Look at the world through the eyes of artificial intelligence, live the experience of a migrant and argue about comics: what interesting things you can do online at the LINOLEUM festival.
From September 1 to 5, Kyiv will host the LINOLEUM festival for the eighth time – the largest show of author’s animation in the country. Traditionally, the festival will present three competition blocks – Ukrainian, international and commercial animation, and a large number of special programs for every taste: from pro-feminist animation to trash selection #killmeplease.
The festival also presents an educational program, for the sake of which the organizers annually overcome a great quest to gather the best theoreticians and practitioners of visual culture from around the world and deploy them for several days in September in Kyiv. The educational program of the festival is always built in such a way that the intellectual needs of everyone are satisfied: both professional animators and fans of modern art, as well as citizens who are just beginning to be interested in author’s animation.
The full educational program of the festival can be found on the LINOLEUM website, and we present 5 MUST VISIT events that, according to the organizers, should not be missed. The events will be broadcast online on the YouTube channel and on the Facebook page of the festival.
ARTIST TALK with Mitch McGlocklin
A unique event that will be of interest to a wide range of visitors – technologists, fans of ART&Science, people interested in the possibilities of AI (here and in the future – artificial intelligence) and the ethical issues it affects, and at the same time designers, artists and animators, in search of alternative methods of work with a picture – all you need is Mitch McGlocklin.
This participant of Sundance, Annecy, and Zagreb (the biggest film events in the world) created the documentary “Forever” using LiDAR, the technology used for self-driving cars. In fact, it is the “sight” for the artificial intelligence that drives the machine. That is, AI technology was used to create the film, which had never been used in cinema before (by the way, LiDAR was added to the iPhone 12 Pro to improve the smartphone camera).
Some believe that this is a revolutionary event for modern cinema. Someone thinks that this is an unintended and unreasonably expensive use of technology, whose purpose is much more complicated and higher than the goal that the artist set for himself. What we are 100% sure of is that McGlocklin’s film surprises us and raises enough questions for us to search for answers together with the author.
VR deconstruction of a film about the migration crisis
The jury member of the international competition is the Croatian director Veljko Popović, winner of more than 70 international awards, including the prize of the main animation event in the world – Annecy, as well as awards from Ottawa, Zagreb, Hiroshima and the LINOLEUM 2018 festival – together with his brother Milovoj, they created an experimental VR project, which transports the viewer into the consciousness of the main character, a refugee, who is forced to constantly save, hide and run away. The directors collaborated with various humanitarian organizations to collect stories of refugees, so that the project had a serious documentary basis.
Round table: comics about closeness
Today, a comic from a children’s entertainment/semi-marginal art form, interesting to a relatively small circle of people, has become a full-fledged member of the literary and artistic circle, which is no longer ashamed to read and study.
Journalist, co-founder of Zaboron Media Kateryna Sergatskova, literary critic and writer Tetyana Kalytenko and art critic, editor of IST Publishing Borys Filonenko talk about today’s comic. About close, insightful, fascinating stories that influenced their professional practice and personal experience of modern times. And also about the proximity of comics and other arts — artistic practices, literature, cinema and animation. The comic does not stand aside from the currents of modern culture, and we will try to immerse ourselves in this current.
CASE STUDY of the film Kill It and Leave This Town
Together with co-producer Jakub Karvowski, we learn the sad story of a hero who hides every day in the safe land of memories. In the reality of despair and excruciating pain, this country is the best place in the world because time stands still and all the dear people are still alive.
The film was created for 10 years, Yakub will be happy to share with us his insights, life hacks and experience of creating and distributing the film, and also tell us how not to lose hope and motivation while working on such a long-term project.
ARTIST TALK with Tomek Popakul
Polish director, animator and screenwriter Tomek Popakul, whose work “Acid Rain” won 35 awards and was selected for 90 festivals, including the longlist of the Oscar film award, and the short hybrid animation “Moon” was created specifically for the pandemic anthology “At Home” of the HBO TV channel, this year he is a member of the jury of the international LINOLEUM competition.
Mykyta Lyskov – a true prodigy of Ukrainian animation, whose work is admired in Annecy, will talk with him about the difference between animation and feature film, animation education, animadoc and commercial animation, while Nikita is looking for romance in the urbanized Dnipro, and beauty in the absence of balls
tours
The international festival of current animation and media art LINOLEUM will be held in Kyiv from September 1 to 5 in a hybrid format: screenings of the competition and special programs will be held offline in the Kyiv cinema “Zhovten”, the educational program will be broadcast online on the YouTube channel and on the festival’s Facebook page.
The theme of LINOLEUM 2021 is “PRESENCE. PROXIMITY. TOUCH”, inspired by the global pandemic. One day we woke up in a world where the usual order of things was shattered. Physical presence becomes a real rarity, love intimacy a forbidden pastime, and touch a mortal danger. Crisis behavior has become our new normal, and the space around us is sacredly inviolable. We desperately invented new forms of interaction and practiced disconnection as a public responsibility. We have learned to get to know the world at the distance of a hand extended to the screen. We have almost come to terms with the online format. However, the tactile hunger has not gone away, it still needs a relationship. We tried to put into logical constructions and words the sudden madness into which the world around us had descended. However, it turned out that understanding reality is impossible without close contact, and culture is lifeless if it does not resonate with bodies. We suddenly felt our own bodies as part of a physical cosmology. It turned out that value is determined by reach, and the experience of being can be fully experienced thanks to touch.
The LINOLEUM 2021 festival will be held with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Fund and the State Agency of Ukraine for Cinema.