3rd Festival of Animation

This year's Animation Festival is a unique event dedicated to the Animation Film Studio in Krakow on the occasion of its 60th anniversary. Founded on the initiative of Kazimierz Urbański and his outstanding graduates from the Academy of Fine Arts, it has become one of the most original studios in Poland and in the world. The artistically educated directors gave up duplicating other people's ideas in favor of eminently authorial cinema, building their workshop through bold subject matter and experiment.

The works presented at the festival are a fascinating record of an ever-changing world. On the one hand, the creators of Kanonicza Street reacted to the development of new technologies, the era of computers, the conquest of space and the Cold War arms race. On the other hand, they looked closely at social and moral changes and the birth of the counterculture. They were happy to draw on western trends, comics and genre cinema, including fantasy.

Screening of films for children and adults from the Krakow studio will be supplemented with works by contemporary artists from the Academy of Animated Film Studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and foreign animations. Viewers will be able to immerse themselves in the visionary, dark adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings” (1978) directed by Ralph Bakshi, which, thanks to the use of the rotoscopy technique, conveyed the mythical momentum of Tolkien's novel and proved that animation is an excellent medium for the adult viewer. A special highlight of the program will also be the presentation of the original set of films for the youngest, prepared in cooperation with the Georgian National Film Archive.

The festival also offers the opportunity to get to know the craft of film in practice. The program will include non-camera workshops, during which participants will be able to personally work with film tape and learn traditional, camera-free techniques for creating moving images.

Events as part of the Animation Festival will take place in the Iluzjon cinema and in the online version on the Ninateka.pl platform.