Official festival poster
Presenting a programme of 50 short animations by Polish authors, the Identi_TY Animated Film Festival takes place in Milan’s DOCVA, the Documentation Centre for Visual Arts
An examination of the effects of masking one’s identity, Piotr Karwas’s short animated film Masks served as inspiration for the Identi_TY Animated Film Festival. Bringing together the works of debuting and well-known contemporary artists and others making their debuts, the festival looks at the topic of identity from up close: individual, collective, loneliness and exclusion.
Fragments of memories, dreams and experiences conveyed through luminous impressionistic images and ethereal music; tangled emotions and lives. In Wiola Sowa’s Refrains, three generations of women with close bonds encounter their memories. When the youngest woman is on the verge of maturity, she remembers her childhood and a letter that her grandmother left for her. Sowa, the film’s writer, director and artistic director, used music written by Poland’s famed jazz musician Leszek Możdżer. The 2-D, 13 minute animation was made in 2007 and has garned awards at the 13th National Festival of the Art House Animation Films OFAFA, Kraków and the International Film Festival Etiude&Anima.
A 10-minute satire full of irony, an image of a society where almost everyone has literally lost their head, Marek Skorbecki’s Danny Boy is a commentary on one of the absorbing subjects concerning modern society - the alienation of people and their place in reality. The film touches on the problems of loneliness, sadness, conformity and times of decision, asking whether social adjustment should conform to others' expectations. In the anonymous urban mass one man stands out, Danny Boy. Being a misfit - as he has his head - he feels strongly alienated from the headless society. One day he meets someone who is ready to accept his dissimilarity.
A camera gliding over the surface of a lake covered with water lilies; dangerous sounds of a thunderstorm coming from afar; a young man riding through the forest. Kamil Polak’s French, Swiss, Canadian and Danish animation Świteź drawn on the romantic ballad by Adam Mickiewicz under the same title, telling the story of a mysterious lake with an enchanted medieval town resting at its bottom. Work on the animation lasted seven years, with 130 people taking part in the production process.
Among the 50 screenings are Marta Pająk’s dream world that feels "oddly familiar", Sleepincord, and Przemysław Adamski and Katarzyna Kijek’s hand-drawn video clip to We Cut Corner’s moody music, A Pirate’s Life.
Identi_TY Animated Film Festival is composed of five sessions of projections from the 21st to the 25th of May from 11 am to 7 pm. The opening takes place on the 21st of May at 6.30 pm. The festival is the first step of a long-term project Ja Lubię Polskę designed to present Polish art and artists. The programme, developed since 2013, foresees a series of projects, screenings and art residencies for artists and curators.
Promoting contemporary artists and exploring videos and other forms of art that embody topics that have no nationality, the Identi_TY Animated Film Festival and the Ja Lubię Polskę project are organised by the non-profit Careof Organization for Contemporary Art with the support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland and the Polish Film Institute. Careof has been operating since in Milan since 1987. It aims to encourage cultural experimentation, placing itself as an interlocutor between artists, curators, critics and the public.
For more information on the Identi_TY Animated Film Festival and Careof see: Careof
Sources: Careof, culture.pl, PISF, Polish Shorts