Animac as Time Capsule

If in 100 years they opened a hypothetical time capsule with the films that we project and the contents of Animac, they would surely believe that our world is more human, imaginative and poetic than it is.

Animation projects dreams and desires and, when memory is the protagonist, it does so outside of journalistic literalness, from the inspiration offered by the imprint left on us by events, big and small, inside and outside our skin. If the memory can be blurred, we have the animation to redraw it.

This year, a fundamental author who has addressed the issue of memory, William Kentridge, receives the Honorary Award for a singular career, recognized both in festivals and in theaters and contemporary art museums around the world. The Animation Master award goes to Florence Miailhe, the great lady of animation in France.

In an extraordinary year with a European accent, many shorts such as The Physics of Sorrow by the Bulgarian Theodore Ushev, Uncle Tomás, Two-Day Accounting by the Portuguese Regina Pessoa or Dcéra by the Tajik director Daria Kashcheeva have won awards, audiences and critics internationally. , with memory as the central theme. In “En Construcció”, we present the Josep project, a French production with Catalan participation, directed by the cartoonist Aurel and set to music by Sílvia Pérez Cruz, about an episode in history that refuses to be forgotten, that of the Republicans who crossed the border to end up in French concentration camps, fictionalized but centered on the real figure of the Catalan cartoonist Josep Bartolí, dubbed by Sergi López.

Exploring other cinematographies, we received extraordinary representatives from Mexico and Estonia: Karla Castañeda and Luis Téllez, animators from Jalisco currently sponsored by Guillermo del Toro, and the Estonian Ülo ​​Pikkov, author of Body Memory, the film about the Stalinist deportations in Siberia that they will suffer the countries of the Soviet orbit.

Young talent never stops sprouting in animation schools, and we dedicate our Animac Campus to them, which this year debuts the figure of its godmother in the extraordinary producer Nuria G. Blanco (Cartoon Saloon).
Families will enjoy a Petit Animac full of delightful and new films, such as Strike, whose director, Trevor Hardy, we also welcome.

And remembering, the Lifetime Achievement Award will go to the historian and cartoonist Jordi Artigas, director of Cinemàgic, the predecessor of Animac. World premieres complete the program with the latest news from the Oscar-winning Joan Gratz; a night of humor and jokes with Rocío Quillahuaman and Roberta Vázquez; and the presence of the great José Luis Moro, animator at Klaus. All this and much more will fill Lleida with animation for four days that we hope will be memorable.

Welcome to Animac in this new decade. There is no future without roots in the past, so fill our time capsule with your realities and wishes for tomorrow.

Carolina Lopez Caballero
Director of ANIMAC

Promotes and organizes: City and Culture Council
Catalog coordination: City and Culture Council
Direction: Carolina López
Image of Animac: Carles Porta
Editorial design: Latipo
Photography: David del Val
Photography Miquel Pueyo: Javi Martín
Photography Carolina: López Oscar Fernández Orengo
Printing: Impremta Pagès