The newly established network of animated film festivals ANIMAMUS was launched by Flipbook Film Festival European Festival for Short Animated Films (Skopje, Macedonia), Balkanima European Animated Film Festival (Belgrade, Serbia), Supertoon International Animation Festival (Šibenik, Croatia), StopTrik International Film Festival (Maribor, Slovenia / Łódź, Poland), and Animakom Fest (Bilbao, Spain). The announcement of the network was held on November 11th - 13th, 2022 during the Bucharest Animation Sessions.
The involved festivals are well-established and appreciated members of the international art-house animation scene (Balkanima, the oldest festival in the network, has successfully conducted 19 editions, while the youngest one is Flipbook of 3 editions experience) who share common vision of what it means to organize a festival and what are the social, cultural, and society-building functions of such events. The partners are convinced that the high quality, artistic animated films should be celebrated at the events (1) that are fully accessible to the audience, (2) which radically reduce the distances between the audience, filmmakers, and industry representatives, (3) which stimulate critical reception of film art and other cultural-building experiences, (4) which raise awareness regarding social, political, historical, ecological issues, and eventually (5) which understand and foster values of intercultural exchanges, sharing of good practices, and implement support mechanisms addressed to the filmmakers and other members of the international animation community, with a special focus on the work of women filmmakers.
Remaining different and autonomous when it comes to programming policies and practices, the members of the network have set on path to develop and implement three modes of activities in support of promotion and outreach-increase of short art-house animated films:
In Latin, "animamus" means "we animate." Actions taken by our network will stimulate, empower, give new opportunities and open-up for new ideas. Our aim is to create spaces and moments of interconnections between audiences and filmmakers and effortlessly build recognition and understanding of the animated film medium.