September 2011

Welcome to the September issue of Croats in London. On September 23/4 the Cambridge Film Festival will be screening two programmes of Croatian animation. We speak to Aline Conti, the Short Film Programmer for the Cambridge Film Festival about it.

The Ersatz

How did the idea of the including Croatian animation in the festival come about?

While attending the International Short Film Festival in Clermont-Ferrand, France, last February, I saw "Nespavanje Ne Ubija", a black and white Croatian animation that blended dream with reality and which was part of the official Lab selection. I was so impressed with the film that, a few months later, while attending the Cannes Film Festival, I stopped by the Short Film Corner in the hope of finding more Croatian animations in their catalog. Fortunately, they had selected quite a few and there I watched "Soba", "Ornament Duse", "U Lancima" and "Cvijet Bitke". Once again, the originality and quality of these animations struck me and I thought "People in Cambridge need to see these animations!"

How will the programme be structured?

There are actually two programmes. The first programme, which will be screened at the Arts Picturehouse on Friday 23rd at 10:30 am, is a selection of award-winning shorts from Zagreb Film, spanning the 'golden years' of Croatian animations from "Samac" in 1959 to Satiemania in 1978. The second programme will be screened at the Arts Picturehouse on Saturday 24th at 10:30am and consists of the latest Croatian animations coming from Zagreb Film and newly emerging animation studios.

Moj Put

How did you go about selecting the particular animations?

For the first programme, I made my selection from the "Balkan Survey", which was a 6 hour retrospective programme on Croatian animation put together by the curator of the Tessaloniki Film Festival and which was supported by the Croatian Audio Visual Center. For the second programme, I selected the Croatian animations that were on the festival circuit in 2010 and 2011.

How does the Zagreb School of Animation fit into the history of animation?

Although I am no expert on the subject, I believe that Croatian animations played a revolutionary role in the history of animation especially in the 1950s when the Zagreb Animation School abandoned the Disney-like cartoon style, and introduced visual of avant-garde abstract painting, constructivism and cubism.

How has Croatia been involved in the programme? Will Croatian animators be present?

Vanja Sremac at the Croatian Audio Visual Center was really helpful in putting us in touch with the relevant people from Zagreb Film, Bonobostudio and Bold Studio. At Zagreb Film, I mainly dealt with Sanja Borcic, the international relations coordinator, who oversaw the transfer of their archival films on a digital format for us. Sadly, we won't have any Croatian animators attending the Festival but we hope that many Croatians living in the UK will come to the screenings to represent these fantastic films.

Details of the Festival can be found here: http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk
The screenings will be on 23 and 24 September at 10.30AM.

Dove Sei