German animated films

The Animated Films from Germany exhibition is a report on current movements in the German art animation film, focusing on typical and successful films produced in Germany today. German animated film artists work beyond the market, moving between the cliffs of the media business. Some of their aims contrast starkly with those of the media industry.

The individual expressive forms are not just very different individually, they also show a wide spectrum of styles and techniques grown on the humus and in the jungle of contemporary art. One key criterion for animated film remains designing movement, the «fourth dimension», which has to follow its own canon. Movement, called «animation» in the specialist jargon, operates within complicated artistic and technical rules that can be learned, but fundamentally require a great deal of intuition and experience. In terms of subject matter, we find the collective fears of the new century reflected in the German artistic animation film, we find sketches about how we might live together in the future, insights into the loneliness of the individual within the demographic reality. There are films about the search for old, archaic life patterns and films offering progress-critical parodies about the perversion of technology. The computer is still at the forefront of any production, but so are drawings, collages, photographs, montages and dolls. The new technology has simplified and accelerated production. But technology cannot replace art in the artistic animated film. Ideas, suspense, plots, humour and emotional profundity arise from the authors’ creativity in the animated film.

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