Animation films bring fresh visuals to Pune Int Film Festival

PUNE: “Is this an animation film?” was the murmur in the auditorium after the opening scene of the nine-minute Lebanese film Mirvattes Closet. Set inside a room with ordinary furniture, regular clothes and a human protagonist, it looked like every other live action film playing at the ongoing Pune International Film Festival (PIFF) on Saturday.
As the flickering image drove the action further there was a reassuring sigh of relief – this was a stop-animation film.A package of 12 animation films competing for the Volkswagen International Student Competition – Animation, is the only non-feature section in the festival apart from the short-film competition, again open only for student films.
The striking variation, not only in theme and subject but also in technology deployed in the storytelling, was the hallmark at the screening of these films that unfortunately had to be cut short because of technical issues.
“There are so many options when it comes to animation whether it is 2D animation drawn on paper, 3D generated on the computer, Claymation, or composting which draws from various techniques. The idea was to showcase these different technologies and how they are used in various ways for storytelling,” said Ravi Gupta, secretary of the Pune Film Foundation, the organizers of the festival.
The 3D format of animation may be emerging as the dominant form of animating storytelling in the market, but film students are taught all the various techniques which is probably why such variety in the use of technology is available in student films, Gupta added.
BAFTA award winning film Sleeping with the Fishes.
The diversity that emerged was not only of technique, but also of the subject matter tackled by the students. “In India, the market for animation films has not developed enough. Here it is believed that animation is only for children. This is not so. Animation is only a medium for storytelling, just like any other and can be used to explore serious subject matter as well,” Gupta said.
The Slovakian film The Awakening made a graphic attack on animal cruelty as it followed a pair of foxes from the wild into being skinned alive for their fur.
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award winning film Sleeping with the Fishes did not have as much violence as the famous Godfather line (Luca Brasi sleeps with the fish) it evokes. Instead, it explores the life of a fishmonger who avoids human companionship in favour of the fishes she cohabits with in her bathtub. The tale of societal alienation has a dramatic twist with the arrival of a delivery man who looks like a rainbow trout.
Mirvattes Closet speaks of a different kind of loneliness – that of an elderly woman, obsessively attached to her wardrobe, particularly her bridal trousseau
Czech film Mythopolis struck a lighter note in its imaginative retelling of Greek myths with characters like a minotaur, a Medusa who turns her uninteresting dates into stone, a Cyclops delivery man and three blind wise women with a single eye.
The seriousness with which animation is treated in India is perhaps reflected in the fact that these 12 films were the only section of the festival’s catalogue where a synopsis of the film has not been provided. But with their imaginative storytelling and bold content, the films proved just as thought-provoking, sometimes more so, than the others at the festival.