Festival Fantoche Baden 2022
A selective survey by Giuseppe Di Salvatore
FAR AWAY - When the film is a trip
Going far away: we can also expect this from a film, to explore new territories, other visual languages, even to create a different, parallel world, and this seems to be a natural talent that animation films have. Which is particularly welcomed today, in a moment when the films tend to interpret the urge of a political commitment, imposing upon themselves the tasks of information and claim.
For the 2021 edition of Fantoche Festival I stressed some formal features that make the specificity of animation films, such as the minimalist style or the opacity of the medium. Other features that I’ve equally mentioned, like the poetic suspension or the non-explanatory storytelling, will now be in focus for my survey of the International and National Competitions at the Fantoche Festival 2022. Together with the films of the guest artist Adriaan Lokman, eight titles perfectly exemplify the idea that…
The film is a trip
I’ve never seen it from there
Can the perspective of a pet animal (dog or cat) be not only different but also poetic? Text and image chase each other in a competition of surprising flips.
C’est une histoire sans queue ni tête, dira-t-on. Mais c’est bien normal, retorquerai-je, puisqu’il y est question (entre autres choses) d’animaux démembrés, cuits et bouffés. N’insistez pas, s’il vous plaît, ne me demandez pas de quoi il est question dans Sometimes I Don’t Know Where the Sun. D’abord, c’est une question de flic comme dirait Godard. Ensuite, si vous voulez vraiment jouer aux gendarmes et aux voleurs, vous serez perdants d’entrée de jeu : le film de Samantha Aquilino va tellement vite qu’il vous sèmera tôt ou tard. La réalisatrice a trouvé le bon point de fuite. En avant ? Oui, parce que soit le cinéma se vit comme un absolu, soit il meurt.
I’ve never dared to look there so far
Consciousness can be a dark, bottomless spiral. Calder does not fear it though but explores it through a woman facing the vertigo of love and murder.
Afterimages have always been there
What happens when we are not able to catch the images? With multiple styles and techniques (we’ll never catch them), Kreyden succeeds in expressing the precise uncompletedness of leaving – or wanting to.
So hypnotic
On Leoni Leoni’s song, Bierma develops a visual journey where the liquid element dominates. A softly psychedelic coherence for a perfect spleen.
Not really a land to return
What if the landscape is made of skin and bowels? Through procedural modelling Bienz makes of the body a self-generative and decaying cosmos for us to discover.
Still not completely still
The clearest is the representation, the most unsettling are its little cracks. With acute haptic sensibility, Hahm creates a cosmic drama for a still life composition.
Nice stories
Together with these eight trips the Fantoche Festival showed at least eight very enjoyable stories: with light and colourful accents, as in...
IDODO, by Ursula Ulmi | LOST BRAIN, by Isabelle Favez | LA REINE DES RENARDS, by Marina Rosset
or with darker and disturbing ones, like...
STEAKHOUSE, by Spela Cadez | BESTIA, by Hugo Covarrubias
and again:
A DOG UNDER BRIDGE, by Rehoo Tang | THE RECORD, by Jonathan Laskar | ETHEL, by Beatrice Jäggi
A last mention goes to original and accomplished works such as
ANSCHT, by Matthias Huber
OUR 2, by Yungsung Song
ALL THE BLUE CATS LOOK LIKE THE SAME COLOUR, by Wenzhe Xu
THE SOMRTLYBACKS COME BACK!, by Ted Sieger