ANIMAFEST 2011 - katalog - HFS

When he finished his Moses, Michelangelo allegedly
hit him on the knee with a hammer and said: “Speak!”
Moses, conditioned by his own technology, took the Fifth.
Three centuries later, Geppetto went a step further in the
relationship with his cheeky carving product, but that
event belongs to the 19 th century imaginarium, not reality.
The demiurgic longing we are discussing here had
to wait for the 20 th century techniques to be brought
to life: the drawn, mended, molten or carved began to
move, speak and defy their makers only when the humans
created animated film.
A scientific explanation says that there is an
evolutional error that makes our retina perceive things
with a delay and thus enables a hallucinating experience,
affording the author absolute freedom, and the viewer
absolute pleasure or absolute torture. Absolute freedom
means absolute responsibility only absolute talents can
handle. No other cinematic branch depends as much of
talent and inspiration as animation. Going back to the
optical illusions, animated film is the only allowed hallucinogenic
drug of our civilisation, moreover, it is even
recommended for children. From the point of view of
our individual, personal histories, cartoons exist since
forever. As soon as a baby’s sight is cleared, they put it
in front of a screen with something animated on it. The
first time you were taken to the movies, I bet it was a
cartoon you watched. I know I did, it was a bad copy of
Bambi in a local cinema that does not exist anymore,
just as my younger daughter began with The Lion King
also in a recently closed cinema, just as my Mom’s first
cinema experience was Snow White, the only American
film the colonising German government allowed in distribution.
Animation is inebriating. That is why it is the
favourite means of ideologies, just as it is the perfect
instrument of subversion. Through animation, totalitarian
regimes can be depicted as nice, and radical anarchy
can be camouflaged in something innocuous in
no time. Betty Boop and Fritz the Cat would have been
immediately arrested if they had ever existed, and Tom
and Jerry would be placed under surveillance due to lifethreatening
behaviour. Animation is a slice of the world
beyond, a world where nothing coming from this side is
threatening to anyone anymore. That is why Estonia had
Priit Pärn, the repressive Hollywood had Avery, Moscow
had Yuri Norstein, and we had our jolly good fellows from
the classical period of Zagreb Film.
Had they been doing what they were doing in
some other film or art form, they would not have been
doing it for long. Growing up in Zagreb taught us how
to adore this space of freedom. The World Festival of
Animated Film taught us from the small Zagreb how
to belong to the big world, thanks to world that never
existed, world created by true talents.
All of us growing up with the World festival of
Animated Film and the thriving period of Animation are
permanently damaged by a disturbed sense of reality,
in the noblest of senses, if you see my point.
In the era of tech society, animation was lucky.
Its only misfortune is the winner’s mishap. In the world
of machines, the virtual has become a code, and animation
turned from art to medium. There is too much
of it everywhere.
This year’s Animafest will continue the quest
for the rare and unique. Zagreb claims its inherited right
on great expectations: Welcome! Turn on your anti-gravity
machines, take off into the inexistent, feel at home!
Hrvoje Hribar
Head of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre
2—3