Focus on Family

Family is a “story” in and of itself. From a random family portrait you can usually already imagine a story – and not only about its protagonist – either in a concrete social or psychological reality. In a much deeper sense, such a family allusion easily relates to a universal experience and triggers emotions deeply enrooted in human character. We can laugh about a family’s staged pose while being reminded of our own deeper pain or fragile happiness. Interestingly, poetic animation does not necessarily stray from reality, but rather shows us a poignant shortcut to our real life experience – in just ten minutes or so. It is more distinct, noble, but less naturalistic and psycho- dramatic. It tricks us all around solely by means of drawn images. Thanks to this, however, we can and have to see “the truth” – being unprepared for denial with the photo-style reality.

Family settings feature a drama of liberal or personal emancipation from the “blood ties”, our ancestors ́ predestination or merely the banal boredom of two people annoyed one by another. It is easy to talk about family ties that canbe full of dangerous traps, jealous fairies, archetypal tyrannies, egoism or ignorance. Nothing is new. Even in the Middle Ages people already knew about, for example, co-parenting, mean stepmothers, bird fathers living away from home or vicious divorces. We have all been repeating similar stories ever since – enjoying childhood, coming of age, starting a family, learning how to raise a child. What drives us the most is our desire to belong, find love, see our future in an heir or just simply escape life’s solitude. No wonder all revolutions principally against families as such have always failed.
Compiling such a programme of family-related films entails a very personal handpicked selection. The Focus programme for Fantoche 2015, called “Family Sweet & Sour” might seem to be very narrative in its usually unorthodox, avant-garde, experiment-loving festival programme. However, this narrative quality comes from the logic of a melodramatic and emotional theme. But what I was mostly interested in was a family from a more innocent, poetic perspective – not so much a social or emancipatory agenda. How that miracle simply happens – despite many prejudices, clichés and arguments against such old-fashioned archetypes that I used to share and have repeated myself (obviously before I got married). What is the magical moment of motherhood? What is it like to age together as wife and husband. When you understand that your children are quickly growing up and you have to start letting them go? You can never exactly say until you go through such a “common” fate yourself.

The Focus section for Fantoche 2015 is divided into three sub-programmes of films (for adults) that attempt to summarize similar life experiences into several minutes of animation.

Curated by Michal Procházka