Anifest… A celebration of animation films
Anifest is an attempt to showcase some of the most endearing, evocative, entertaining & equally engaging animation films from closer home & across the world. Featuring 9 muti-award winning & highly acclaimed visual stories from Pramod Pati, Gitanjali Rao, Aditi Chitre, Bastien Dubois, Céline Devaux, Abhishek Verma, Pradipta Kumar Santra & Rajesh Thakare & Troy Vasanth
1. Tree of Unity (Films Division Archives) by Pramod Pati – 3 min/ India/ English/ Color/ 1972
A Classic animation by Pramod Pati on the theme of National Integration broadcasted first in 1972. The mumbling gibberish as dialogues, characters, music towards the end of the film and the dance moves have stayed in public memory since a long time.
2. Ek Anek aur Ekta (Films Division Archives) by Vijaya Mulay – 8 min / India / Hindi/ Color/ 1974
A short educational film from 1974. The film won the National Film Award for Best Educational Film. It was the first film from the animation studios of the National Center for Education Technology [NCERT].The film also won the Best Children’s Film award in Japan.The film is considered to be one of India’s greatest examples of animation story-telling. It is well remembered by the 80’s generation as a classic example of ‘unity in diversity’ telecast by Doordarshan.
3. Journey to Nagaland(MIFF winner / Films Division) by Aditi Chitre – 26 min/ India/ English/ Color/ 2012
The story of a young girl who is led to a distant land by the force of her visions and her mother’s sprit to discover the latter’s roots and possible her own.
4. Madagascar by Bastien Dubois
– 12 min/ France / French (English subtitles)
/ Color/ 2009
Madagascar is a journey diary that redraws the trip of a European traveler confronted with Famadihana customs. The pages of the diary turn, then the drawings liven up, we cover the luxuriant landscapes of Madagascar before being introduced to the Malagasy culture.
5. Good Morning Mumbai (MIFF winner / Films Division) by Rajesh Thakare & Troy Vasanth – 13 min/ India/ English/ Color/ 2012
The tenant of a slum sets out to perform his morning duties and meets with a series of unfortunate events tht prevents him from doing so. He finds a way out and accomplishes his goal which in turn seeds another problem for a different group of people. The film depicts the basic problems caused by urban growth such as lack of space and infrastructure, sanitation problems, pollution, over-population and how they are all inter-related.
6. Aching Art by Pradipta Kumar Santra – 4 min/ India/ English/ 2013
Are we not forgetting the things which made Our country Bharat or India as a cultural Heritage or more precisely An Art House on World Forum?? Or do we really care for…the Indian Art which is dying in India??
7. Rasputine by Céline Devaux – 10 min/ France / French (English subtitles)/ Color/ 2013/ Rated: A
This film is an animated poem, originally written in French Alexandrine rhymes. The film tells the fascinating story of wandering Siberian monk, Grigori Rasputin, who claimed to possess healing and divinatory skills –ultimately placing him in a seat of great power in the capital of the Russian empire, St. Petersburg. Although extremely rough and known to be a quite unpleasant looking man, Rasputin managed to seduce his audience with his credulity and sexual magnetism. This film is a tragicomical animation about his rise and fall.
8. Chasni by Abhishek Verma – 5 min/ India / Hindi (English subtitles) / Color/ 2014
The animated short film “CHASNI” deals exclusively with one of the proliferating horrendous crime that is acid attacks. The growth of this crime is upsurge in India, happening day and every day. It also includes the plight of disfigurement which is known to be as root revenge reason against women and their beauty. It leads the victim to a stage of trauma which is physical and mental both.
The film focuses which makes the viewer introspect, “Is this a society we live in? Is this a way we treat people around us”. I t stands as, that we first disfigure a human being and post we made them question about their disfigurement.
This film follows a narrative with a story & spoken word poetry. It describes about a woman who is a survivor of an acid attack. She wants to have tea, but she finds that the tea box falls empty. She thinks that she can go out and buy a tea box. Is it possible for her to go out and buy a tea box? As her earlier experiences made her describe the inability to just move out of her house. I t depicts the situation of how people react on seeing her and along how she manages to spend her daily life.
9. True Love Story by Gitanjali Rao – 19 min/ India/ English/ Color/ 2014
True Love Story is a journey through the seductive, treacherous streets of Bombay. In a city soaked in Bollywood dreams, it moves from the fantastical to the viscerally real. The film is a painted ode to romance.
Where does Salim, a 17 year old orphan who left his village at the age of eight to make a living in the streets of Bombay, learn to woo a woman? Who teaches him and many other youths growing up on the streets, how ‘boy meets girl’? Bollywood. TrueLoveStory is a glimpse into the influence of Bollywood on real life in Bombay told through animation.
In partnership with The Root Reel, Indiearth On Screen & Films Division