ARMENIA CELEBRATES 70 YEARS OF FRAME BY FRAME WITH ITS FIRST ANIMATION FESTIVAL
Armen Boudjikanian

The Magazine of Animation
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Octobe r 3, 2009

The first Yerevan international animation film festival, ReAnimania
’09, kicked off today in Armenia’s capital. The fest began with the
screening of Animal Crisis, a Spanish comedy competing in the feature
category. While this film’s drawbacks come from the limitations
of Flash animation (i.e.. crappy front view walk cycles), it does
take the medium away from the cinematically flat and minimal to
the world of Warner hurt gags and Ren and Stimpyesque dirtyness. It
does so with an Orwellian script and a pleasure in mutilating Disney
archetypes: the heroic stallion, the seedy lion and the treacherous
Hyena. Think of this film as South Park with animation principals
applied throughout. My favorite instant of the film: watching a Flash
hippo clap. A never before seen motion; at least by me.

Other highlights from the first day included an intimate interview
with Michel Ocelot of Kirikou and Azur et Asmar fame. The conversations
with the director set the tone of the festival. When Ocelot was asked
why he is interested in making films for children, he replied that he
does not think about his audience when starting to work on a film. He
only strives to do a good job. Ocelot believes that animation should
go in the direction that graphic novels have taken a while back:
dealing with issues in a way that audiences from any age group can
appreciate. In the mind of the French animation author, "Animation
is never just for children."

This statement was concurred by Vrej Kassouny, the interviewer and
director of the festival. Kassouny stated one of the main goals of
Reanimania is to make its audiences aware that animation does not
equal to films for children. Animation is an art form, and like any
art form you can work with it in different ways.

With retrospectives on Armenian animation, Bruno Bozzetto and Alexander
Shiryaev; the Pitching & Prod g for animation and 2D workshops,
competitions in feature, short, graduation, TV an educational films;
forums and studio showcases, Re-Animania is surely to shed some new
light on animation during the next three days. It runs until Oct 6th
at Kino Moscow in Yerevan, Armenia.

Find the festival schedule and read about the history of Armenian
animation on ReAnimania’s site.