In continuation of our story about the Krok-2000 International Festival of Animated Films, I cannot avoid again touching on the topic of contrasts. They not only accompanied on the whole trip from Moscow to St. Petersburg, but took a very high profile in the competition program. Recall that it included over eighty works by beginning animators from various countries. Under such conditions contrasts are inevitable, as during the festival the first student experiments (student work category) were side by side with quite professional films in the diploma work category and absolutely mature authors’ works in the debut category by young cinematographers that had already managed to seriously make their presence felt on the international screen. Hence the inevitable contacts made at the festival are advantageous in allowing the participants see their own films in the context of other works, especially successful ones, by their generation.
I, however, want to dwell on something else. Literally from the very first day I (and, as it later became apparent, most ofmy colleagues) was surprised and even subconsciously concerned by a certain incongruity. On the one hand there were happy, lively young people, to some extent pragmatists and to some extent idealists (making author’s films, knowing perfectly well that there is no special demand for it in world cinema). On the other hand, there were the depressing and declining motifs of most festival films. Feelings of anxiety, danger, and hopelessness were present in almost every other film. They could assume the shape of a quite specific evil like in the film Daddy and Me (Korea) where the talk is about sexual abuse within the family (the film is marked with the diploma of a jury). They could appear out of certain mystically sick visions, as in Harare (director Andreas Kaiser, Germany), which won $2000 in the diploma works category. They could turn into an expressly told story, as in the film Last Station: Paradise (director Jan Turing, Germany, also given a diploma by the jury) when rats living at the city dump found a bright postcard portraying exotic nature and set off in the search of this paradise, but while crossing the highway almost all of them perished, run over by cars, and only one, barely alive, reached the goal: juicy grass and big flowers. But as the camera moved back, we, the spectators, see that it is only the strip of green dividing the two lanes of the road.
Even the funniest, in jury’s view, film of the festival, Birds Do not Fly in Cages (director Lois Brisseno, France, also awarded by the prize of the Fund to Promote the Development of the Arts in Ukraine) is really funny but was made with black humor. Even the winner of the Grand Prix of Krok-2000 ($4000), the charming 3-minute Pompon by French director Fabien Droue, kept the audience in a state of anxious tension. It tells about a nice puppy that somehow does not expect anything good from life and is continuously pursued by visions of fearful automobile accidents. And not without reason, for it was precisely in this way that his father’s life had ended. And though Pompon remains alive and unhurt, it is difficult to call the film overly optimistic.
What, then, is torturing these young people? Whence comes this foreboding of danger? Perhaps they are still unable to rid themselves of the natural inhibitions of youth. Perhaps it is a certain fashion. If only it were so. Or maybe it is anxiety (and not without reason) for their professional futures on the path of the author’s animation. Or the inevitable concern that appears in people on the cusp of centuries. Or do they intuitively and subconsciously know something that we do not or do not want to know?
It happened that the Kursk submarine tragedy took place during the festival’s first days. But Krok took place on a boat, making life quite isolated from the outside world; there was no TV, and you could not find fresh newspapers during stops. The only source of information was a Mayak radio. From the radio news we long took everything that had happened with Kursk as nothing but an ordinary accident. But as time passed and nothing happened we started to realize that something terrible had happened. And even then we did not yet comprehend the scale of the disaster. It was only in St. Petersburg that I understood it and not at all from the media. My colleague and I were running late for the closing of Krok and flagged down a car. The driver who picked us up turned out to be a former submarine sailor. With what a pain he spoke about the Kursk and with what inconsolable grief about his life and his fellow sailors! Then I thought with a shudder that perhaps these festival films are not altogether so far from the reality as it had seemed to us. And however dreadful, the Kursk is but one of the tragedies that has befallen our planet.
And still, the same festival screen also provided a certain measure of hope, awaking tender feelings and bringing the smiles to our faces. Incidentally, it was precisely the Russian cinema that looked as the most optimistic and thus diverse, which the jury also esteemed. The award in debut category went to the film Love (director Agamurad Amanov, Russia), a story of Galatea in the new Moscow style. The jury awarded the jury prize for best children’s film (with $500) to Natalia Berezova for the attractive and humorous film, The Story of a Cat with All the Relevant Consequences. The award for the best film on an ecological topic (also $500) went to the work of Arthur Tolstobrovov, Resurrection, about the resurrection of a calf. The author also received an award from the information sponsors, journalists from TV-Park and Cinema-Park, which read, “For rare relevance of content to form, for harmonic combination of the low topic with elevating deception, and for the skillful use of a non-normative lexicon.”
The Ukrainian students of the Animation Department of the Kyiv State Institute of Theater Art also did not leave without awards, though, so far, only collective and promotional ones, but completely justified. They were awarded the diplomas of the jury and two prizes (both VCRs) in the name of Iryna Hurvych and 1+1.
And, finally, the special award of a jury ($3000 and digital video camera) was presented to the Czech films The Light and The Letter (director David Soukup), the prize in the student film category ($2000) to Big Mixture (directors Yukhym Perlis and Peter Engels), and the award for the best program of cinema school to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Ghent, Belgium).
The festival is over. The awards have been handed out. Most of young film- makers demonstrated not only quite a decent level of professionalism but also their capacity to search for new plastic, technical, and gender possibilities in animation. Quite a logical question appears: and what next? Next comes — silence, bitterly noted one Kyiv alumnus. At do not be misled that the problems of professional demands and artistic self-realization is acute only for us and the Russians. Such complaints were voiced by literally all Krok participants. Because author’s film, I repeat, is something in little demand by mass movie audiences, and this means you cannot live for long time doing it for a living. For this reason the young are finding their own solutions. One does it nights at his own expense and in the daytime earns money at an advertising agency; another leaves for commercial animation, hoping that someday he will still be able to have his word in grand art; yet another teaches and again makes film in his free time. And these are young cinematographers from Poland, Belgium, and Hungary. Foreign teachers, in that very Belgium or Great Britain honestly warn their students that they are going to teach them a profession, or if you prefer, a craft, and there will be a demand for young cinematographers in commercial animation. But if the issue is about self-realization, here nobody can guarantee anything, and don’t expect a job. In fact, Yevhen Syvokin who in practice is today supporting the school of Ukrainian animation, gives the same warning to his students. But here there is one significant difference: if foreign animators have a place where to go and show their strengths, ours do not.
For example, a former Kyivan now living in Moscow, famous director Aleksandr Tatarsky confessed that he refused pedagogical work because he got tired of preparing the personnel for Hollywood: “All my best pupils are working there in very good studios. In the USA there is a huge animation industry and every decent specialist has every chance to get a good job and be in demand. They even lack specialists, and they grab them from Europe, including Eastern Europe. Our problem is that our animation is trying to sit between the two stools. On the one hand, Russian animation considers it below its dignity to make big commercial projects, which is done by the whole world. On the other hand, there are fewer and fewer author’s films despite an abundance of talented people.” We might add that this is a problem for Ukrainian animation also. Only it stands even more painfully. But that is another tale.
(Continued from the previous issue)
