This section surveys the possibilities of animation usage in a non-fiction dimension in all possible relations to reality (art record, film diary, association evocation etc.) or in effects (comedy, drama or historical tragedy). Any reality can be thickened into the form of a simple outline picture and an ironic exaggeration; or relived in the painful memories of Nazi ghetto inhabitants through the animation of drawings from that period.
Animation is a technology that allows time condensation, a crossing of physical laws and comfortable travel in space-time; animation as a medium penetrates the surface meanings of the recorded or the mediate, and – equally as, for example, a caricature in a painting – refers to its deeper and more important aspects or characteristics. Thanks to this feature, animation is – only seemingly paradoxically – relevant for a documentary portrayal or for diary "notes". Due to symbols and metaphors, animation can refer to shared, sense-perceived reality; all the more space is left for a detailed exploration, a psychological and emotional response connected with the experience of the explored.
As an illustrative example, we can mention two peripheral forms – subjectivism and objectivism. Samantha Moore employed the means of expression of animation and its potential to establish a state of emotional pre-rational sharing in her film Doubled Up where she describes her pregnancy and motherhood. Thanks to the possibility of an immersion in both mental and physical depths, without brutal literality or insensitive corporeality, she can talk about mysteries that take place in a mother's body, about a nascent symbiosis between mother and child and also about a nascent life in the totality of this miracle.
Steve Woods uses animation as testimony to an official event in national history. In his film Ireland 1848 he shows the traumatic period of the Great Famine. The event took place before cinematography was invented and he decided to evoke history in such a way that it could have been filmed by a cinematographer. He demonstrates a feeling for historical detail which consists, not only of visual verism, but also of the sensitive actualisation of the event's meaning.
Kateřina Surmanová
Trial of Solomon
dir. Steve Woods, Ireland, 2002, 6'
Ireland 1848
dir. Steve Woods, Ireland, 1996, 10'
A Conversation with Haris
dir. Sheila M. Sofian, USA, 2001, 6'
The Velvet Tigress
dir. Jennifer Sachs, USA, 2001, 11'
Doubled Up
dir. Samantha Moore, England, 2004, 6'
Silence
dir. Sylvie Bringas, Orly Yadin, England, 1998, 11'
Survivors
dir. Sheila M. Sofian, USA, 1997, 16'
Chainsaw
dir. Denis Tupicoff, Australia, 2007, 25'
Roadhead
dir. Bob Sabiston, USA, 1998, 14'
Repetition Compulsion
dir. Ellie Lee, USA, 1997, 7'
Cyanosis/Sianoze
dir. Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami, Iran, 2007, 32'
11 Dec 10:00 p.m. Film Auditorium — CONDENSED REALITY
— series of films — Non-fiction Animation
