RADAR INTERNATIONAL 1

StopTrik IFF – Special Selection

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

Friday, May 25th, 2018 – 17:00 @ Metro Kinokulturhaus, 73 min

After All - Michael Cusack

After All

Michael Cusack | 2016 | 13 min 22 sec | AU

After all is said and done… all that is left are memories. A man cleans out his childhood home, remembering past conversations.

The Lost Mariner - Tess Martin

The Lost Mariner

Tess Martin | 2014 | 5 min 45 sec | NL

An animated interpretation of Dr. Oliver Sacks’ case study found in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. It uses photographs to visualize the rare memory condition of patient Jimmie G.

The Night Face Up - Hugo Covarrubias

The Night Face Up

Hugo Covarrubias | 2012 | 9 min 45 sec | CL

A man has a motorcycle accident. At the hospital, he has strange hallucinations from a past that doesn’t seem his own. Here starts a trip that will crumble the edges of his very reality.

The Last Bus - Martin Snopek, Ivana Laucíková

The Last Bus/ Posledný Autobus

Martin Snopek, Ivana Laucíková | 2011 | 12 min 25 sec | SK

It’s the start of the hunting season. The animals of the forest board a small bus and flee to safety. When hunters stop the bus in the middle of the night, its passengers reveal their true natures in fear for their lives.

Missing One Player - Lei Lei

Missing One Player

Lei Lei | 2015 | 4 min 32 sec | CN

During a majong game a bad situation occurs. The three have no choice but to wait and sit there silently in tears. They do believe that the fourth player will come.

Tango - Pedro Giongo, Francisco Gusso

Tango

Pedro Giongo, Francisco Gusso | 2016 | 12 min 30 sec | BR

After years of drought, a mystic potato sprouts in the remote springs of the Aiatak River. Soon, everything will be ready for the great ritual of Tango. For the people, this is the beginning of a new era.

With the Artist's Kind Permission - Piotr Bosacki

With the Artist’s Kind Permission / Dzięki uprzejmości artysty

Piotr Bosacki | 2016 | 10 min 10 sec | PL

The phenomenon of creation explained. Balancing between seriousness and mockery. A lecture, a literature and an animation.

Curators statement:

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 Logo

8. StopTrik IFF
Maribor (Slovenia): 04. – 07. 10. 2018
Łódź (Poland): 09. – 11. 11. 2018
Call for entries by 31. 07. 2018
https://www.stoptrik.eu

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.

2019-02-14T10:19:30+00:00