The third Independent Animation Festival will kick off at the Seoul Animation Center in downtown Seoul on Thursday, featuring 32 experimental animated films in the main competition section.
The festival has made its mark as a key venue for indie animation filmmakers in the Korean market. Unlike other film festivals which follow set formats, Indie-Anifest is known to allow more freedom to participating animators to elaborate their own themes, and show off their latest works.
The opening film is a 25-minute feature, "The Private Life of Murim Ilgeom" ("Indie Anibox : Selma's Protein Coffee"), directed by Jang Hyeong-yoon. The story involves a martial arts guru, Chin Young-young, who gets reborn as a vending machine. Although this contraption is duly fitted with a steel-coated surface, Chang laments his transformation into something less than noble.
But it turns out that his vending machine reincarnation is not so bad, especially once he encounters the kind-hearted owner, Hye-mee, who carefully feeds water and coffee into the machine on a daily basis.
The peace, however, is short-lived. Chin Young-young comes under sudden attack from a secret assassin, and it is time to figure out a way to stage a real showdown with the killer, even though Chin is a mere machine.
The storyline is, well, outrageous. But its peculiarity is perfectly fitting for an imagination-oriented animation festival, organizers said. Director Chang previously won the Hiroshima Award at the Hiroshima Animation Festival for his similarly imaginative feature, "I Need a Father".
In the competition section, 12 animation features by professional animators, and 20 works by animation students will compete for the award, while the festival's panorama section will show 21 animated features.
The festival also has a section for Wisut Ponnimit, a Thai artist who started off in the comic books business, and then expanded his interest to piano performance, animation and illustration.
The festival, organized by the Korea Independent Animation Filmmakers Association, will run through Sept. 18. For further information, call 3455-8488, or visit Open the link
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