The Magic Place for Children

The 19th edition of Anima Mundi is now leaving Rio and heading to São Paulo. If you couldn’t be here to check this amazing festival, our blog will bring the news for you! In 2011, Anima Mundi’s film selection pleased the kids (even thought we know there isn’t a limit age to love animation). Check the children’s favorites!

We started on friday with The Missed Lynx, 2011’s feature film winner. The film follows the misadventures of a group of animals to escape from being kidnapped by an unscrupulous hunter, hired by a “benevolent” millionaire, named Noah. The eccentric old man, aware of nature's deterioration hatches a plan: to build a new “ark” and keep a pair of animals for each endangered specie. He recruits Newmann, a cool blooded hunter. But even the best hunter in the world will face endless problems as he try to capture our animal heroes under the leadership of Felix, a jinxed Lynx.

The winner of the silver medal was the very delicate Japanese movie Hearth and Yummie. The animation film tells the story of Heart, a T-Rex who was found still inside the egg by an herbivorous female dinosaur, which raises him as her own baby. The film questions the existence of something we call “essence” in a very beautiful way.

We also had a special show for the Aardman’s most famous character: Shaun the Sheep, with bright new episodes. Shaun is the leading character of this British tv show. He and his friends turn the farm they live upside down in hilarious adventures.

Besides the feature films, we had a session only with short films for children, called Comkids – Prix Jeneusse. The seven short movies were reunited by Midiativa – Brazilian Center of Midia for Children and Adolescents. The premier concern of this institute is to develop audio-visual programmes for children with high quality contents. They work like an observatory, analyzing and mapping every program that is specially designed for children in Latin America. They also look forward to increase the public debate within this field of animation. This special show makes us think about the power of animation when used such as an educational tool. We can point out the short films Things you Think – Love, made with several children’s illustrations about what they see when they think about love, and Paul and the Dragon, the touching story about how kids face harsh realities. And we couldn't forget the amazing Juan Pablo Zaramella with the movie Trip to Mars, elected best short movie by the Popular Jury in 2005.

Another great session especially design for children is Panorama 6 – Child TV. Anima Mundi brings seven episodes of children’s TV series from many different parts of the world, including Brazil. The idea is to show what is being produced internationally and at the same time provide fun as big as the cinema screens to the kids. The show comes with episodes from United Kingdom, Check Republic, Taiwan and Colombia. An episode of the program Trank Train, one of the first TV series that were created and produced entirely in Brazil and was actually exhibited in national channels, had a granted spot in the show!

For those kids that are already drawing and thinking about animation, the tip is to go and see the show Future Animator. The panel reunites films produced by children and adolescents that are starting to discover the magic in the animation world. The films are made in schools or at home. In the next post you will hear more about MUAN, a very simples and easy animation software developed by Anima Mundi’s team, and then you can start doing animations with your own kid!

Anima Mundi is a place for children and their families. Check in the next post everything about all the animation workshops available for the public and more details about how you can do it at home!