Anima/Jury of competition

ANIMA COMPETITION JURY:

- HIERONIM NEUMANN
- CLAUDIUS GENTINETTA
- JONATHAN HODGSON
- MATI KÜTT
- WENDY TILBY

THE CHAIRPERSON OF JURY– ANIMA COMPETITION

alt was born in 1948 in Poznań. He graduated from the University of Arts in Poznań. Following graduation, he began a long term cooperation with Polish Animation Studio - Studio Małych Form SeMaFor, and then TV Studio of Animation Films in Poznań. He is one of the representatives of Polish experimental animation, praised together with such artists as Jan Lenica, Jerzy Kucia, and the Oscar winner for Tango Zbigniew Rybczyński. Zbigniew Rybczyński is also Neumann’s friend with whom he cooperated during early days of his career e.g. by assisting at making the film Oh! I can’t stop/Oj nie mogę się zatrzymać (1975). They both have also common artistic plans for the future. Neumann has been a university lecturer for years, professor of fine arts, head of Cartoon Studio of the University of Arts in Poznań and Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
He made his debut as an independent animation film maker with Counting-out game/Wyliczanka in 1976. His most famous films, awarded and presented at festivals all over the world include Block of flats/Blok(1982), Event/Zdarzenie(1987), Ptaszor(1987) or Zoopraxiscope(2005). Apart from fully independent films, he makes music to masterpieces of classical music (e.g.
V Sonata C-dur KV-14, 1992; Dream/Marzenie, Flight of the Bumble-Bee/Lot trzmiela, 1993). He has also made fairy tales for children – Of Children’s Toys/O zabawkach dla dziecias a part of Fourteen Tales from Lailonia Kingdom by Leszek Kołakowski/14 bajek z Królestwa Lailonii Leszka Kołakowskiego(1999) and Twine, the little Schoemaker/Krawiec Niteczka(2005).
The artist specializes in combined film. He applies various techniques: time-lapse photography, cutout animation, collage, combining old media with state-of-the-art media techniques. He openly draws on works of other artists e.g. Eadweard Muybridge (Zooparaxiscope), as well as classical achievements of surrealistic avant-garde as in Magritte (1995). He is known for his easiness in creating and handling pictures so as to build alternative film space and in this way holding a discourse with the works of Zbigniew Rybczyński, a person so dear to him.
Hieronim Neumann was already our festival’s guest in 2009. Together with Jiři Barta, Dennis Tupicoff, and Ish Patel he participated in an exclusive series of “The Self-Portraits of Animation Authors”. In 2008 the artists was awarded with Silver Gloria Artis Medal.

Claudius Gentinetta was born in 1968 in Lucerne in Switzerland. He studied graphic design and animation in Lucerne, Kassel and Liverpool. From the beginning of his career he has been creating comic books and making animated films at the same time. In 1987 he made his debut film Hungry – an artistic impression on his university years in Liverpool which won him an award for debut funded by the Swiss Trick-Film Association at the film festival in Solothurn. Already at school in Kassel he made a film Life (1990) which won many awards all over the world (and that was made under the artistic supervision of, among others, Paul Driessen a famous Dutch animator). In the following years Gentinetta made more films, this time to music Le gosse – 40 Messerstiche (1990, the first prize at the International Animated Film Festival in Espihno, Portugal) and Wohlstandskühe (1992). In 1995 Claudius Gentinetta was granted a scholarship thanks to which he spent a year in Kraków which, as he claims, had certain influence on his further works. During his stay in Poland he created a comic book Hysteria, closely related to personal experience of the director. The following years brought such films as Amok (1997) and Poldek (2004), which were screened at the most important festivals all over the world including the International Film Festival Etiuda&Anima in 2005. Lately, Gentinetta has been working with Frank Braun (the long standing director of the Fantoche International Animation Festival in Baden, Switzerland). Together they made The Cable Car/Die Seilbahn (2008) and Sleep/Schlaf (2010).The latter one has been screened at many international festivals, and during last year’s edition of the International Film Festival Etiuda&Anima it won Golden Jabberwocky – Grand Prix of our festival. Nowadays, Claudius Gentinettalives with his family in Zurich, working on another project.

Jonathan Hodgson will be the guest of our festival for the second time, this time as a member of the jury. The artists was born in Oxford in 1960. He studied at the Polytechnic in Liverpool and at the Royal College of Art. His debut films Dogs (1981) and Nightclub (1983) were made there. In 1985, having left college he co-directed with Susan Young a short animation about nuclear disarmament entitled Doomsday Clock (1987), commissioned by the United Nations. He worked for such production companies as Felix Films and Speedy Films. Jonathan Hodgson was one of the founders of Bermuda Shorts, and in 1996 together with a producer Jonathan Bairstow he set up his own company– Sherbet. He directed many animated advertising campaigns, including ones for a Swiss bank, Persil or the Home Office. In 2003, he founded Hodgson Films, a production company, so as to be able to work upon his own projects. He is a versatile artist who uses in his animated films many experimental techniques such as footage, collage, drawing, live action, painting, quite often composing his own sound tracks and music to them, too (e.g. Feeling My Way, 1997). He steers clear of conventional narration and prefers observation and drawing based on his own experience. He likes combining animation with documentary as in his awarded Forest Murmurs (2006) or Camouflage (2001). His animated films are often used as fragments of featured documentaries such as Abductees by Paul Vester (1992) or The Age of Stupid (2009) Franny Armstrong, screened in cinemas all over the world (fragments created by Hodgson are as follows: War, Capitalism, The Solution). One of the latest artist’s projects is Suburbia in Therapy (2011) directed by Zac Beattie screened during last year’s edition of the Festival Etiuda&Anima. Hodgson has lectured at the Royal College of Art, Surrey Institute Farnham in the UK and at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, Germany. Currently he is an external examiner for BA Illustration and Animation at Kingston University and BA Animation at Westminster University. In 2008 he became programme leader for BA Animation at Middlesex University. He continues to combine teaching with a career of an independent artist.
In 2010 The Man with the Beautiful Eyes was on the winner list of “ASIFA 50 for the 50th” poll. Hodgson has his blog (http://jonathanhodgson.blogspot.com/), where he posts his drawings. The artist lives in London.

Mati Kütt was born in 1947 in Tallinn. In years 1962-63 he studied painting at the studio of Juhan Muks in Viljandi, and in years 1965-68 at the Department of Energy of Tallinn Technical University. He is an animator, painter and performer. For twenty years (1974-94) he worked at the Animated Film Department of Tallinnfilm Studio and then for a year at Eesti Joonisfilm Studio. Currently, Mati Kütt is a freelancer. The artist is the author of about 10 original animated films. In 1981 he made his debut with a short film Monument.Seven years later, his puppet film Animated Self-Portrait/Animeeritud Autoportreedwas screened at the renowned festival in Annecy. Labyrinth/ Labürint (1989) was awarded at the festival in Tampere, Finland and at the International Animated Film Festival in Espihno, Portugal, in the experimental animation category. His other films – puppet animation The Smoked Sprat Baking in the Sun/ Sprott võtmas päikes (1992), Little Lilly/ Plekkmäe Liidi (1994), Underground/ Põrandaalune (1997), animated objects and cut-out animation Button’s Odyssey/ Nööbi Odüsseia (2002), Substantia Stellaris (2007) or Sky Song (2010) – have been awarded at many famous festivals in Clermont-Ferrand, France, at the Fantoche International Animation Festival in Switzerland, KROK in Ukraine, at the festival in Leipzig, Germany, in Ottawa, Canada or in Seattle, USA. He often directs commercials. In 1997 he received a prize for the best Japanese commercial Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter of Tenjin-Core Fukuoka. In years 2001-2002 Mati Kütt was granted a scholarship in motion studies and experimental animation at Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, Denver, Colorado. The artist has participated in over forty cartoon competitions and collective exhibitions in, among others, Skopje, Tallinn, Tokyo, Ancona or Riga. He is the author of many installations and performances combining oil painting and other media. Mati Kütt is a member of Estonian Painters’ Association, Estonian Artists Association and Estonian Filmakers Union.

Wendy Tilby was born in 1960 in Edmonton, Canada. She is a director, scriptwriter, and editor of animated films. She studied visual arts and literature at Victoria University. She wanted to become a writer, then a documentary maker but finally the animation course that she additionally took changed her interests. Wendy Tilby began studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, from which she graduated in 1986 with major in film and animation. Her student film Tables of Content (1986) received many distinctions as well as Grand Prix at the International Film Festival in Montreal and awards for best debut at animated film festivals in Ottawa, Espihno and Shanghai. In 1987 she was invited to cooperate with the National Film Board of Canada. The animation Strings, which was made there was nominated to Academy Awards in 1991 and won the first prize at the International Animation Festival in Hiroshima. She applied there a slow motion technique and painted the images directly on glass panes. Since 1995 she has been cooperating with Amanda Forbis forming an artistic duet which became famous for their When the Day Breaks (1999) – the animation nominated to Academy Awards and awarded Golden Palm in Cannes and Grand Prix at the festival in Annecy. The film also took 17th place in “ASIFA 50 for 50th” international poll organized by our festival last year. In 2003 Wendy Tilby moved from Montreal to Calgary where together with Amanda Forbis they made their second film Wild Life (2011). She has expressed her interest in documentaries by making animated fragments for documentaries produced at the NFB, including Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick (1994). Tilby has taught animation at Concordia University in Montreal and was a visiting lecturer in the visual and environmental studies (VES) department at Harvard University.