World Animation cinema to be focus of city film festival from November 2

A city film festival is all set to focus on world animation cinema beginning November 2. The 13th Kalpanirjhar International Short Fiction Film Festival — organised jointly by Kalpanirjhar Foundation and Max Mueller Bhavan(Kolkata) will showcase a variety of distinguished short fiction films from all over the world. The focus this year will be on animation films, which are gaining in popularity all over the world.

“A selection of experimental animation films from Berlinale(Berlin International Film Festival) will be screened this year. Also selected entries in the independent  animation films section — some of them with strong political undertones — will be screened at the fest”, said S V Raman, Festival Director.

Interestingly, the independent entries in the animation segment are also quite telling, says Raman. “An Iranian film talks about how a family was happy till the Black Birds came in. An Ukranian entry says how the landscape changes after the Russia built houses started taking shape”, said Raman.

Why the focus on animation films? “With the attention span of audiences diminishing all over the world, animation movies are gaining in popularity since they can say a lot within a short span of time. An animation film can pack in 10 minutes what a celluloid film would say in 20 minutes for example”, added Raman. South Korean cinema will also be a talking point of this year’s festival. Award winning entries from the Busan International film Festival (showcasing Asian cinema) will also be screened.

Raman rues the fact that there are no entries in the animation section from India this year. The festival will feature 68 films from 29 countries and will continue to be screened at Max Mueller Bhavan tillNovember 6.  Actor Ranjit Mullick will inaugurate the festival of short films this year.