This is not pixar. It’s Cartón.
Festival Internacional de Cortos de Animación La Tribu, or simply Cartón as it’s been named, opened yesterday and runs until Sunday 6th November. Aimed specifically at amateur and recreational filmmakers, it’s the only Argentine festival dedicated to the celebration of independent animation.
In a city as big as Buenos Aires, you might imagine there’d be similarly minded festivals going on but you’d be wrong. Which is why, as the only festival with such strong independent roots, event organisers have high hopes for Cartón.
With this week serving as the festival’s debut, it’s an enthusiasm obviously shared by many. The event has garnered support from almost a dozen sponsors including ‘Anima’, a bi-annual animation festival held in Córdoba, which steals the title of the biggest in Latin America.
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A screenshot from one of the entries in CGI Traditional Animation (Photo courtesy of Cartón)
Event organizer Agustín Sinibaldi, explained that the idea sprang from a program on community radio channel La Tribu, which featured discussions about comics and short film. Rising to demand, Cartón combines the two.
With a focus on short animated film, the festival showcases the techniques of traditional computer generated, stop-motion and flash animation, in free public screenings held over the next four evenings.
The films themselves were submitted in response to a contest held by La Tribu, and selected from some 100 entries. Featuring films from animators in as many as 13 different countries, the agenda for the screenings sees them divided in to genres of comedy, drama, terror, music video clip, and children’s, and promises flash animations as short as one minute next to stop-motions of an incredible 18 minutes.
To qualify for entry into the contest, all films had to meet criteria of less than 30 minutes in length and, if Spanish was not the original language, had to include subtitles for easy judging. Four of the industry’s big names, including award-winning animator Juan Pablo Zaramella, will decide a winner in each category of production, based on content and technique.
Sinibaldi explained that outside of festivals such as Cartón, the internet is the most common place for people to stumble across or share independent animation and is one of the few ways many bedroom animators reach an audience. For many, this is the first time their work has been shown in a public forum, and for the winners, guaranteed appreciation and the opportunity to gain recognition is sufficient a prize. Many of the animators are more than satisfied with the exposure and the enjoyment of coming together in the festival environment.
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Animation as we knew it before computers (Photo courtesy of Cartón)
Last night saw the bohemian bar at La Tribu community radio converted into a makeshift cinema. The neon walls burst to life as animators, directors, producers, illustrators, and fans alike, gathered to share and promote animated film as a medium for communication and expression of artistic ideas and techniques.
If you’re thinking of going along but worried that your Spanish isn’t up to scratch, Sinibaldi assures that the visual nature of the festival makes it fun. Whilst it’s true that cartoons are rooted in culture and language, Cartón showcases animation from Latin America and all over the world, without falling victim to language barriers. “The festival creates a way to learn about other cultures through art,” he says. “Even with the cultural code, there’s something universal about cartoons. It’s something that doesn’t need words, just images and sounds.”
Between now and Sunday, what you get besides an animation overload, is four evenings of screenings, discussions, book presentations and talks by some of the festivals sponsors and animation schools. There’s even a drawing workshop; but if you’ve always wanted to learn how to draw like a professional, you’re out of luck. Tagged onto Saturday afternoon’s ‘Infantile’ section, and with the promise of cookies, this one’s only for budding animators eight years old and upward.
And what about the kids? While cartoons are normally associated with children, the alternative and adult content in some of last night’s previews suggests that outside of Saturday afternoon, this might not be the place to bring them. But if you’re looking to relive the Argentine childhood you never had, there will be weekend appearances from kid’s favourite Hijitus, along with other classic and not so classic characters from Argentina’s animation archives.
The winning films will be announced at the festival finale, which takes place on Sunday at Cine Cosmos, the cinema of the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). The selected films will be shown for a second time following a screening of Argentine cartoon ‘Mono Relojero’. The oldest surviving animation reel in Argentina’s cartoon history, it follows the adventures of a clockwork monkey, and will be accompanied by a live score from the aptly named ‘Chancho a Cuerda’ orchestra, which translates as the wind up pig.
With its edgy setting and alternative, independent character, Cartón is the festival for amateur artists, who might see their passion for animation endure an eight hour day and still find the energy to translate it in to the sometimes painstaking work of creating a cartoon.
Uniting directors, producers, filmmakers, artists, illustrators and animators who might not otherwise have met, Cartón offers a prime opportunity to network and connect, and most of all, brings the bedroom animators out of their bedrooms.
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