Budapest!

Gravity is screening at the 2011 Anilogue International Animation Festival starting today in Budapest Hungary! Upon writing that sentence I realized I know absolutely nothing about Budapest...let's see, internet, what can you tell me...hmmm...Oh my goodness it is an incredibly beautiful city! It looks like a breath taking combination of Slavic and European (and vaguely Middle Eastern?) architecture! With spas! And the Danube! And a rich history beginning with Celts, Romans and a barage of conflicts that have lead to the rebuilding of this place making it the strong, gorgeous nation that it is today! The best resource (in English) I could find about Hungarian culture was this one! It seems to cover everything from the current complicated & historical outrage about Gypsies to the adorable Cog Wheel train that has climbed the nearby mountains since 1874!


The festival seems very fitting to this region too,  animation has a tradition that runs deep here, a tradition that is definitley moving forward and beyond as evident in this fests programming. I somehow have gotten sucked into the festival website where film after film description sends me on a wild digital journey into a completely different animated vision- WONDERFUL! Posted here are a few trailers from short pieces and some entire shorts that are screening at Anilogue, each reminding me that animating is such a totally immersive, self expressive artform- every single piece of an animation is a controlled act forming it's own creative world all stemming from the mind of one single person! A tiny moving microcosm of a single, giant idea! AMAZING!


Ok, I should stop praising Budapest and the festival and these superb animatiors now...but they make it so easy with all of their awesomeness, no? Have a great time at Anilogue everyone who is lucky enough to be there and please, I beg you, drink whatever this official festival drink of bitter honey beer is for me (drools all over keyboard...)! O, and check out this interview in TimeOut Budapest that Brent gave, conducted by the lovely Kreet! (Hey Kreet! Are you reading this? Hope so! Hope everything is going well over there at your beautiful festival!)