MONOCROMIA
If we consider animation as one of the fine arts, we will have to think of colour as one of its basic expressive tools. That is precisely why monochrome, the almost exclusive use of light and shade, of the scale of greys from black to white, acts as a powerful agent of meaning, which has brought us in recent times a series of works of concentrated force, which take their inspiration from painting, drawing and design. Stories in which chromatic minimalism is essential in its telling, condensed in this brief cataloguef of the (infinite) plastic and emotional possibilities contained in the purity of chiaroscuro.
BESIDE ONESELF
Karolina Specht / Poland / 2016 / 5 min.
Confrontation or fusion, the two sides of life as a couple, told through a combination of white lines on black which avoid each other and intersect in the impossible geometry of love.
EL RELOJ
Borja Santomé / Spain / 2018 / 5 min
In nervous traces of watery/diluted India ink, a story about journey and change, about the move from the coast to the big city and the dialogue between the sweet and the macabre.
32-Rbit
Víctor Orozco Ramírez / Germany, Mexico / 2018 / 8 min.
A story about Internet, in which that parallel world mutates into another ghostly world. The strangeness of “memes” and viral videos in traces of paint bring to the fore memory loss, surveillance and addiction in these times of permanent connection/ disconnection.
SELF-PORTRAIT
Mitja Mancek / Slovenia / 2016 / 16 min.
A self-portrait of the animator, for once in front of and not behind her story, in which a whole life is reduced to the minimal expression: the black line on white.
III
Marta Pajek / Poland / 2018 / 12 min.
A dark, disturbing game of seduction and amorous encounter, the transformation of the flesh into impossible combinations, crowned by the music of Einstürzende Neubauten.
EGG
Martina Scarpelli / France, Denmark / 2018 / 11 min.
With sensuality, humour and a peculiar aesthetic, Martina Scarpelli talks about a crucial moment in her life: the one that got her out of the mind map of anorexia.
PREY
Dal Park / United Kingdom / 2017 / 2 min.
A young woman faces her mother’s illness. An illness that here takes the form of a wild animal she will have to learn to tame.
THE PRIDE OF STRATHMOOR
Einar Baldvin / Iceland / 2014 / 9 min.
Inspired by Raging Bull, Disney in the 40s, H.P. Lovecraft, Bergman and the boxer Jack Johnson, Baldvin composes this impressive film with extracts from the 1927 diary of Pastor John Deitman of Strathmoor, Georgia, immersed in violence and obsession.
BROKEN – THE WOMEN’S PRISON AT HOHENECK
Alexander Lahl, Volker Schlecht / Germany / 2016 / 7 min.
A harrowing animated documentary based on the statements by two former political prisoners about the most famous women’s prison in the GDR.
PINING
Caibei Cai / United Kingdom / 2017 / 2 min.
Between lightness and abstraction, Caibei Cai tries to trap an ineffable feeling, in an animation dominated by the stroke and free association.
UNTRAVEL
Nikola Majdak, Ana Nedeljkovic / Slovakia, Serbia / 2018 / 9 min.
In the greyness of the city, a kind of pro-communist dystopia, a woman dreams of going into exile. A monotonous, monochromatic life, only coloured by the possibility of an uncertain escape.