Archived: Animafest at Zagreb Pride

ANIMAFEST 2020 AT ZAGREB PRIDE: JUST LOVE!

As part of the 19th Pride Parade of LGBTIQ people and families, in cooperation with Zagreb Pride Animafest Zagreb 2020 this Saturday, September 19, in the Art Park (Ribnjak Park) shows a full-length program consisting of five award-winning animated films on topics related to the Zagreb Pride mission.

Purpleboy

Starting at 8pm, we first watch Purpleboy (Portugal, France, Belgium, 2019) by Brazilian author Alexandre Siqueira, a story from this year’s Animafest World Panorama about a human child of unclear biological sex growing and maturing in the garden of his animal parents. A symbolic fable / fairy tale about individual freedom, Purpleboy hides a strong political subtext in its fascinating bright red-pink palette and ingenious panoramas. The director was inspired by a book about the first transsexual operation performed in Brazil, which sensitized him to the topic of gender in the context of the undemocratic contemporary history of that country. Nevertheless, he incorporated autobiographical elements of his own relationship with his parents, but Purpleboy is still the only film in this program that does not belong to the category of animated documentaries, but relies most directly on the fully animated film tradition of metamorphosis, anthropomorphization and grotesque grotesque.

Beauty

Next up is Beauty, a 2016 Belgian-Dutch film by Diëg Nurse – a poetic documentary about transgender Beyong that uses animation to illustrate and dynamize her childhood memories of Suriname, her relationship with her parents, moving to the Netherlands, her experiences with opiates and prostitution, and finally reconciliation with by itself.

All those sensations in my stomach

All these sensations in my stomach (Croatia, Portugal, 2020) by Marko Dješka then offer the intimate world of Matie Anne Pleše, accompanying her in the range from school, through student, to professional days in search of love, acceptance and self. Deška's film, which has a Croatian premiere at Zagreb Pride and to which Hana Tintor contributed significantly with illustrations, is less focused on the act of transition itself, and more on the search framed by peer violence, teachers, etc., from which salvation ultimately offers surrounding "dear people" and acceptance of female gender and gender identity.

Meat

Meat (Brazil, Spain, 2019) Camile Kater comes to us after Locarno, Toronto, Palm Springs, Leipzig, IDFA and Annecy as a sensationally successful first auteur film in which five animators illustrate the stories of five women of different ages, occupations, races, genders and life experiences. All segments have in common the theme of the relationship to the female body, the metaphor of meat and the degree of its roasting and brownish-red hue, but each story is done with a different technique – hybrid stop-animation of objects and clay combined with oil paints, direct interventions in 35-millimeter film strip, found footage, whole animation of drawings and watercolors, digital animation with glitches. We are approached by women stigmatized for obesity, age, gender, or character: a former movie muse, a transgender black woman, a perimenopausal lesbian, a young girl with her first period, an activist.

The man-woman case

Finally, The Man-Woman Case (France, 2017) Anaïs Caure is a French crime-biographical mini-series about Eugene Falleni, a famous transgender man accused of the brutal murder of his wife and his life full of violence, fluidity and loss. Made in classic, mostly black and white techniques combined with rotoscopy and a bit of color, the series was awarded the Jury Prize at the Annecy Festival and a special jury award from the 2018 Animafest Feature Film Competition.