StopTrik Festival 2022: Looking for the Doppelgänger

StopTrik Festival 2022: Looking for the Doppelgänger

After crafting an Animyths programme for its 11th edition, StopTrik IFF (Maribor, 28.9 - 2.10 & Poland) introduces another, multi-dimensional theme for its 12th edition, the one the Doppelgänger.

Staying firmly on the realm of stop-motion animation (broadly conceived) they present an array of programmes and activities which are focused on the 'me and my shadow' theme

This year we suggest treating animated film as one of the elements in a wide cultural reservoir representing a paradoxical, eerie, and ultimately fascinating figure of a doppelgänger – a double, a shadow, a sinister twin, if you will…  A physical or psychological double, belongs to universal and timeless themes of various narrative traditions. The figure of a dark twin or a spiritual alter ego, understood as a mirror reflection (identical yet opposite), represents the intrinsic duality of the 'self' and allows to depict the tension between its conflicted sides: the revealed and the hidden, the dominant and the subordinate, the sacred and the profane - Olga & Michał Bobrowski. 

The programme that both organizing directors have curated will open the festival (28 Sep), entitled ‘The Self, the Double, and the Unknown: Looking for Doppelgänger’. It is to be expected that Jan Švankmajer’s animation masterpiece 'Dimensions of Dialogue'  (Možnosti dialogu, 1982)  will be an integral part of this collection. However, more gems find themselves in the programme, like Yevhen Syvokin’s 'Laziness' (Linʹ / Лінь, 1979).

Coming from the Ukrainian animation master, this bitter anecdote uses the double metaphor to depict the mechanisms of domination and subordination. Following programming stretches between disturbing, psychological drama and ironical grotesque.

In her programme ‘There’s Always Another Side’, Naima Alam (PhD candidate, Institute of Media Studies, University of Tübingen, Germany) explores the concepts of post-colonial mockery and cultural dualism. Here the ambiguous relationships between colonizer and colonized) found on the continuum enlist themselves in the works of Santiago Bou Grasso ('Padre), Sebastian Quispe Robles ('Soup'). Emigration is here considered in works such as 'The Coin' (dir. Song Siqi, China/USA) and 'Fishboy' (dir. Anita Bruvere, Latvia/UK).


StopTrik’s ‘Doppelgänger retrospective’ concludes with the award-winning feature 'The Nose Or The Conspiracy of  Mavericks' by Andrey Khrzhanovsky), a loose adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s “The Nose” (1836) and Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera of the same title (1928).

Khrzhanovsky’s film deconstructs the mechanisms of power in imperial and Soviet Russia. Intellectuals and ideologists, artists and average citizens – they all perform their functions in a totalitarian machine of production and control. The film premiered in 2020 but in the light of the war which the Russian Federation wages now in Ukraine, its resonance seems even grimmer - as if the film anticipated forthcoming of terror, ideological brainwashing, and the inevitability of sorrowful exiles

A one-week workshop, appropriately called Workshot 2.0: Doppelgänger' introduces students to both critical approaches to media and understanding film and the practical, scriptwriting and animation stages (led in three stages by: Urška Breznik, Kaja Fiedler, Vassilis Kroustallis and the Hugo Covarrubias). The Oscar-nominated artist of 'Bestia' will be present for the whole StopTrik Festival.

The competitive and non-competitive selection of StopTrik Festival (73 stop-motion films overall selected) is something to behold. For the first time, a Stop Motion for Children Competition is introduced, and a lot of fine films in the official lineup

Check the complete festival schedule:

Wednesday, 28. 9. 2022
19.00 / Official opening with Retrospective I: The Self, the Double, and the Unknown: Looking for Doppelgängerscreening (77') / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
21.00 / Exhibition opening: Andrej Štular: Doppelgänger / Vetrinj mansion, lobby
21.30 / Opening concert: Moveknowledgement x TAC (AV) / Vetrinj mansion, courtyard

 

Thursday, 29. 9. 2022
16.00 / Screening: Panorama, (82') / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
18.00 / Screening: International competition programme: Stop Motion Animation I (70') / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
20.00 /  Exhibition opening: In frames and strips. Croatian animation – comics artists /  Vetrinjski gallery
21.00 / Screening and live music: Multagitprop: Ukrainian 1920s Animations (30') / Vetrinj mansion, courtyard 

 

Friday, 30. 10. 2022
16.00 / Debate: Ukrainian animation: searching for cultural independence / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
17.00 / Screening for families: Babies and the Bear 2+ (32’) / Maribor Puppet Theatre, small hall 
18.00 / Screening: Retrospective 2: There’s Always Another Side (60') / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
20.00 / Screening: International competition programme: Stop Motion Animation II (67’) / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
21.30 / Screening: Shcha 7 seconds International nomadic micro-festival of animation films (30')  / Vetrinj mansion, courtyard 
22.00 / Friday’s evening: .čunfa x vitameanxx + Marko (AV) / Vetrinj mansion, courtyard 

 

Saturday, 1. 10. 2022
12.00 / Talk with the authors: TrikShow / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
16.00 / Imagining the Author: Hugo Covarrubias / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
17.00 / Screening for families: The Wandering Kite 4+ (35’) / Maribor Puppet Theatre, small hall
18.00 / Screening: Retrospective III: The Nose or the conspiracy of mavericks ( 89') / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
20.00 / Screening: International competition programme: Stop Motion Animation III (71') / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
22.00 / Saturday concert: Jimmy Barka Experience x 5237 + Rocca (AV) / Vetrinj mansion, courtyard  

 

Sunday, 2. 10. 2022
12.00 / Lecture: Writing the Histories of Animation in the Time of Artificial Intelligence
17.00 / Screening: International competition programme: Borderlands (77') /  Vetrinj mansion, big hall
19.00 / Closing of the festival and screening of awarded animations / Vetrinj mansion, big hall
22.00 / After Party: Haloban + Doppelgänger x TAC (AV) / Gustaf hall

 

Before/During the festival (21. 9. - 2. 10. 2022)

  • Workshot: Stop motion animation workshop for children with Leon Vidmar
  • Workshot: Stop motion animation workshop for children with Zarja Menart
  • Workshot 2.0: Doppelgänger- workshop of concept, script writing and stop animation
  • Sharpening the Gaze - film criticism workshop with Muanis Sinanović
  • Kindergarten and school projections, projections of partners festival for high schools 
  • Exhibitions Andrej Štular: doppelgänger and In frames and strips. Croatian animation – comics artists

All StopTrik Festival activities are free of charge. 

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