RADAR INTERNATIONAL 1

All presented films participated in StopTrik IFF competition programmes throughout 8 editions of the Festival,
curated by Olga Bobrowska.

Narrative Focuses of Stop Motion Animation

I would like to propose to look at the review of StopTrik’s narrative films from the perspective suggested by Rick Altman in “A Theory of Narrative”. The first step in Altmanian analysis is to discern narrative material according to the mode of imposed narrative as dual-focus, single-focus or multiple-focus. The dual-focus can be recognized in the works where no single character is specifically emphasized, instead the narrator instance alternates between two mirroring agents that constitute intratext relationships. Single-focus, suggested by an emergence of an individualized gaze and consciousness, makes us following a single character and interpret his/her desires, ever-changing relationships and identifications. Eventually multiple-focus mode unveils multitude of voices and perspectives that surprisingly may be integrated, their correlation would bring out from the shadows an engaging story, rich in new general meanings, just as mutliplane-table would blend carefully crafted silhouettes and backgrounds into fresh and enchanting visual quality.

It is an each viewer’s experience to comprehend communication media as storytelling and narrative dispatchers, works of artistic animation included. Michael Cusack’s After All may apply to dual-focus mode though not without ambiguity essentially imprinted in artistic animation medium. Tess Martin’s Lost Mariner or Hugo Covarrubias’ adaptation of Julio Cortazar’s novel, The Night Face Up apply to single-focus mode in the most poignant way. Ivana Laucíková and Martin Snopek’s Holocaust-allegory The Last Bus, Pedro Giongo and Francisco Gusso’s brilliant parody of mythological imagination Tango or Lei Lei’s extravagant doomsday anecdote Missing One Player establish diversified worlds, inhabited by groups of creatures, each character ultimately focused on their own agenda what eventually reconfigures the nature of the whole collective of characters. But Piotr Biosacki with his ironic and restrained voice-over narration in With the Artist’s Kind Permission demystifies the viewer’s and the artist’s desires to comprehend fully and create totally, along the way perfectly neutralizing curator’s fascination with categorizations. The story is in the hands and minds of the receivers.
Olga Bobrowska, Festival Director StopTrik IFF

StopTrik IFF is dedicated to stop motion animation and attempts to examine this unique tradition of animation filmmaking from various perspectives, technique being major one. StopTrik competitions are divided into two sections: “International Stop Motion” where we present films that maintain traditional conventions of 3-D hand-made animation (e.g. puppet, clay, cut-out or pixilation), whereas “The Borderlands” programme aims at reflection over stop motion qualities achieved by the means of mixed techniques, combining stop motion with other cinematic forms, and its illusionary aura conceived from tricks played on the spectator’s perception and cognition.