Punto y Raya Festival

Festival Description: PUNTO Y RAYA is an international platform devoted to the promotion, education and production of audiovisual art in its purest state: Form, Colour, Motion and Sound. No representation! Its mission is to recapture the spirit of Cinéma Pure and Absolute Film formulated by the European avant-garde in the 1920s, and resignify it in the most diverse contexts through actions that promote its sustainability, thus consolidating this unique art form laying at the intersection between Fine Arts and Media.

2023 Call for Entries (Archive)

The 8th edition of the PUNTO Y RAYA FESTIVAL will take place in October 2023 in Portugal. More info coming soon.

Eligibility criteria:

• The films must be made entirely with abstract imagery, avoiding representation. That is no cars, no people, no landscapes, no texts; only Dots & Lines, Form and Colour as ends in themselves.
• You can use any technique you want: drawing, video composition, CGI, scratch, op·art, stop·motion, camera·less.
• The maximum running time is 8 minutes.
• Films must have been produced after 2017 (inclusive).
• All people in the world are eligible to participate in this festival, whatever their age and formation. 
• Each author can submit as many works as s/he pleases, but only up to three works per author may be selected for the Competition.

Appraisement criteria:

• The intrinsic relationship between the Visual and the Soundtracks, and the quality and depth of the exploration of such relationship (40%).
• The pictorial expressivity of the visuals, in its use of colour/B&W, form and movement (20%).
• The work and exploration in the soundtrack composition (20%).
• The concept’s originality; how far and deep the author takes it, independently of whether s/he is exploring pure conceptual form, aesthetical expression and/or narrative (20%).

Awards:

• The international jury will award three Prizes, and might also give one Honourable Mention at their own discretion. Their verdict is final.
• There will also be an Audience Award.

By participating in this call, the author conveys the non-exclusive rights to screen his/her material at the Festival. The organisers of the Punto y Raya Festival desire to make the results of the competition accessible to as large an audience as possible. To achieve this we are consolidating an international exhibition platform, encompassing over 50 cities. A compilation featuring the finalist and awarded films under the title "The Best of PyR 2021" will be screened at some of these venues. The creators will be contacted in due time to discuss the details.

• Fees: Participation is free
• Entry Form
• Festival Regulations
• Deadline: 31 July 2023

2018 Festival Coverage (Archive)

This year Punto y Raya received 757 eligible entries from a record number of 56 countries. There are 106 selected films structured into six 70' reels. The screenings will conclude with a Q&A session with artists in attendance and open to audience participation.

Ania Głowińska, programme coordinator at Animator Festiwal in Poznań, returns to PyR to curate and introduce the opening activity: the Polish Short Film Panorama. And to close the festival on Sunday, Nag Vladermersky, artistic director of the London International Animation Festival, will introduce his British Short Film Panorama, spanning various decades in one of the current main production countries in the genre.

Guests:

• electrifying experiments with textures and magnetism by Thorsten Fleisch (DE)
• physically immersive experiences created by Bonnie Mitchell (US)
• Vibeke Sørensen (SI) discusses her pioneer work at the intersection between Art, Science and Engineering
• John Osborne (CA) explores the wonders of Complexity and Patternicity
• Aga Jarząb (Wroclaw) & Olga Wroniewicz (Warsaw) discuss strategies for the production of Abstract Animation with Design and Fine Art Students

NB: 2024 Festival Dates are tentative