10th Stop Trik International Film Festival Unveils its Theme: Animation as a Weapon

10th Stop Trik International Film Festival Unveils its Theme: Animation as a Weapon

It is up to us to learn to decipher the artist's secret communications and warnings (Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art, 1976)

The 10th edition of StopTrik IFF begins in October. Back in 2011 on Pekarna squat in Maribor we would have never imagined the way this Festival developed. What started as a somewhat improvised, one-time event, it has turned out to be an annual gathering of stop motion professionals and enthusiasts. Now we have just closed the 2020 call for entries that succeeded in few hundreds submissions from 52 countries.

On StopTrik we keep on discussing “what-s”, “why-s” and “how-s” of the presented film works. And in fact this means that we keep on discussing “what-s”, “why-s” and “how-s” of the surrounding social, political and cultural environments. Needless to say, we have not expected a pandemic so at this moment no one can be fully certain how the 10 th StopTrik gathering will look like but save the dates for StopTrik Maribor: 8.-11. 10. 2020, and StopTrik Lodz: 6.-8. 11. 2020. Whatever will be, we will keep calling for critical reception of films, authors' self-awareness and intersectional perspective on the problems of film and culture activism. But in this unusual year we want to be affirmative and straight-forward. Just as Theodre Ushev was when he wrote and performed A-Z MANIFESTO. The notion of ANIMATION AS A WEAPON has been on our agenda since 2011.

A-Z manifesto 2017 (Animation as a weapon)
Animation as a weapon against Arrogance
Animation as a weapon against Bad
Animation as a weapon against Cynicism
Animation as a weapon against Dismality
Animation as a weapon against Envy
Animation as a weapon against Fear
Animation as a weapon against Greediness
Animation as a weapon against Hate
Animation as a weapon against Insanity
Animation as a weapon against Jealousy

Animation as a weapon against Killing
Animation as a weapon against Lies
Animation as a weapon against Monstrosity
Animation as a weapon against Negativity
Animation as a weapon against Oppressiveness
Animation as a weapon against Prejudice
Animation as a weapon against Quarrelsomeness
Animation as a weapon against Racism
Animation as a weapon against Skepticism
Animation as a weapon against Terrorism
Animation as a weapon against Ugliness
Animation as a weapon against Villainy
Animation as a weapon against Worthlessness
Animation as a weapon against Yuckiness
Animation as a weapon against Zealousness
(Theodre Ushev's manifesto published in “Propaganda, Ideology, Animation. Twisted Dreams of History”:

When we go live in Maribor we want to present ANIMATION AS A WEAPON retrospective programme where each selected stop motion film refers to each letter→fear→anti-value indicated by Theodore Ushev. Experimental BlackBox section will feature the works of the most free spirit of Russian art-house animation, Sasha Svirsky. We're proud to say that Sasha is an author of StopTrik 2020 visual identification! Croatian festivals, Animafest Zagreb World Festival of Animated Film and Supertoon International Animation Festival will cheer us up with the music video clash of their artistic directors: Daniel Šuljić and Slave Lukarov. Anyone interested in world class stop motion filmmaking should consider participation in workshops led by Špela Čadež, a multi-awarded animator and animation director, and a member of Academy Awards.

Only naturally we intend to maintain social distancing and other anti-pandemic precaution, s and so we have to significantly limit our program proposal this year. Nevertheless the young audiences in Maribor will have an opportunity to discover and discuss finest examples of contemporary art-house and experimental animation brought to their schools by our partner festivals: PAF – Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art (Olomouc, Czech Republic), Linoleum Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival (Kiev, Ukraine) and Insomnia Open-Air Animation Festival (Kaluga, Russia).

Children programme hosted by the Puppet Theatre in Maribor will consist of the selections of Polish animation (curated by Piotr Kardas from O!PLA Polska animacja), Russian animation (curated by Nadezhda Svirskaia, animation producer and curator from Moscow), programme of Koyaa films collection of the best children films from Annecy Festival. Full film line-up complemented with information on workshops, panel discussions, exhibitions and other events as well as StopTrik Lodz programme will be unveiled in the second half of September.

It was possible to come so far because of the StopTrik community: those who form the festival in Maribor and Lodz with their presence and engagement, culture activists in the region as well as the global artistic community that is eager to share their visions and ideas with our local audiences. Eventually we owe a lot to the accepting participants of the European animation festival circuit who respect StopTrik's concept-driven attitude of criticism.

10th StopTrik Festival gathering will take place StopTrik Maribor: 8.-11. 10. 2020, and StopTrik Lodz: 6.-8. 11. 2020.

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