Anibar Reclaims the City

Anibar Reclaims the City

Founded in 2010, Anibar has hosted both acclaimed aninators and carefully researched programmes in the very heart of erstwhile war conflicts.  As a non-profit cultural organization, we have strived to build cultural activities with the help of our International Animation Festival. In the past two editions, the festival spoke about Migration and Global Warming, themes that were well-received and applauded by many.

Since May 2014, the festival has also "occupied" the only cinema in the city, which had been inactive for many years following the post-war period; the festival had received a 15-year lease from the city council to manage it under the festival administration.

But things changed for the worse.

On the 10th [of March] we were planning to go public with the program, but on the 8th we found out that PAK [the Privatization Agency of Kosovo] had made a decision to liquidate," festival organizer Vullnet Sanaja tells Kosowo 2.0, also including that liquidation is only the first step in a long period toward privatization, which may even take years to complete.


So, this year the festival joined forces with others to Reclaim the City,as an official theme and a promising mission of Anibar. By reclaiming the city, Anibar aspires to reflect a better-defined social consciousness to interacting with public space:

Our approach to reclamation is a creative signal to the city's creativity, inviting residents, and even visitors to help us develop and respond to a creative intimacy with space not only when festivals take place. This project intends to explore both the nature and urban landscapes, the old and the brand new, in order to revive the liveliness in the use of space from dullness and lifelessness.

 

The festival organizers aim to make the art of independent animation (which is a form of culture) a means to connect the city's memories and past with a more engaged, more optimistic future. The previous Anibar experience, which transformed the city to a place of community-based international and artistic cultural environment, certainly implies that they strongly believe what they say.

Read the complete festival statement.

The 8th Anibar takes place 14-20 August in Peja, Kosovo. The 2017 visual signature is by Marek Naperstek.

 

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