11 days of Animation: MIAF at ACMI
June 2013
In recent weeks, the whisper of film festival season has been moving through Melbourne’s streets, propelled by a steady increase in nippy winds and damp-feet-making rain. For it is in the medium of film and the climate controlled environment of the cinema that many Melbournians take refuge from the outside harassments of winter. With over a month to go until the opening of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), it should come as a great relief to be reminded that the Melbourne International Animation Festival (MIAF) is now open us.
Screening at ACMI across 11 days, MIAF showcases a wide selection of the most innovative and downright entertaining efforts in contemporary animation from Australia and overseas. Local special effects artist and filmmaker Isabel Peppard is represented with her darkly fantastical stop-motion animation Butterflies (2012), for which the young Melbournian has gained international recognition over the past year. There is a pronounced grimness in this film – both in its aesthetic and its narrative – which nevertheless serves to briefly absorb the viewer in a world that is at once like and unlike the one in which we exist.
Also of note amongst the 400 films showing at MIAF is Iranian filmmaker Maryam Kashkoolinia’s intensely claustrophobic work Tunnel (2012). Created using sand animation, this film presents to the viewer an experience of traveling through the tunnels underneath the Gaza blockade. This screening at MIAF provides a rare opportunity to view Kashkoolinia’s work on the big screen.
As the current film festival (now in its 13th year) clearly demonstrates, the specialised genre of animation offers unmatched scope to realise (as filmmaker) and experience (as viewer) the infinite potential of creativity in the moving image. Moreover, if we give credence to the wisdom of master animater Tim Burton, who has described the technical side of animation as “soul-destroying”, the viewer’s seat in the ACMI cinemas becomes all the more comfortable and contenting. Schadenfreude? Just a smidge.
The 2013 Melbourne International Animation Festival shows at ACMI, Federation Square, now until June 30.
MIAF13 trailer – by Martinus Klemet (Estonia) from MIAF on Vimeo.
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