Enzo’s Monday Motion #37: HAFF

This week it’s time for the Dutch equivalent of the Annecy animation festival. Although the French are clearly our bigger & better brother, it’s still worth a visit. Here are some highlights of the six different competitions.

Features

The festival shows both national as international films. For the main competition the Japanese film ‘Miss Hokusai’ goes for the main price after their nomination at Annecy. The film, based on a graphic novel is portrayed in the typical Japanese style we know from studio Ghibli.

Another film to keep your eye on is the Czech stop motion film ‘Litle from the fish shop’. A refreshing version of the Hans Christian Andersen’s tale we know by Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’. Europe finally has it’s own Tim Burton and his name is Jan Balej.

Out of competition features

One film I’ve been waiting to see on the big screen is the latest project of Charlie Kaufman. Being sick of the studio involvement and longing for complete artistic freedom, he started a kickstarter project for his first stop motioned feature Anomalisa. The film is broadcasted twice on the festival

Shorts

Don’t worry if you’re not only into stop motion or Japanese anime. There more to it like the Estonian short by Chintis Lindgren. Herman is a punk rat who lives alone in his messy apartment. One day a small petite-bourgeois cat decides to move in. But is life with Herman H. Rott even possible?

Students

This categorie fluctuates between very skilled to, let me put it this way.. artistic. If you’re open for a surprise go and see this category. One I very much enjoyed was the social critical film ‘smartphone life’. The world has turned into a hunchbacked smartphone addicted society and if you’re honest you can see yourself walking in it. The short is directed by Chenglin Xie from the Chinese Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Dutch animation

If you wonder why director Pablo Vazquez is competing for the Dutch animation it’s due to the producer and the production agency Blender. The interesting part of Blender is that t’s a the free and open source 3D software package that includes the whole production pipeline for a 3D film.

In ‘Caminandes 3’ we follow two characters who strongly remind you of the squirrel Scrat in Ice Age. On itself not unique, but still nicely written and animated.

HAFF Junior

And the last category is specially for kids between 5 and 12. What’s nice about this category is that HAFF makes a tour at the primary school before the festival to encourage the future animators of the world.

In ‘Seaside’ we meet Jonas. He has dreamed of living in the sea all his life. But it’s not possible, or is it?