International Student Animation Festival
International Student Animation Festival: THE RETURN
The disruptions of the last few years forced some very difficult decisions upon us and perhaps the hardest was having to pause our annual spotlight on the world of international student animation. BUT IT’S BACK! This year we happily relaunch a mini festival-within-a-festival dedicated entirely to the dynamic world of student animation. In a day dedicated to watching AND talking we have pulled together three fabulous, short programs for films from some of the best schools in the world and we’re busy assembling a roster of way-cool guests and presenters to come in to share their work, tell their stories and pass on their advice. So whether you’re in the bar, the foyer or the cinema there will always be something going down.
Conversation #1: Turning Our Grad Film Project Around
Conversation #2: The Creative Teams Behind “Heroic Turtle” + “Inferno” (Republic of China)
Conversation #3: Sarah Balanger, Maker of “Rushmore” (ESMA – France)
Conversation #4: Nailing The Perfect Fight Scene – Ollie Wilson (VCA – Aus)
Conversation #5: Building Worlds – Gabriella Lee Sudyatmiko (RMIT – Aus)
Conversation #6: How We Made A Finnish Heavy Metal Music Video
Program #1
So Long Gropius
Bertille Rondard
France, 4’19, 2024
A young girl becomes friends with a strange lizard and in the process finds herself stepping into a whole new world.
(La Poudriere)
Dare To Be Fabulous
Joao Buosi, Yangjia Chen, Adam Meziane Philipps, Carla Sampaio Da Silva, Xinxin Qin, Zhen Zhou
France, 6’04, 2024
To prove himself to his gangster father, Alessandro decides to rob a bar but inside that bar resides a surprise he could never, ever imagine.
(Gobelins)
Hello, Headquarters
Zuzanna Heller
Poland, 5’00, 2025
An elderly man wants to report his wife’s disappearance but there are barriers beyond his imagination to conquer.
(Lodz Film School)
The Sound Of Raindrops
Julie Blanc, Estelle Jourdan, Elena Forlini, Gabriel Riera, Lila Trouve, Max Banse, Alvaro Deolio
France, 7’00, 2024
Two young brothers separated by parental conflicts find themselves in the heart of a violent storm they can only overcome together.
(Ecole Georges Méliès)
Bon Apetit!
Wang Ziyu, Yu Jinhong
China, 4’34, 2024
In a garden of shimmering colours and ever-changing dimensions, a sheep attracted by a unique purple flower embarks on an unusual mealtime.
(CUC – Communication University of China)
Program #2
Sesame
Alix de Clerck, Alice Diop
France, 5’49, 2024
A woman dies of a sesame allergy and, to add insult to injury, in the ultimate twist has to mourn her own death.
(Atelier de Sevres)
The Deep Above-First Hunt
Niklas Wolff
Germany, 5’00, 2024
Across a vast ocean stretching towards infinity a colony suffer in endless darkness. Will they dare to steal the light from the godlike Lumathans?
(Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg)
Targeted
Ruby Meades, Chris Popham, Jessica Steininger, Bella Ranstead, Mihaly Csordas, Eyessa Gentle, Billie Clement
New Zealand, 1’36, 2024
In the not too distant future, when the targeted ads just won’t go away, one guy decides enough is enough – it’s game on!
(Southern Institute of Technology)
Sphere Supreme
Hasan Pastaci
Belgium, 5’00, 2024
Guided by a mystical pomegranate tree Arama encounters parts of himself he must try and put together to establish a new identity.
(KASK)
Quasar
Theodora Pittaluga
France, 4’54, 2024
During a mission at the borders of a distant planetary system, the astronaut Yoko loses the lucky charm she holds dearly.
(Atelier de Sevres)
NRUT
Sophia Schonborn
Germany, 4’33, 2024
If you’ve always stood still, how do you know if you’re going to get dizzy? Muncu is about to find out.
(Filmuniversity Babelsberg Konrad Wolf)
Program #3
Poppy Flowers
Evridiki Papaiakovou
Estonia, 4’24, 2024
Remembering is a fluid affair. A daughter tries to reconcile with her mother through memories of their shared rituals.
(Estonian Academy of Arts)
Itch
Maggie Zeng
Canada, 2’29, 2024
As Manon impatiently waits for her date to arrive an uncontrollable itch begins to overtake her.
(Concordia University)
How To Make A Friend
Jinfei Ge, Bin He, Myrtille Huet, Julie Jarrier-Stettin, Yuqiang Zhang
France, 7’16, 2024
Moo mourns her deceased friend, so Yuu decides to create a new companion for her.
(Gobelins)
Core
Yu-Hsiang Chen
Republic Of China, 6’30, 2024
A robot strives to rewrite its own past, and in the transition finds the courage to break free from life’s constraints.
(National Formosa University)
Sunscreen
Xinzhi Ma, Yuan Liu, Yufan Chen, Zixiao Yue
France, 6’22, 2023
After an eternity trapped in a space station after a catastrophic accident Zora begins to hallucinate as she confronts the world around her.
(Gobelins)
Conversation #1: Turning Our Grad Film Project Around
The ‘capstone’ project (aka Grad Film) is the ultimate outcome of most university animation courses. And they can often be rollercoaster experiences for those undertaking them. Matilda Mansfield knows this better than most. She was the director of “Life Line”, leading a small team of fellow students at Swinburne to create a beautifully imagined tale about a little mouse prepared to give its all to save others from a range of dark forces in a mysterious forest.
Almost from the beginning “Life Line” experienced head winds that saw the changing of critical team members and issues with defining core elements of the story and characters. Deadlines came and went (as they do) but the team dug deep and completed the film (and their degrees).
Matilda, and the film’s producer, Ashley Caboon, will reflect on their experiences with making “Life Line”, discuss its challenging pathway from imagination through to completion and reflect of the wider issues with pulling together a completed graduation film in the face of what sometimes seemed like impossible odds.
Conversation #2: The Creative Teams Behind “Heroic Turtle” + “Inferno” (Republic of China)
“Heroic Turtle” and “Inferno” are two of the films we are screening from a favourite Taipei-based distributor who helps us keep up to date with emerging animators in the Republic of China (RoC). We are delighted to welcome team members from both of these films to Melbourne and we have invited them to sit down and discuss their experiences making these films.
We will learn about the way animation is taught in the RoC, look at the kind of career paths these young animators are expecting and discuss different approaches to crafting characters and narratives within the wider culture of the RoC.
“Inferno” is screening in International Competition #5 (so will have screened the evening before and will repeat on Sunday afternoon) and “Heroic Turtle” is screening in our ever popular Late Night Bizarre later tonight.
This will also be a unique opportunity to look closely at two very different films, employing significantly different styles, techniques and technologies and to learn how these films were imagined and produced.
Conversation #3: Sarah Balanger, Maker of “Rushmore” (ESMA – France)
Sarah Balanger is one of the team from France’s prestigious Ecole Superieure des Metiers Artistiques (ESMA) school which made the film “Rushmore” which is screening competition in MIAF 25.
The ESMA animation course is a demanding one, annually producing a cohort of French animators who will go on to significant careers as independent and commercial animators.
ESMA graduation films are team projects, rather than individually directed and while this brings the strength of being able to harness the skills of a talented collective of animators, it also brings into play the need to cooperate, negotiate and compromise within a group structure to produce a final result all can be proud of.
Sarah will sit down and discuss her experience at ESMA making “Rushmore”, her views on the wider world of animation as she sees it and her thoughts on moving from the contained world of creating a student film into the wider space of a professional animator.
Conversation #4: Nailing The Perfect Fight Scene – Ollie Wilson (VCA – Aus)
Ollie Wilson’s VCA grad film “The Devourer’s Den” screened in MIAF’s Australian Showcase on opening night.
It channels a combination of anime, gaming and horror film aesthetics and at its beating heart is a prolonged, beautifully executed series of fights scenes.
You get the sense that this is something Ollie had been itching to animate for quiiiiiiite a while! That ambition is far from unique when it comes to student animators but getting it right is a whole different box of dice. And it’s not just about the finished animation; those fight scenes have to be choreographed in animatic form to the satisfaction of a teaching team who may (or may not) share the passion for a fight-to-the-death piece of animation and the characters have to be designed in such a way that animating them ‘works’ for what is being created.
Then there is the critical eye of the audience who themselves are no strangers to these films and are often walking encyclopaedias of the inspirations, references and masters of the form. But Ollie’s nailed it here and we plan to ask him how (and why) he did it.
Conversation #5: Building Worlds – Gabriella Lee Sudyatmiko (RMIT – Aus)
The film “Carrion” made by Gabriella Lee Sudyatmiko at RMIT last year is set in a densely imagined and visually saturated undersea world. It is a world that offers the animator an almost endless range of choices and opportunities; a kind of maximum flexibility that allows an incredible creative freedom.
That Gabriella has leaned into this opportunity is evident from the earliest moments of the film and the sense of continuing immersion in this world only increases as the film progresses, becoming more and more visually complex as it goes.
Additionally this world also has to be populated and ways have to be found to make the inhabitants of the world move through it, interact with each other and with the fixed infrastructure of they encounter.
This kind of ‘imaginative ballet’ first takes form in the mind of the animator before a single frame is drawn and the capacity to create and then realise that vision is what it is to ‘think like an animator’.
Gabriella will discuss this process of ‘world building’ and take us inside the making of her beautifully realised new film “Carrion”.
Conversation #6: How We Made A Finnish Heavy Metal Music Video
Nobody does heavy metal quite like the Fins but even within that uniquely anarchic cohort the band “Warmen” stand out for their iron-clad fidelity to the form; they give it everything they have and they have a lot to give.
Somehow – and we’re about to find out how – a group of RMIT students in Melbourne, lead by lecturer Simon Norton got to make an official music video for “Warmen”. Perhaps aptly titled “A World Of Pain” this is Finnish metal at its full-blast best!
We screened it as the closing film in MIAF’s Australian Student Showcase coz we loved it and we couldn’t imagine anything being able to follow it.
There has to be one helluva story behind how this came to pass and how the resulting animated video was created to match the barely constrained concussive force of the music and the molten-hot, dangerous energy that pours forth.
Going to the source is the only way so we invited Simon and some of the contributing students in for a chat to learn everything we can about their experience in crafting the video for “A World Of Pain” for a Finnish heavy metal band called “Warmen”.
All sessions is classified: Unclassified (M) Mature, not recommended for viewers under 15 years.
Please note that Backlot is NOT fully accessible. There are stairs with handrails, but no lift to the second floor where the cinema is located.