Review: The Factual Animation Film Festival (FAFF) 2022

The Fall of 2022 marked the 9th year of running of The Factual Animation Film Festival (FAFF). Following the success of 2021, this time the festival maintained its hybrid format offering both in-person and online events. Those who found themselves in Berlin on September 24th, could attend a screening at local Z-inema moderated by Marina Belikova, one the festival’s producers. Similarly, in London on October 16th, the FAFF founder Holly Murtha and the UK-based FAFF producer Alex Widdowson presented their film selection in The Garden Cinema. While the two offline screenings had slightly different entries, the audience worldwide could enjoy the entire programme online for free from October 17th to October 27th.

For those who have never attended FAFF, it is a dedicated screening space for animated documentaries (anidocs) – animated films that frequently reflect on the historical and current sociopolitical issues. Animated documentaries are often described as capable of showing ‘unrepresentable’ human experiences, challenging official historical narratives, telling stories not being told in conventional documentary cinema, and amplifying voices of marginalized and unprivileged communities (Honess Roe 2013, 136). It is not surprising that all these trends found their place in this years’ programme of FAFF. From depictions of modern wars to personal narratives of migration to international accounts of climate change activism to representations of emotional struggles and mental health conditions, the 9th FAFF offered a variety of topics from the diverse body of creators.

Figure 1 – A shot from Pandora Box: Russia-Ukraine War 2022.

London’s programme kicked off with an incredibly timely Pandora Box: Russia-Ukraine War 2022 (2022) by Sofiia Rud. Conceptualized shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, the one-minute film presented an imaginary letter from Death to the aggressors (Fig. 1). Done in 2D digital animation with deep orange colours contrasting against black background, the short emphasized the surreal experiences of the events and incomprehensibility of the human tragedy that the war brought to Ukraine.

A similar style of flat sketch-like drawings executed with bright colours could also be noticed in All Those Sensations in My Belly (2020) by Marko Dješka – an opening short for the screening event in Berlin (Fig. 2). Djeska’s anidoc told the story of the character Matia who narrated her experience of searching for love and acceptance as a Croatian trans woman. Following Matia’s journey from elementary school to adulthood, the film beautifully utilized cartoonish and fantastical images to illustrate the struggles and joys that the woman had encountered during her transition. In that, All Those Sensations in My Belly serves as one example of evocative animation – which visualizes inner worlds of portrayed subjects (Honess Roe 2013, 25). Focusing on the experiential part of presented events, evocative animated documentaries tend to aid the viewers’ understanding of the perspectives that may be different from their own.

Fig. 2 – A shot from All Those Sensations in My Belly.

Fig. 3 – A shot from Maalbeek.

This year, FAFF was particularly rich in anidocs leaning to the mode of evocation. Apart from All Those Sensations in My Belly, such films as Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis’ Maalbeek (2020) (Fig. 3), Simon Ball’s Another Presence (2022), Nelson Fernandes’ Us (2021), Ben Alderman’s RIP 9-5 (2022), Diana Reichenbach’s Toddler Talks (2021), and Emily Downe’s Nobody Stands Nowhere (2021), all dealt with various sides of human experiences that could not be recorded directly.

To start, Chandoutis and Ball touched accordingly on the processes of post-traumatic amnesia and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Both animators opted for more abstract animation styles to highlight the unstable nature of the health conditions they set to explore. As Chandoutis expressed in one of his interviews, he approached this project from the position of “less is more” (Chandoutis 2020). In the case of his film, “less” manifested itself in the tonally muted, ashy frames lacking any clear outlines and evoking a horrifyingly eerie environment of the Maalbeek subway station after a terrorist attack in 2016. In Another Presence, Ball employed a similar visual approach. In his attempt to depict what it feels like to experience hallucinations caused by DLB, he created a slow-paced animation with colourful flickers and metamorphing figures made of incomplete gritty outlines.

Fernandes’ Us offered a more poetic exploration of inner struggles depicting the feelings of loneliness, despair, and confinement. Akin to Maalbeek and Another Presence, Us leant to the side of experimentation and invited the viewers to appreciate textural qualities of its shots. Similarly, Alderman’s desktop animated film RIP 9-5 reenacted a paranoia associated with the end of the millennium. In particular, the short was interested in depicting the imagined results of a technological collapse and apocalypse triggered by monopoly capitalism. Continuing the trend of experimental animation, Toddler Talks “was animated in a way that mimics the development of language and emotions” (Reichenbach 2021). By using abstract visuals reminiscent of her son’s drawings, Reichenbach was able to immerse the viewers in her child’s learning experience.

Finally, the question of how people form their opinions and interact within the increasingly pluralistic society became central to Downe’s animated essay Nobody Stands Nowhere. Her fluid images evoked a feeling of exploration and intellectual search which seemed quite fitting to the subject of her film. Following Downe’s voice, the viewers were prompted to ask themselves: “How do you see things? What makes you who you are?” While not giving a certain answer, at the end of the film the artist accurately remarked: “There is no neutral perspective. Nobody stands nowhere. Do you know where you stand?”

Fig. 4 – A shot from Timeline, the winner of The Best Film award.

Three shorts Borscht with Pretzel (2022), Cherry Bone (2021), and Timeline (2021) (Fig. 4) offered a possible response to the last question. The three films were concerned with the topic of immigration as an experience that shapes not only individual lives, but the outlooks of the whole nations. Anna Ring’s Borscht with Pretzel and Evgenia Gostrer’s Cherry Bone presented stories of two Soviet-Jewish families who immigrated to Germany in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Both films were based on pre-recorded interviews with animators’ families. Yet while thematically the two anidocs were undeniably similar, they differed in their animation styles. Ring’s short was made with sketch-like pencil drawings reminiscent of childhood craft projects. In contrast, Goster created her film by molding plasticine under camera and forming more realistic-looking scenes to support her parents’ narration. With its stop-frame under-camera animation, Cherry Bone fell somewhere in-between Borscht with Pretzel and Osbert Parker’s Timeline, the winner of The Best Film at this year’s FAFF. The latter was a film loop commissioned by The Migration Museum in London for its recent exhibition Departures. Parker’s work used mixed media animation to explore the 400 years of emigration from Britain between 1620-2020 and beyond. The film thus became a visual reflection on the UK’s history and the cultural and historical impacts that (im)migration has brought to the country.

Stop-frame and mixed media animation were generally represented quite well at FAFF 2022. Apart from Us, Cherry Bone and Timeline, mixed media approaches could be seen in The Harbourmaster (2022) by Mia Ludvigsen Henriksen and Konrad Hjemli (Fig. 5), Something More (2022) by Mary Martins, Jeremy, my Father (2022) by Miranda Peyton Jones, Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days (2019) by Regina Pessoa, Only a Child (2020) by Simone Giampaolo, and Ride (2018) by Paul Bush.

Fig. 5 – A shot from The Harbourmaster, the winner of the Best Student Film award.

The Harbourmaster, awarded The Best Student Film by the jury of FAFF, told a story of an aggressive Norwegian swan who was recently put down by local authorities after attacking a teenager. The film consisted of several interviews conducted with community members and included imaginary monologues by the swan’s family itself. Approaching the topic of aggression from a different angle, in Something More, Martins explored the causes of youth violence in London. Using 16mm stock as a basis of her scratch animated film, Martins achieved a moving representation of the passing time and emphasized the unrecognized consequences of gentrification and continuing discrimination that impact marginalized communities. Only a Child also discussed implications of unresolved systemic issues. This collaborative mixed-media poem created by a group of independent animators illustrated a poignant 1992 speech by a climate teenage activist Severn Cullis-Suzuki. The film could be interpreted as a celebration of the youth environmental movement, but also as a desperate call for action to consider the future of our planet. In a way, by inserting animated characters into live-action spaces or adding archival recordings to support their narratives, these anidocs transformed real environments to draw the audience’s attention to the questions of personal and societal legacies, contemporary politics, and historical trends.

On the other side of the material-based anidocs, Peyton Jones’ Jeremy, my Father offered a very personal perspective into the process of bereavement following her dad’s suicide. This brutally honest and reflexive stop-motion short comprised of family photographs, letters, and slides from her family’s archive. With that, it served as a tribute to the artist’s dad and showed her attempt to come to terms with the tragedy of his loss. Similarly, Pessoa’s Uncle Thomas presented an animated love letter to her deceased relative. In mixing 2D hand-drawn animation with stop-motion animation of Thomas’ belongings, Pessoa managed to create a vivid and complex impression of her uncle who struggled with an obsessive-compulsive disorder but could always offer a welcoming and creative environment for his niece.

Another stop-frame film Ride had a different take on the preservation of history – in this case, not the history of a family, but the history of technology. Bush’s playful pixilated work showcased the collection of an artisanal museum of motorbikes (Museu da Mota in Vizela) managed by a Portuguese enthusiast José Periera. In a way, Ride echoed Parker’s Timeline both as a film about cultural heritage and, on a more basic level, as a project associated with a cultural institution. The latter connection is also evident in Sitting on Recycling (2021) created by Studio Desk Animation for Victoria & Albert Museum. Thematically aligned with Only a Child, this 2D animated short focused on the environmental benefits of recycling and invited young visitors of the museum to create something original out of recycled materials. Litter Buggin’ (2022) by John Rowley continued the conversation about human impact on the environment started by Only a Child and Sitting on Recycling. Yet, as opposed to the previous two films, Rowley’s piece went a different route and employed humour and cartoonish aesthetic to possibly make the message of the film more compelling.

Fig. 6 – A shot from The Unfair Sex.

Following this trend of activist statements, Serafima Serafimova’s The Unfair Sex (2022) confronted the audience with the uncomfortable truth about the pressures and contradictory demands constantly placed on women in our society (Fig. 6). In 69 seconds, the artist presented female bodies going through a variety of experiences: she showed them at rest, at home, at work, and at protests. Interestingly, The Unfair Sex utilized the colours pink and red which are often associated with superficial femininity. However, in the case of Serafimova’s work, this palette channeled anger and frustration and aimed at raising awareness of the women’s struggle for equality – still ongoing in 2022.

More broadly, the inherent educational potential of animated documentary was also realized in Imagination Blind: Aphantasia Explained (2022) by George Lee, My Thoughts on Autism… And Orangutans (2022) by Alfie Minchin, The Chimney Swift (2020) by Frédéric Schuld, and The Wind Whistles (2022) by Alessandro Dordoni. While Lee’s and Minchin’s works offered insights into the mental states of the people with conditions described in their films’ titles, Schuld and Dordoni discussed real episodes of European history – specifically, on inhumane child labour practices in the 19th century England and the Italian partisan movement during the Second World War.

Finally, Kandittundu (Seen it) (2021) by Adithi Krishnadas gave a voice to an eccentric storyteller, Mr. P. N. K Panicker who educated the viewers on Malayalam folklore and specifically its ghouls (which seemed quite fitting for the Halloween season). The film stood out from other entries at FAFF not simply due to its manneristic style, but also because of its fantastical topic. Based on a video recording of the conversation between Mr. Panicker and his son Suresh Eriyat, the founder of Studio Eeksaurus, Kandittundu quirkily pictured the supernatural encounters that the old man convincingly claimed to have.

Overall, FAFF 2022 offered a rich programme full of socially important questions and challenging answers. As difficult as it is to coherently describe the diverse body of films presented at the festival, by its end one thing became very clear – animated documentary as a form of cinema is currently flourishing. It is undeniable that anidocs open opportunities to address topics neglected by conventional documentary. Relying on the representational freedom of animation, they push boundaries of the representation itself and aim at offering new perspectives on the real world. To conclude, I would like to rephrase George Lee’s statement from Imagination Blind: I think FAFF 2022 has served as a reminder of the diversity of the human experience and invited to examine our own situated perspective on reality and beyond.

**Article published: November 11, 2022**

References

Honess Roe, Annabelle. 2013. Animated Documentary. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

La Semaine de la Critique. 2020. Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis Presents MAALBEEK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJstlm_WOtY.

Reichenbach, Diana. 2021. “Toddler Talks.” https://dianareichenbach.com/toddler-talks.

Biography

Anastasiia Gushchina is a PhD candidate at the department of Communication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary. Her PhD project tentatively entitled “The Stuff of Reality”: Towards a Materialist Theory of Animated Documentary examines techniques and production processes of independent animated documentaries of the 1990s-2010s. She presented at multiple international conferences and published her work in Sense of Cinema. She is a winner of Maureen Furniss Award 2022 and Sherry Clarkson Prize 2022 for her writings in animation. Her research interests include film and animation theory, film philosophy, and documentary practices in visual arts.