HAFF 2016 proves that animation can do anything: from abstract art to documentary

Is animation the most versatile film form? At the 19th edition of the Holland Animation Film Festival which kicks off in Utrecht on 16 March, features all kinds of examples that make this very plausible.

There are abstract films that build on the work of pioneers like Walter Ruttmann and Norman McLaren. In Moon Blink computer codes underlie a play of lines and patterns. In Composition you can see sound and hear picture.

There are Oscar winners, including the already overrated Disney-Pixar hit Inside Out, which demonstrated before a large audience that animation is ideal for making the leap into the imagination.

A counterpart is motion-capture technology, which allows real actors to step into the skin of animated characters. This happens in the beautiful Belgian/Dutch/French Cafard, an epic adventure film loosely based on the adventures of an elite Belgian soldier in World War I.

Insanely true story

There is even a genre that you don't easily think of when you think of animation, but which festival director Gerben Schermer, when asked, likes to draw attention to. That is the documentary. As one of the highlights of HAFF 2016, Schermer mentions NUTS!, the crazy but true story of rise and fall of the infamous John Romulus Brinkley. This eminently self-made man discovered in 1917 that he could cure male infertility by transplanting goat testicles. It made him rich and famous, also because he started a radio station in addition, which became wildly popular. Meanwhile, he evoked counter forces from agencies determined to stop him.

Director Penny Lane has very cleverly constructed this at first sight relatively conventional documentary, partly by including a narrator of dubious status. Lane uses a mix of archive footage, home movies, interviews with specialists and re-enacted scenes in hand-drawn animation.

The latter works superbly. When it comes to events where there is no authentic picture, a documentary filmmaker usually has two options. Having someone tell what happened, which is not very appealing, or having actors reenact it, which is a bit like cheating anyway. But with animation, the latter objection falls away. You can see that it is drawn, so it is a kind of retelling, but it still comes to life in a realistic way.

NUTS! is part of the international competition, which includes a number of other animated documentaries and docudramas. Such as 25 April, on the experiences of soldiers who took part in the invasion of Gallipoli in 1915, or La Montagne Magique, a docudrama painted with rich palette about a Pole fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviet army.

Expressionist touch

That animation can add a very distinctive accent to a familiar film form is also evident in Russian animation Before Love, one of the films from HAFF's opening programme. About two men and a woman and their often unhappy encounters. A simultaneously raw and touching reflection on loneliness, misunderstanding and desire that could easily have been cast in ordinary feature film form with real actors. But the superb drawing gives it an expressionistic touch that enhances the character and feel of the narrative.

Installations

Yet another angle is the fruitful connection between animation and visual art. "That crossover is something that HAFF has long championed," says Schermer. "Animation films by independent artists who also make other work. A few years ago, we started the Expanding Animation, which combines film with installation art at various locations around the city."

For example, saw an entire tree into thin slices, take a thousand photos of it, turn them into ten thousand animated images and present that on six screens. This is how Chinese artist Ding Shiwei created Meteor Sonata. A loving analysis of an old tree in an installation about impermanence.

And those who were impressed by Geng Xue's unique stop-motion animation Mr Sea in Chinese porcelain last year will undoubtedly want to see her porcelain artwork presented as an installation now.

Award-winning debut

One last tip: Edmond, Nina Gantz's already much-discussed and Bafta-award-winning debut novel. Standing across a deep lake, a man contemplates the consequences of his unfortunate way of expressing his feelings of love and affection. Using stop-motion technique with felt and knits, a moving fantasy is created as only animation can.