FANTOCHE 2020: Celebrating Heroines and Focus on Denmark
Skwigly
Fantoche has taken a flexible approach during the pandemic to bring you the following: from 1–6 September, join us in celebrating 25 years and 18 gatherings of the Baden Animated Film Festival. This year, we are shining the spotlight on women, whether the heroines on screen or the directors and filmmakers active behind the camera. We are honouring pioneer of silhouette animation Lotte Reiniger with a retrospective and exhibition at the Kunstraum gallery in Baden. Over half (52%) the films in this year’s festival are by women. Our guest of honour is Denmark, with 72 shorts competing in three categories for 13 different prizes. The festival opens with “Calamity, une enfance de Martha Jane Cannary”, by Rémi Chayé, winner of the top prize at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The Fantoche prize ceremony will take place on 6 September at 18:00 at the Trafo event venue in Baden.
Moms on Fire, Joanna Rytel (2016)
Heroines
Fantoche 2020 is dedicated to women: the festival’s steering committee is comprised of women, while the majority of governing board and selection committee members also identify as female. All-female juries will determine the winners of the International and Swiss Competitions. In organising its line-up, Fantoche has long aimed for women directors to represent half of all programming. “In past years, women in all areas of the festival have had a strong voice and pronounced presence. That wasn’t something we left to chance. They’ve earned the right to take centre stage this year”, says festival director Annette Schindler.
Fantoche 2020 is also a celebration of strong female protagonists: three feature films and three short film programmes curated by Eliška Děcká and the women of Vienna’s Tricky Women Animation Festival shine the spotlight on real-life and imagined female characters as they take part in various animated tales and adventures. Animated film pioneer Lotte Reiniger will be honoured with a retrospective, an exhibition at the Kunstraum gallery in Baden and a screening of her 1926 feature film “Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed” set to live music. The Fantoche edit-a-thon will focus on adding key female animated filmmakers to Wikipedia as a way of balancing out the ratio of male-to-female contributions on the site. Fantoche is also proud to be the eighth film festival in Switzerland to sign the Pledge for Parity and Inclusion at film festivals, as launched by SWAN (Swiss Women’s Audiovisual Network).
More about the Heroines-programme
Focus on Denmark
Denmark has consistently entered fantastic films into competition at Fantoche, giving rise to a wide-ranging network of productive contacts, among them Michelle and Uri Kranot, of course, along with this year’s jury members Réka Bucsi and Ágota Végső, who both live and work in Denmark. The large expat population in both nations is just one of many similarities between Denmark and Switzerland. The countries – both rather diminutive in size – cannot compete with animation production budgets available in other countries and must depend instead on home-grown ingenuity.
Since the 1960s, Denmark’s animation industry has received national support for artistic animated short films from the “Kortfilmrådet” short film council, making the industry attractive for new filmmakers as well. This government initiative sparked an intensive period of experimental and cut-out animation. The Danish Film Institute later began actively encouraging directors to make films for children. Since then, Danish animation has been practically synonymous with children’s films. Having said that, Fantoche will be exploring a lesser-known facet of the industry: independent animated films for adult audiences. Michelle Kranot has curated three short film programmes, including the Special focus: Maria Mac Dalland, which pays homage to this key figure in Danish animation.