Monstra 2013 - Lisbon Animated Film Festival

The 12th Lisbon Animated Film Festival, Monstra 2013 (Festival de Animação de Lisboa), takes place in Lisbon between the 7th and 17th of March.
Brazil and Spain are this year's invited countries, celebrating the 105 years of Segundo de Chomon's "Hotel Eléctrico" and the 30th anniversary of Boi Árua by Chico Liberato.

 With a vast programme distributed through 11 venues, the Festival hosts presentations from 48 countries, including: Films; student and children film; super-shorts; feature films; classic feature films; best of the world sessions, and more. Workshops, master-classes, exhibitions and a concert, are also part of the programme.

 As usual, this year's edition presents Monstrinha, a specific programme adapted to its audience and organized in 3 age groups (3 to 6, 7 to 12 and >13).
Monstrinha 2013 includes 25 short and feature-lenght animations, as well as workshops where children have the opportunity to build their own tools to give their first steps into animation.

 Monstra 2013 will present 15 awards, including the Vasco Granja | SPAutores and the Production Incentive Award, sponsored by Same day Solutions SDS.

 In 2013, are also celebrated the 25th anniversary of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," the 40 years of "La Planete Sauvage" and Michel Ocelot's 15 year old "Kirikou and the Sorceress."

Monstra - Lisbon Animated Film Festival 2012

The 12th edition of Monstra - Lisbon Animated Film Festival (Monstra- Festival de Animação de Lisboa) will inaugurate tomorow 19th and will prolong until the 25th of this month.

With a programme of more than 100 films from Portugal, Germany, Japan and Canada, Monstra will dedicate this year's retrospective to Germany, a country with a long tradition in animation, of which the Festival will show films from the 20's to our times, covering themes such as music and satire. Some of the names include Bruno Böttge, Lotte Reiniger and Raimund Krumme, one of the invited guests of the Festival.

Having Bauhaus has a meeting poin for new and experimental artistic cultural and philosophical ideas, where names such as Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger, Walter Rutman, Viking Eggeling and Lotte Reiniger, are a reference among many others, Germany has placed an indelible influence in the animated art of the 20th century's first half.

Following last editions, Monstra will also dedicate a retrospective to the Eastern animated films, with Japan playing this year's role.
The 2012 highlights will be "Ghost in the Shell," a Manga film from the director Mamoru Oshii and the film "Winter Days," a tribute to the recently deceased film director Kihachiro Kawamoto that will include the presence of one of the film's assistants, the film director and performer Noriko Morita.

In this year's edition, the competition is dedicated to short films, namely directed by students, and to under 2 minutes short films (Curtíssimas). Several prizes will be attributed to different categories.
Student classes will arrive from England, France and Germany, as well as young directors from many parts of the world.
The sudents competitions will be curated by Júlio Alves and Miguel Matos.

For the first time, the Portuguese Society of Authors (SPA) colaborates with Monstra to create the SPA/Vasco Granja prize, with the intent of rewarding the best Portuguese animation film created in 2011. The prize has a value of €5000.

Children are an important, if not the most important, element of this Festival. For them, Monstra 12 has Monstrinha, a special programme taking place in several places that will include specially catered sessions presented by field experts who will talk about the techniques that were used on each film.
One of the highlights of Monstrinha will be the film "Bambi," that celebrates its 70th anniversary this year.
The session wil take place in the peninsula of Troia. Those deslocating from Lisbon will benefit from free transport offered by the organization.

Several parallel activities will take place during the Festival, including workshops and master classes, as well as exhbitions.

A reference partner of Monstra, is the Museu da Marioneta (Marionette Museum), where the exhibition "Marionetas de Animação," dedicated to the DEFA Studio from the ex-DDR will take place. DEFA is one of the most important European animated film studios, with over 1500 films produced in 35 years (1955 to 1990).
Through the project [RE]Animar, vistors to the museum will have the chance to play with the zoetrope and learn about its use and how although an old instrument, still triggers curiosity and continues to be used.

Celebrating 10 years of Opera Imaginaire, the organization presents a programme about music and animation, in partnership with the programme DESCOBRIR from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
A tribute to the Portuguese director José Abel, of which Opera Imaginaire was his last work and had its premiere after his death, will be made through the presentation of his originals.

The Monstra - Lisbon Animated Film Festival will take place at Cinema São Jorge, Cinema City Alvalade, Fnac, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Museu da Marioneta, between 19th and 25th of March 2012.

Admission: 4€; with discount: 3,5€; schools: 1€

On a side note: The Monstra Festival sponsored the presentation of "Nutri Ventures - Em Busca dos 7 Reinos"(Nutri Ventures - The Quest for the 7 Kingdoms), which took place on the 17th at the Cinema São Jorge.
This is the biggest animation series ever done in Portugal and will soon start on the RTP2 and Panda channel.

3D Mapped Projection on St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral

St. Patrick's Old Cathedral 3D Projection (artist: Jeff Grantz) from Materials & Methods on Vimeo.

Part of the Flash:Light art project, included in the Festival of Ideas for the New City, the façade of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, NY, was used for a 3D mapped projection animation produced by Bluewhale Studios in collaboration with Materials & Methods.

Sponsored by Audemars Piguet, The "Equation of Time" animation was created by Jeff Grantz (Materials & Methods) and explored the notions of time passage, culminating with a animated larger-than-life transparent time piece replicating Audemars Piguet Signature movements

Images of the event and a video of "Let Us Make Cake" can be seen here.

The Dutch Golden Age Paintings in 2.5D

From a series of animations created by Alicia 7777777, The Art Inquirer has chosen this creative 2.5D animation of famous paintings from the Dutch Golden Age.

Click here to watch a 3D animation of Picasso's Guernica.

"The Passenger" by Chris Jones

Result of an amazing dedication and creativity, together with the right portion of humour, "The Passenger" is a short film animation completely created by the australian artist Chris Jones.
This project developed through the course of six years and completed in 2006 has received the
Best Animation - 2006 Los Angeles International Short Film Festival (premiere) and the
Best Australian Film - 2008 Melbourne International Animation Festival awards.
Its screenplay has a quality that can be compared to ones that we are used to see from Tim Burton, grabbing the viewer from the beginning to the very end of the film.

Stop-Motion Animation by Eleanor Stewart

Hoedown from Rodeo from Eleanor Stewart on Vimeo.

Graduated by the Visual Communication at the Glasgow School of Art, Eleanor Stewart has created this cutout stop-motion animation inspired by Westerns.
The musical score is called "Hoedown", from the Rodeo Suite by Aaron Copland.
Eleanor did this work for her final year degree.

"Mirage" by Youngwoong Jang, US, 2006

In 2007, a korean student from the New York School of Visual Arts, Youngwoong Jang was attributed the animation gold medal, by The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
His CG animation "Mirage" is about a bio-mechanic character who has to fill his chest with water in order to sustain his life and the importance of water to all living beings.
Back in 2006, Youngwoong Jang was interviewed by Sam Chen.

Muto A Wall-Painted Animation by Blu

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Muto is a wall painting animation made by Blu with the assistance of Sibe.
The music is by Andrea Martignoni and the production belongs to Mercurio Film.
The animation takes place in Buenos Aires (Bologne, Italy) and Baden.

This video was mentioned by Knappert at Wetcanvas.

Doll Face by Andy Huang

Doll Face follows a machine's struggle to construct its own identity. The machine with a doll face mimics images presented on a television screen and ultimately self-destructs from its inability to adopt a satisfactory visage. Created in its entirety by Andy Huang, Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future.
Andrew Thomas Huang is currently a senior Fine Arts major and Animation minor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Andy's past animated work has been showcased at the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and his latest independent short film "Doll Face" has been selected as part of the Official Selection at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France, as well as the Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston . Since the completion of "Doll Face" in December 2005, Andy, now 22 years old, continues animation work for Root Films, a production company in Los Angeles.