Animation: No more a kids-only affair

“The festival was founded to provide a platform for both established and new animation talent and enable it to reach wider audiences,” says its director Sonya Mazumdar. The genre has met with growing acceptance in recent years, according to her, with Indian films receiving well deserved recognition besides 300-plus submissions from across the world. 

Roy Dipankar, content and marketing, IndiEarth, adds, “This event is important because it supports artists who rise to the challenge of creating non-commercial forms of art that force us to think and act as catalysts of change.” 

This year’s event showcases a finely curated selection of films that touch on globally relevant topics like identity, sexuality, environment, geo-politics, anthropology and technology, which also includes a host of national and international award-winning films. One of them, Ladies Make Do , directed by Lili Boisrond, is a sort of sexual catharsis that aims to help liberate the omnipresent sexual self-consciousness of our present societies through a comical representation of women’s most embarrassing sexual anecdotes. 

There is also a documentary from Sweden, The Bus Trip, directed by Sarah Gampel. Sarah is invited to show her film in Israel as part of a film festival bus trip. She hopes for political discussions and friendship, but conversation stops each time she brings up the occupation of Palestine. So instead, Sarah talks to her dead dad over a noisy phone line. 

The festival will also screen Suresh Eriyat’s film, Fisher woman and Tuk Tuk, which won the National Film Award for the Best Animated Film this year. Set in a coastal village, it’s a poignant story of a middle-aged fisherwoman who dreams of owning an auto rickshaw and the consequences that ensue. The film, which was nominated for awards at 35 international and national festivals, has won 13 so far. Eriyat says successes like these will prove to be an impetus for India’s animation industry, which generated revenues of Rs 5,110 crore in 2015, a growth of 13.8 percent over the previous year. But Eriyat says there is still much room for improvement and there remain several issues to be addressed. 

“We must change the narrative that animation is a kids-only genre. Secondly, most of our writers think live action when they write animation. We must tell stories that affect our daily lives, things we see on the road, in the language regular people can relate to. Thirdly, there needs to be an established revenue model,” he points out. 

The filmmaker, however, is hopeful that the raw, unrefined talent in India will script a turnaround through different mediums, visuals and thought-provoking films, because animation gives creative freedom to project a serious issue with a comic undertone, something audiences have come to appreciate and relate to. “For example, approaching topics like death and grief is certainly not an easy thing to do. Rather than sticking to the stereotypical portrayal of depression and death, animation helps you move in a different direction. When these serious topics are put into an entertaining setting, we see a normalisation of how real people handle them; the characters may not be bouncing back from saddening events with resilience, but they show that despite any tragedy, the world keeps spinning. It shows you that things can be handled in a variety of ways depending on the individual; that there isn’t just one image,” explains Eriyat. 

The festival also includes a workshop titled, ‘Art and communication: Animation in the digital age’, by renowned animation artist and award-winning independent filmmaker Abhishek Verma, whose film Maacher Jhol , a hand drawn 2D animated short film about a young man and his inhibition in coming out, and confessing about his sexuality to his father, will also be premiering at the festival on Sunday (August 21). 

Verma will introduce participants to practical hands-on skills training in his workshop, while also exploring worldwide trends by screening select excerpts of noteworthy animation films. “The misconception that animation is a niche art must go. The beauty of it as a medium is that anyone can use it to share their ideas on screen; technology has facilitated the ease of this. Animation can be utilised as a powerful communication tool in the modern era, an evocative medium that can push the very boundaries of visual storytelling. Learning how to work within it can empower storytellers and filmmakers alike, who can explore its myriad creative possibilities. We, the current lot, haven’t had it easy — and still don’t. But times are changing and animation will get its due,” says a confident Verma.