Anima 2019: Focus on France
Skwigly
ANIMA, the Brussels International Animation Film Festival, taking place this year from 1st to 10th March, has chosen to turn the spotlights onto France, a neighbour who has yet to be honoured with the customary Festival focus!
French animation has experienced an incredible development over the past twenty years, with the average annual feature production rising from three to ten. The sector combines high-tech and economical production with more artistic approaches to bring out an incredible variety of talent. Anima is paying tribute to this vitality with a selection of films that have stood out during this rise.
As this is a very comprehensive programme, ANIMA has called upon the Palace Cinema to delight spectators with some César-winning features to be seen on the big screen: The Rabbi’s Cat, Ernest & Celestine, The Illusionist, Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants, The Little Prince and My Life as a Courgette.
The Festival will be hosting screenings of short films at Flagey, with César or Oscar winners, Festival favourites and little gems from 2018 in 4 programmes entitled Bleu, Blanc, Bouge !, including two retrospectives, a selection from last year and a zoom on one of the most original studios on the French scene: Sacrebleu.
Apart from that, ANIMA will be presenting heritage programmes on a theme such as:
- Tweaked by Hand: A compilation from the CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie) of some of the most inventive French commercials from 1910 to 1970.
- Pioneers of 3D in France: A programme of some of the first digital films chosen by historian Pierre Hénon.
- Chronopolis: Pseudo Science Fiction and futuristic archaeology in this feature by Piotr Kamler, France, 1988.
- An exceptional EXHIBITION: Les Shadoks, droit dans le mur à toutes pompes !
- The Festival will be hosting an exhibition on the famous Shadoks, the TV sensation of the 1970s about the quaint philosophical flightless birds, who lay iron eggs and find their salvation in pumping… And as a bonus: screening of the new documentary web series about the Shadoks phenomenon, narrated by Benoit Poelvoorde.
- Friday 8th March, a fun evening with the French-Belgian Battle – It’s a Replay!, co-organized with the SACD, where Belgian and French artists will compete (very sportingly) in a live drawing performance.
And finally, many of Futuranima‘s guests are also French:
- Jérémy Clapin with his very promising first feature J’ai perdu mon corps still in production,
- Louis Clichy, director of the Asterix features
- Anne Brotot director of MoPA in Lyon, with its 3 films in the running for an Oscar,
- Antoine Cayrol, director of the virtual reality production company, Atlas V.