For the seventh occasion this year, MAGMA Contemporary Art Space is organising screenings of the children’s film competition programme of the Primanima World Festival of First Animation, which will take place on 21-25 October and November 2024.
The short animated story film compilations, one hour per age group, are open to interested groups by appointment. Advance bookings are welcome on 0721 649 156 or at studio@magmacm.ro. Entrance is free of charge!
The Primanima festival, held in Budaörs, Hungary, from 16 to 19 October, will again pay special attention to the younger audience: the children’s film competition programme, divided into three age groups – 3-6, 7-11, 12-14 years old – will feature better and better films that have already won many festivals.
Anna Búzás, media literacy teacher and curator of the children’s film competition, has selected a diverse line-up of animations for three age groups from all over the world. Toddlers will see Julia Ocker’s latest funny animal stories, Pufferfish and Sevenfoot. The South Korean stop-motion film Akku Mom, with its beautiful imagery, shows the different layers of love and care, where we learn about the work of an element in a nursery: she works in the soap bubble blower, measures the fever in the thermometer and comes to the aid of the children when there is a fire. In the French animation Baking with Boris, which has won many festivals and prestigious awards, children meet a young baker’s son who becomes allergic to flour and can’t bake any more bread overnight, but his friends come to his rescue. Friendship is also at the heart of the German animation Screw and the Lithuanian animation Paws on the ice rink, where the protagonists find themselves in unusual situations: sock lovers get lost in the washing machine and, while looking for each other, make new friends, a pig and a cow meet a lonely fish living under the ice.
The animations of Martin Smatana and Veronika Zacharova have already been screened several times at Primanima, and now their latest film, Hello, Summer!, will be screened for the school-age audience, in which a family goes on a fun holiday, where anything can happen, strange, everyday objects become important elements, and a very exciting visual world is revealed. The dichotomy and contrast between the digital world and reality is also present in several films, in the Portuguese The Girl with the Busy Eyes, a little girl walks by, completely oblivious, until the phone flies out of her hand, and then she realises how much more interesting and wonderful the environment is, the Czech The world that surrounds her a girl is playing a game on her phone all day, oblivious to her grandfather, but a huge storm throws her off, she senses that the sound of raindrops are more real in reality and she can reconnect with her grandfather. The Russian film A Snow White Day opens up a magical world, where all of us, regardless of age, are immersed in a cartoon animation that evokes the world of Yuri Norstein, where we can wonder at the small, simple, everyday events of the world through the eyes of a child.
