AQUANIMA
Special selection of animated short films curated by Teodor Ushev
Stampfer Dreams
Thomas Renoldner
Austria / 2024 / 12’
STAMPFER DREAMS is a homage to the scientist Simon von Stampfer, who presented his invention of the Stroboscopic Discs in Vienna in 1833. These discs show all kinds of animated loops from abstract to figurative and from (literally) experimental to documentary, and in this way forshadow the variety of genres in animated film. All characters and animated sequences in STAMPFER DREAMS are taken from /based on these “optical magic discs”. The film begins at the time and in the alpine environment of Simon’s childhood and vaguely follows his biography. Starting from the sight of the wheel of a watermill, three “dreams” illustrate Simon’s visions of developments in technology and art from the age of the industrial revolution in the 19th century to the present day.
I Died in Irpin
Anastasiia Falileieva
Ukraine / 2024 / 11’
On February 24th in the morning my boyfriend and I decided to go from Kyiv to Irpin to see his parents. It is hard for me to recall the chronology of those days, my mind blocks and minimizes all the memories, erases them, but the only thing I know for sure is that every day everything rapidly became worse.
Supersilly
Veronica Martiradonna
France / 2024 / 10′
Having crept into a tent, a young girl steps out of it grown and strangely dressed as a bunny rabbit. An inner journey through which the young woman tries to understand the drama at the root of all her suffering.
Naive New Beaters, Star Feminine Band „Ye Kou Si Kuo“
Lola Lefèvre
France / 2024 / 2’
After a wild party in their flat, three hungover friends get ready for the next one, while jamming to their favourite band.
Il burattino e la balena
Roberto Catani
Italy / 2024 / 8’
Story of a puppet who does not become a child.
91 Thousand Unrelenting Stitches
Samuel Wasserman
Canada / 2024 / 2’
Ordinary Life
Yoriko Mizushiri
France /Japan / 2025 / 10′
Ordinary life repeats itself every day. The succession of moments that we repeat over and over again is never the same, and everything changes and wavers. The moment we touch something, our consciousness can go to a place that does not exist anywhere in the past, nor in the future. In an uncertain and fluctuating world, only the feeling of the body touching something, which exists only in this present reality, can be recognized as “now”. That moment is lovely.
The Graffiti
Ryo Orikasa
Japan / 2025 / 12′ 33”
The moment the first gleam of sunlight trickled in, gently stirring the folds of a shallow sleep – that was when the graffiti appeared. Installment #2 in the Bungaku Bideo series, fusing Japanese literature and animation, Ryo Orikasa’s hypnotic animated short The Graffiti brings to life a prose poem by Makoto Takayanagi, read here by the poet himself.
Samaa
Ehsan Gharib
Canada / 2024 / 2′
A caged bird flutters and flails in a struggle for freedom. But only by surrendering to the transcendent power of music and movement is the bird finally able to soar.