The 24th World Festival of Animated Film Opens in Zagreb

The 24th World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb 2014, short film edition, has opened in the Croatian capital on Tuesday night…

Animafest Zagreb, established in 1972, is the second oldest film festival in the world completely dedicated to animation, and will be held until Sunday 8 June at Zagreb’s Europa, Tuškanac and Cineplexx Kaptol Centre theatres.

Of 1725 entries arriving from 73 countries, works have been selected for Grand Competition, Grand Panorama, Student Competition, Student Panorama and Commissioned Film Competition – the categories representing the finest works from the biennial international animation production.

A large theme programme is dedicated to puppet film and includes a global top list of best works as selected by 45 renowned experts, alongside a French and Croatian puppet film panorama. The retrospective section focuses on Yuri Norstein, the winner of Animafest’s 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award and the author of the best animated film of all times, Tale of Tales, as selected by his fellow professionals; and Norman McLaren, the great innovator and pioneer of numerous animation techniques, whose 100th birthday is marked in association with the National Film Board of Canada. The Animafest PRO segment consists of Q&A’s with filmmakers, interesting lectures and the International Animafest Scanner 2014 Symposium, which will host leading international animation studies historians and theoreticians, such as Marcel Jean, Giannalberto Bendazzi and Paul Wells. (animafest)