Georges Schwizgebel

Creative vertigo

Georges Schwizgebel (Renconvilier, Switzerland, 1944).
A craftsman of fluidity, he found imaginative solutions to create calculated visual games and transitions between scenes, using camera movements that would be physically impossible if it were not for the art of animation. This original and virtuoso style of narrating and animating using a variety of visual techniques has made him a benchmark in the world of international animation. His work combines hand drawing and acrylic painting on acetate with a strong experimental and colourist intent inherited from post-impressionist art movements. He explores classical themes, as well as mythology and short stories (The Flight of Icarus, The Man With No Shadow, The ravishing of Frank N. Stein, The Young Girl and the Clouds…), opera librettos (Erlkönig) and reflections on space and painting (Jeu, The Subject of the Picture), and pays tribute to other artists such as Rodolphe Töpffer (Zig Zag) and Paolo Uccello (The Battle of San Romano). Music is the main narrative voice of a cinema without dialogue, with scores by Prokofiev, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Schubert and Liszt, as well as contemporary composers who captivate us with images within images and loops in a hypnotic mise en abyme.

With The Flight of Icarus (1974) he began a career with twenty films to date, which have won numerous awards at prestigious international festivals such as Cannes, Annecy, Zagreb, Hiroshima, Stuttgart, Ottawa and Espinho. His film The Ride to the Abyss (1992) is regularly mentioned as one of the best animated films of all time and his latest film, Darwin’s Notebook (2020), has been recognised as the best Swiss animated film of 2021. 

He is one of the great names in contemporary animated cinema, recognised by the most prestigious awards. He received an Honorary Cristal at the Annecy Festival in 2017 and the Honorary Swiss Film Award in 2018, he was named a member of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) in 2019 and was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at Animafest in Zagreb in 2020.

Animac seeks to honour an exceptional animator with his own voice, recognised and recognisable, who has continued to fascinate audiences throughout a career of almost fifty years. This award is presented with a full retrospective of his work that includes the premiere in Spain of his latest film, Darwin’s Notebook, and the screening of his award-winning short Erlkönig (2015), accompanied live by the concert pianist Emma Stratton.