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Created in 1999, Sacrebleu Productions has been working in the field of animation for almost 20 years. Awarded with prestigious prizes such as the Palme d’Or, Cesar, Golden Lion, Silver Bear, and Cristal at Annecy, Sacrebleu Productions is mainly dedicated to animation. After its well-received animated feature Long Way North, Sacrebleu Productions is now finishing the feature by Romanian director Anca Damian and is working on a feature-length project in coproduction with Negativ in the Czech Republic: My Sunny Maad directed by Michaela Pavlátová.

CEE Animation is also an international platform with the goal of supporting young professionals while helping them to develop their animation projects with experienced international professionals, and to help them create an international network. Thirteen short films in development will participate in the pitching competition and compete for several awards. Every team will get five minutes to present their story, idea and future animation film for an audience of potential partners, co-producers and other professionals.

Back in the past, many generations of Europeans grew up on animated series from Central and Eastern Europe. These came from the times when governments and public broadcasters fully financed audio-visual works. Since the end of the eighties, the audio-visual sector has been ruled by the market. But there is no sustainable animation market in our region. And so financing an animated series has become a true art, an adrenalin sport. Still, there is much hope, thanks to growing cooperation in our region, European union funding, new distribution platforms, and thanks to the growing numbers of motivated and fast-learning producers. Come to see the nine best projects that will compete in a pitching contest.

Marie-Pierre Vallé, Head of Acquisitions at Wild Bunch International Sales, one of the world’s leading players in the field of international sales, handling an international sales catalogue of around 450 titles, distinguished by its diverse editorial policy and distribution channels, and Alexis Hofmann, Head of Acquisitions at BAC Films, which ranks among top French independent distributors, active in theatrical distribution, video publishing, VOD and TV sales, international co-production and sales, will focus on hot topics and strategies in film distribution and sales in a masterclass moderated by Jean-François Le Corre, producer and founder of French production firm Vivement Lundi!

The CEE Animation Forum has grown into a platform where producers can build networks among themselves, meet broadcasters and other film professionals, present new talents and their creative work for EU producers and help find financing and distribution for their projects.
Come to learn about selected countries and meet film professionals.

CEE Animation is also an international platform with the goal of supporting young professionals while helping them to develop their animation projects with experienced international professionals, and to help them create an international network. Thirteen short films in development will participate in the pitching competition and compete for several awards. Every team will get five minutes to present their story, idea and future animation film for an audience of potential partners, co-producers and other professionals.

Feature films attract great interest of viewers and creators alike. While the creative input from countries with lower production capacities is often celebrated and their creators sought after, the lack of tools and knowhow in production, coproduction and distribution of feature films is still strongly apparent across the whole CEE region. That is why the CEE Animation again decided to open a pitching competition of feature animated films.

Animánie is a non-profit organization from Pilsen, Czech Republic, that has been making animated films for children and, more importantly, with children for the past fourteen years. Through various courses and workshops, it aims to foster love for animated films in children and teach them the importance of being able to express oneself with images. Every year, Animánie organizes an international Animánie Festival. You’ll have a chance to learn how this unique project came to be and how it has evolved over the years. You might be surprised how great young animators who still have to go to school every morning can be. You’ll also find out why you might want to visit Pilsen in autumn and what the Animánie Festival has to offer. It’s so much more than just animated films.

The subversive and experimental use of technology in computer animation has been a prevalent theme ever since, relying on deviations and deliberate exploitation of flaws. The forms of play and experimentation with animation and technology can be quite diverse: animation can be of a reflective nature and specifically address its own substance and materiality as a theme, or it can be extended by technologies, that are truly foreign to the field of animation. The media arts festival Ars Electronica addresses these correlations since 1979. Based on recent examples, the director of the Ars Electronica Animation Festival Jürgen Hagler, who is also an academic researcher and curator, will spotlight different forms of anomalies at the intersection of animation, art and technologies.

Animated Worlds Between Visual Music and Abstract Narratives

A well-known figure on the experimental animation scene, Max Hattler works on the edges between abstraction and representation, where meaning is freed from the constraints of traditional storytelling. Spanning short films, visual music, music videos, video installations and audiovisual performances, his works explore microcosms, moments and atmospheres: close-ups as reflections on the bigger picture; aesthetics as reflections on politics. In this masterclass, Hattler presents some of his works and the ideas behind them, offering an insight into his way of working.
As part of the accompanying programme of the Anifilm festival, he will also be presenting his retrospective and a stereoscopic audiovisual performance Hattlerizer 4.D.

CEE Animation Forum in its 7th edition follows the aim to continue in rewarding the excellence of the European animation industry as well as diversity. The winners of pitching competitions in Short Film, Series/TV Specials and Feature Film categories, voted for by three juries made up of film professionals from all over the world, will be awarded on 8th May 2019 during the CEE Animation Award Ceremony in Třeboň. Among traditional prize awards, the Nespresso Audience Award will go to the winning project of the feature film category and EUR 1,000 in cash to the best projects of all three categories.

Wacky adventures of a yellow sponge in a pair of blue pants who lives in a pineapple at the bottom of a sea or a series about the day-to-day struggles of an infallibly optimistic workaholic working in the mercilessly capitalistic environment of a fast food restaurant. These are just two of the possible ways one can interpret one of the most popular and currently the longest-running cartoon series of all time. As SpongeBob turns 20 this year, we will take a closer look at the series’ genesis, we will identify what is so unique and ingenious about it, and we will also examine the international smash hit in the context of its home network Nickelodeon and American animated TV production in general.

Animated documentary or anidoc for short as a short festival-oriented auteur film, anidoc as a visual essay, anidoc as an explainer video, anidoc as an expansion of an audio recording. How is the composition of this genre influenced by the relationship between sound and image? And how does an interactive environment affect the story and visual form?
Michaela Režová, the author of the original animated documentary Chase, and producer Damian Machaj will introduce the genre of animated documentary and various forms of digital storytelling using actual examples, drawing on their personal experience and exploring works by foreign authors. Michaela is a director and animator specializing in the anidoc genre. Damian is a multimedia content producer at Czech Radio’s Creative HUB.

Education must always keep the focus on students. It is necessary to develop their personalities, knowledge, skills, attitudes and abilities. It is vital to support their inner motivations. And all that can be helped by proper use of modern technologies, visualisations, animations, educational games, and augmented and virtual reality. The panellists are: game developer Michal Berlinger, film education specialist Tereza Czesany Dvořáková, member of the expert committee of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport Radko Sáblík and film producer Vratislav Šlajer.

For several years now, Tomek Ducki has been one of the most distinctive creators of animated music videos. His unmistakable style is characterized by the blending of different animation techniques, visually mesmerizing colour combinations and hidden stories. The Hungary-born director, who now lives in Poland, will explain how he makes his music videos. Are they products of meticulous preparation or unbridled creativity? How were the award-winning music videos for Paradise Awaits, Daydreamer, Man in the Moon, Animals, and other songs made? So far, the author has let on that “they are all made within a short time and with big pressure, so my little team and me needed to be creative with concepts, visuals, and technique, and they each have different inspirations.” The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session.

Come to the Festival Tent, which is raised in the Třeboň castle park, and enjoy afternoon meeting with filmmakers, who have their films in the competition. These moderated encounters will give you a chance to meet the authors in person and find out about their work, craft and inspiration. Hosted by festival programmers and film theoretician Eliška Děcká (FAMU).

Czech Television’s New Media Dramaturgy Centre team will describe the peculiarities of creating interactive projects closely tied to TV shows and films for children and grownups. Creative producer Štěpánka Sunková, game designers Kristina Volná and Petr Šprincl, and game developer Tomáš Kozák will talk about theory and practice as well as their actual experience and insights.

ANIDOX is a creative platform for development and production of animated documentary projects. We run a laboratory, a professional training course, a residency programme and masterclasses, seminars and hands-on creative workshops following the main goal, which is to foster and develop collaborations between animation and documentary creatives, and help them move further with their projects.
Is it real? Isn’t this fiction? What are you able to reveal about your subject that a live action film cannot? The filmmaker Martina Scarpelli will present a series of animated documentaries produced and/or developed within ANIDOX frameworks. We will see how animation can be used to comment on the world, and tell stories other than the ones we know.

Taking a deeper look into the process of making Chris the Swiss, Markus Krohn will discuss tasks and strategies of music and sound design that are typical for animated documentary. He will show examples of great collaboration between a composer and sound designer, and different layers of sound. We will also find out about phenomena in other departments that occurred during the making of this particular film which might touch on editing, directing and production issues as well as the political perception of the film. This presentation was made possible with the support of SWISS FILMS.

New Cinema 2018–2019 is a two-year educational project intended for cinema operators. Each year, ten selected cinemas from the Czech Republic and Slovakia participate in the project, which consists mainly of presentations at film festivals in Třeboň, Zlín, and Jihlava that are open to the public and intended primarily for cinema operators, distributors, producers, and other professionals in the field. Participants will learn how to work with specific types of film (animated films, films for children and teenagers, documentaries) and how to present how they work with these films in their cinemas. The second part, entitled Animated Film in Czech Cinemas, will focus on films screened in Czech cinemas in 2018 and a multi-parameter analysis of their successfulness, promotional campaigns, and work with the audience.

Little Mouse’s Encyclopedia is an interactive encyclopaedia that aims to teach children about the natural world around them. What began five years ago as a master’s degree project by Tereza Vostradovská in collaboration with game developer Michal Berlinger, has been finished this year. The app supports sixteen languages and the book of the same name was published in four. What does it entail to make an interactive educational application for children with no financial support whatsoever? The lecture will be centred around the technological and production aspects of the project.

ANIMARKET is an industry networking event and job opportunities market for professionals and students of animation, VFX, game development and VR/AR.

Do female characters in computer games still have such freakishly large breasts? And what do male characters look like? What does it mean when a boy plays as a girl and when a girl plays as a boy? Do girls like action heroes’ butts? And can playing games make coming out smoother? In her lecture Playing as Boys and Girls: Gender and Computer Games, Tereza Krobová, one of the jurors of this year’s indie games competition, explores the complicated relationships between representation, gender identification, and the vastness of virtual worlds.

The What, the How and the Why of Animated Documentary

Jonas Odell, a Swedish music video and film director, and holder of a Golden Bear from Berlinale 2006 for his short Never Like the First Time! among many other awards, specializes in making animated films mixing live action and mixed media techniques. He will discuss the nature and raison d’être of the animated documentary with his own films in the genre as a starting point. Does the seemingly paradoxical combination of the words “animated” and “documentary” even make sense, and is the animated doc in fact the only honest form of documentary?

Children form an essential image of the world between 4 and 7 years of age. Input from audiovisual media makes up 60–75% of this cultural knowledge base. Many countries therefore endeavour to ensure that broadcasted audiovisual content is of high quality and up to date as it is a key determinant of the character of each new generation. The speakers will try to define the purpose of animated films and discuss the roles of society, parents, and creators of animated content in the upbringing and education of children.

Director Michaela Pavlátová and Eliška Děcká will introduce the feature-length work in progress My Sunny Maad. The film is based on the book Frišta by Czech journalist Petra Procházková and tells the story of a Czech woman who falls in love with an Afghan man but has no idea what to expect from her new family or what awaits her in Kabul. Michaela Pavlátová will describe how she got from short auteur animated films to a feature film, how she turns her ideas into reality and sketches into a film. Drawings and extracts from the film will give the audience a chance to take a peek into the author’s “kitchen” and learn about the process of preparation and shooting of an animated feature film.

Anidoc or animated documentary can be made in the form of a classic animated film but it is also increasingly often applied in creative ways in the digital environment, which has different rules and offers different opportunities. New types of screens and various kinds of mobile devices allow us to expand viewers’ experience with interactive and non-linear aspects. What forms of digital storytelling are there and what does it entail? How does it affect the work of content creators? How do developers and filmmakers complement each other? And what’s the role of animated documentary in all of this? The speakers will talk about their experience, plans, and inspirations and discuss examples of both successful solutions and dead ends.

Pavel Barák, chairman of the Czech Game Developers Association (GDACZ), will present a unique study on the video game industry in the Czech Republic, which was conducted this year by the GDACZ in cooperation with the Institute for Digital Economy. The study provides a plethora of basic yet crucial information, such as how many game studios there are in the Czech Republic, how many people work in the video game industry, how much money released games made, and what are the industry’s export volumes. At the same time, it describes in detail the current situation on the video game market, points out current issues faced by the industry, and suggests possible solutions that could be implemented in cooperation with the state. Pavel Barák will also discuss what immediate measures and goals should be derived from the study.

Petr Janeček, who currently works as a Lead Character Animator at Warhorse Studios (and formerly worked, for example, at Disney Mobile Games, 2K Czech, and Eallin Motion Art), will talk about the differences between animating films and games. He will present how games are animated at Warhorse Studios and outline the challenges and advantages of game animation, explain the use of motion capture, and introduce the world of game animation with a focus on how in-game cutscenes and facial animation are made.

With the help of a projection of film extracts, line-tests, images and various documents, Georges Schwizgebel will present his approach to short animation. He will address the topics that particularly interest him: music, loops, movements in space and metamorphosis. Georges Schwizgebel is the author of more than twenty short films, which rank among the most influential animated films in the world. The director and artist, who, among many other awards from prestigious festivals, received the Honorary Cristal Award in Annecy last year for his distinctive body of work, will also show the participants selected cels from some of his films. This presentation was made possible with the support of SWISS FILMS

How does a game like Hidden Folks get made? Game designer Adriaan de Jongh will take you through all the steps he and his collaborator took to start and finish Hidden Folks.
Without getting too technical, Adriaan Jongh will show the game’s initial drawings, open the software in which the game is put together, show the process, the code, the design. He’ll show the to-do lists and all the tools and apps that helped the team communicate, show how a game is tested, how sounds get made, how it is translated, show how a game is uploaded, how it is promoted, and show what “doing business” means for a game.

Florence Miailhe’s short films have won prestigious prizes at Annecy, Sundance, Cannes, Amiens, Clermont-Ferrand and Leipzig. The French painter and animation director will take us through the making of The Crossing, her first feature-length film about two stray siblings on the roads of exile, who are trying to escape from their pursuers and reach some more welcoming country. This French-German-Czech co-production is partly made in collaboration with Czech animators from MAUR Film in Prague, and it is created using a demanding paint-on-glass animation technique.

The shooting of the feature film Even Mice Belong in Heaven started at the end of 2018. The film tells the story of two mortal enemies, a Mouse and a Fox, who meet in animal heaven after dying in a tragic accident. They become best friends and their desire to be together forever endures even after they swap roles as they are reborn, and their close friendship eventually allows them to beat even seemingly impossible odds.
The film is being made using stop-motion puppet animation but there is also quite a lot of CGI involved – digital drawings, 3D animations, and visual effects. The film’s directors Denisa Grimmová and Jan Bubeníček and producer Vladimír Lhoták will show exclusive footage from the work in progress and talk about how they combined the applied animation technologies with 3D print during its development and production.

Come and find out about the most beautiful and interesting indie games released last year. Jakub Dvorský, the co-founder of the Czech game development studio Amanita Design, will use in-game footage to introduce last year’s most visually interesting games, including GRIS, FAR: Lone Sails, Below, Return of the Obra Dinn, and many others. Some of the presented games have been nominated for the Anifilm game awards.