The 61st edition of the San Sebastian Festival will dedicate a special retrospective to animated films produced in the last two decades. Entitled Animatopia, the cycle offers a look at films that overshoot the limits erroneously imposed on the genre, family entertainment or fantastic adventures. The programmed titles will highlight the freedom and capacity of alternative animation to tackle all kinds of adult themes through different perspectives, techniques and points of view.
To introduce the cycle in San Sebastian, "Animatopia" will enjoy the presence of an exceptional master of ceremonies, Bill Plympton. Born in 1946, this North American moviemaker has become a reference in transgressive and iconoclastic animated cinema. Having put his name to almost fifty shorts (including two Academy Award nominees), Plympton has also directed several features that are now modern classics in the genre: The Tune (1992), I Married a Strange Person (1997), Mutant Aliens (2001), Idiots and Angels (2008) and Hair High (2004), the latter of which will be screened in the "Animatopia" retrospective.
The retrospective will be accompanied by a publication coordinated by Roberto Cueto with contributions from high-profile specialists: Jordi Costa, Fernando de Felipe, Sonia García López, Rubén Lardín, Jesús Palacios, Jayne Pilling, Jordi Sánchez-Navarro and Paul Wells.
MY LIFE AS MCDULL TOE YUEN (HONG KONG) 2001 Winner of the Annecy Festival in 2003 based on the popular Hong Kong comic, this little gem of an animated film shows us the adult world from the bewildered perspective of McDull, a piglet with more questions than answers.
WAKING LIFE RICHARD LINKLATER (USA) 2001 Richard Linklater, one of the most personal and unpredictable contemporary American filmmakers, couldn’t be expected to make a conventional animation movie: a philosophical look at the meaning of life and the world around us.
HAIR HIGH BILL PLYMPTON (USA) 2004 Bill Plympton, master of irreverent animation, applies his inimitable style in this homage to the teen movies of the 50s, to comedy from the school of oversized toupees, rock music, fast bikes, loverboys and dance queens. All of course generously sprinkled with the blackest of humour and shots at satire.
MAINDO GÊMU / MIND GAME (MIND GAME) MASAAKI YUASA (JAPAN) 2004 Adaptation of a popular Japanese underground comic, this impressive merger between hugely varying animation techniques narrates the bizarre adventures of Nishi, a youngster obsessed with becoming a comic illustrator.
NYÓCKER / THE DISTRICT ÁRON GAUDER, ERIK NOVAK (HUNGARY) 2004 Animated film takes to the streets: considered by some as the "Hungarian South Park", this winning film at the Annecy Festival is the caricaturesque chronicle of life in a multi-racial district of Budapest inhabited by Gypsies, Arabs, Chinese and Hungarians.
THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES STEPHEN QUAY, TIMOTHY QUAY (GERMANY-UK-FRANCE) 2005 The Quay brothers are two of the most incorruptible and imaginative artists to have come out of modern animation cinema. In their second feature they apply their stop-motion techniques to the morbid Gothic tale of an opera singer kidnapped by a sinister doctor who wants to turn her into an automaton.
DE PROFUNDIS (FROM THE SEA) MIGUELANXO PRADO (SPAIN-PORTUGAL) 2006 One of the most unusual and surprising animation productions ever made in our country, a visual and musical poem conceived by the Galician illustrator Miguelanxo Prado and created using animated oil paintings.
PAPURIKA / PAPRIKA (PAPRIKA) SATOSHI KON (JAPAN) 2006 The last film and testament from one of Japanese anime's greats, Satoshi Kon, a hallucinating and visually brilliant sci-fi fantasy: what happens when we have the ability to enter other peoples' dreams?
PRINCESS ANDERS MORGENTHALER (DENMARK-GERMANY ) 2006 One of the most controversial productions to come out of recent animation cinema, this violent and poignant film follows a missioner's crusade against the porn industry to avenge his sister's death. Nothing further from a film for all the family.
TACHIGUISHI RETSUDEN / TACHIGUI: THE AMAZING LIVES OF THE FAST FOOD GRIFTERS (TACHIGUI: THE AMAZING LIVES OF THE FAST FOOD GRIFTERS) MAMORU OSHII (JAPAN) 2006 A mockumentary bringing a critical history of Japan from the post-war until today, summed up in a prestigious collage of innovative animation techniques, courtesy of Mamoru Oshii, mythical creator of Ghost in the Shell and Avalon.
PEUR(S) DU NOIR (FEAR(S) OF THE DARK) BLUTCH, CHARLES BURNS, MARIE CAILLOU, PIERRE DI SCIULLO, LORENZO MATTOTTI, RICHARD MCGUIRE (FRANCE) 2007 Prestigious names from the world of illustration and drawing come together in this anthology film where each use their personal styles to depict the worst fears of the human being. The journey into darkness was never so beautifully drawn.
$9.99 TATIA ROSENTHAL (ISRAEL-AUSTRALIA) 2008 Stop-motion adaptation of the short stories by the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, a collection of tales focussed on the people who live in a block of flats, their daily problems, and their search for the meaning of their lives.
VALS IM BASHIR / WALTZ WITH BASHIR (WALTZ WITH BASHIR) ARI FOLMAN (ISRAEL-FRANCE-GERMANY-USA-FINLAND-SWITZERLAND-BELGIUM-AUSTRALIA) 2008 One of the most celebrated and important productions of adult animation in recent years, winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Animation and historical research shake hands to unveil a terrible episode in the recent history of the Middle East.
FANTASTIC MR. FOX WES ANDERSON (USA) 2009 Wes Anderson adapts a short story by Roald Dahl for his first animation movie, fantastically supported by Hollywood star-packed cast who lend voice and soul to the characters. Anderson goes beyond mere family cinema to revisit his sweet and sour reflections on the family, its happy times and its misfortunes.
MARY AND MAX ADAM ELLIOT (AUSTRALIA) 2009 Winner of awards at prestigious animation festivals like Annecy and Ottawa, this is the tender tale of a friendship between pen-pals you wouldn't believe was possible: a lonely girl in Melbourne and an obese 40-year-old with Asperger's Syndrome in New York. Will they ever meet face to face?
METROPIA TARIK SALEH (SWEDEN-DENMARK-NORWAY) 2009 A sophisticated animation technique based on manipulated, computer-animated photographs provides the visuals of this claustrophobic fable on the life of a hypothetical Europe in the near future. The voices are by Vincent Gallo, Juliette Lewis and Stellan Skarsgård.
CHICO & RITA FERNANDO TRUEBA, JAVIER MARISCAL, TONO ERRANDO (SPAIN-UK) 2010 The creative coming together between the filmmaker Fernando Trueba and the designer Javier Mariscal resulted in a film nominated for an Academy Award that landed a Goya and the European Film Award. A light-packed tour of Cuban music through a passionate love story.
ALOIS NEBEL TOMÁS LUNÁK (CZECH REPUBLIC-GERMANY) 2011 Based on a prestigious graphic novel by Czech artists Rudis & Jaromir, this tale in steely black and white stars a stationmaster on the border with Poland who lives tormented by the ghosts of his past.
ARRUGAS (WRINKLES) IGNACIO FERRERAS (SPAIN) 2011 The Spanish production to bag most awards in recent years and premiered at the 59th edition of the San Sebastian Festival. A carefully-made adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by Paco Roca sensitively portraying the life of residents in a home for the elderly.
CRULIC - DRUMUL SPRE DINCOLO / CRULIC - THE PATH TO BEYOND (CRULIC - THE PATH TO BEYOND) ANCA DAMIAN (ROMANIA-POLAND) 2011 Can animation cinema and documentary join forces? This film, winner at the Annecy Festival, proves that it is possible and even recommendable: a spectacular animated work recreates the true story of Claudiu Crulic, a Romanian citizen who was arrested in Poland for a crime he claimed he never committed.
DWAE-JI-UI WANG / THE KING OF PIGS (THE KING OF PIGS) SANG-HO YEUN (SOUTH KOREA) 2011 The big revelation of recent South Korean animation was this powerful chronicle of power struggles between students at a Seoul high school: two former pupils remember a mysterious classmate who marked their lives.
GORDO, CALVO Y BAJITO (FAT, BALD, SHORT MAN) CARLOS OSUNA (COLOMBIA) 2011 Animation cinema can also tell familiar, everyday stories, like this one about Antonio Farfan, an assistant in a notary's office who believes that his poor professional and sentimental success is due to his unattractive physical appearance. Until someone shows him that things could be different.
LE TABLEAU (THE PAINTING) JEAN-FRANÇOIS LAGUIONIE (FRANCE-BELGIUM) 2011 Can the figures in a painting come to life? This fascinating exercise in animation stars the inhabitants of a painting left incomplete by its author: figures completely painted, others with no colour, and those that are nothing but sketches.
TATSUMI ERIC KHOO (SINGAPORE) 2011 A delightful portrayal of the life and work of manga illustrator Yoshihiro Tatsumi adapting the artist's memories and some of his most famous and heartrending narrations, thanks to a careful visual style maintaining the full beauty of the original.
A LIAR'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: THE UNTRUE STORY OF MONTY PYTHON'S GRAHAM CHAPMAN BILL JONES, JEFF SIMPSON, BEN TIMLETT (UK) 2012 Graham Chapman, who died in 1989, was one of the founders of the Monty Python comedy group. Now his memoires, "A Liar's Autobiography" are taken to the screen with the help of animation. The story may not be factually exact, but that doesn't make it any less true.
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