
public and we had the younger generation discover them.

Since
2011, Anim’est, the International Animation Film Festival, has also been
organized in Chisinau. Beginning 2017, the Anim’est Trophy’s award-winning
short-reel has been picked by an international professional judging panel. Such
a film has been included among the eligible candidates as part of the
nominations made by the American Film Academy Awards, in the Best Short-reel
Animation Film category.

( Translation by Eugen Nasta)