The tenth edition of Animaphix opens Tuesday, July 22, at 9 p.m. at Villa Cattolica in Bagheria (Pa), with “Sonámbulo,” a cine-concert by Giovanni Sollima, one of the greatest virtuosos of the cello and an internationally renowned composer-who will retrace the pictorial works of Bulgarian director and artist of Canadian adoption Theodore Ushev, through sounds ranging from baroque to rock, to metal, for a performance of extraordinary energy.
Admission is free while seats last.
At the same time, director Theodore Ushev will be treated to a retrospective that includes almost all of the films he has made over a quarter of a century, and will be presented with the Guttuso Prize 2024 for the large number of films produced with the technique of painting in motion.
The cine-concert “Sonámbulo”
The cine-concert “Sonámbulo,” whose title is named after Ushev’s short film of the same name, represents a vast sound canvas where the director’s works are interwoven with new compositions and adapted to the nuances of sound: it is the meeting of two versatile artists, one a “reckless virtuoso,” who embraces the history of music to the sounds of the contemporary, the other a “punk filmmaker,” with poetics made up of figurative art, music and cinema, whose metalanguage speaks directly to the art itself and to the viewer.
Theodore Ushev
The director’s continuous search for expressive forms and curiosity about everything and everywhere make him one of the preeminent figures in the animation cinema of the first quarter century of the third millennium.
The retrospective presented during the tenth edition of Animaphix includes almost all of the films he made in a quarter-century, most notably Tower Bawher (2005), a cavalcade of images and a wild ride through Russian constructivism to the music of Georgy Sviridov, from which some characteristics of his art can already be discerned, particularly his privileged relationship with music, as in the following Drux Flux (2008), a partly figurative and partly abstract short film – to music by Alexandre Mossolov and inspired by the book “One-Dimensional Man” by philosopher Herbert Marcuse -, in which the director deconstructs industrial scenes and their terrifying geometry to show the inhumanity of progress, and Gloria Victoria (2012), which takes its cue from the Leningrad Symphony (no. 7) by Dimitri Shostakovich, where a kind of conflicting admiration with constructivist aesthetics continues and deepens, resulting in a true trilogy on the relations between art and power.
Music literally takes over in Sonámbulo (2015), an independent short film inspired by Federico García Lorca’s poem “Romance Sonambulo,” which depicts a surrealist journey of shapes and colors to a frenetic tune by Bulgarian musician Kottarashky, who a few years earlier had signed the music piece on which Demons (2012) is based, a succession of Eastern European folk art scenes flowing on a vinyl record.
Even more structured and complex appear the pseudo-documentary Les journaux de Lipsett (Lipsett Diaries, 2012) made from an alleged discovery of the diaries of the ill-fated Canadian artist Arthur Lipsett, whose artistic stature has always been underestimated partly because of his whirling descent into depression and madness, until his suicide in 1986, and the more recent Physique de la Tristesse (The Physics of Sorrow, 2019), a monumental film in animated painting, perhaps Ushev’s highest artistic point to date, based on the novel by Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov, who reconstructs his life story as a labyrinth, wandering through the past to find the melancholy child at the center of it all.
To further explore the work of the Bulgarian-Canadian filmmaker, Borislav Kolev’s Unseen Connections (2022), a documentary about Theodore Ushev that discusses the biographical, historical, cultural and subcultural connections that shaped him as a person and artist, will be screened.
Also presented will be the VR version of Vaysha l’Aveugle (Blind Vaysha, 2016), based on a text by Georgi Gospodinov that tells the story of a girl who sees the past with her left eye and the future with her right eye, and is therefore unable to live in the present. Viewing the film will be possible only through viewers in the Festival’s VR Zone, with which the individual viewer will have to choose whether to see the past or the future, resulting in different endings of the film.

Animaphix – Nuovi Linguaggi Contemporanei Film Festival is made possible thanks to the contribution and patronage of the Ministry of Culture – General Directorate for Cinema and Audiovisual; the Sicilia Film Commission – which operates within the Department of Tourism, Sports and Entertainment of the Sicilian Region; and the Municipality of Bagheria. With the support of the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection of Sicily (Arpa Sicilia), the Arts and Humanities Council of the Quebéc Ministry of Culture and Communications, the Quebéc Delegation in Rome, the Instituto Cervantes in Palermo, the Embassy of the Czech Republic, the Czech Center in Rome, and the Polish Institute in Rome.

“The Sicily Film Commission returns to confirm its support for the Animaphix festival, which proves for the tenth year to be one of the most innovative realities in the panorama of experimental animation cinema and New Contemporary Languages, placing the relationship between cinema and visual arts at the center of its research, with a keen eye on the latest frontiers of virtual reality applied to audiovisuals, standing out for its originality and internationalization.”
Nicola Tarantino (Director in charge Sicily Film Commission – Regional Department of Tourism Sport Entertainment Sicilian Region).
“The City of Bagheria has been committed, for some time now, to take every opportunity to promote the City, its territory, its culture, its traditions, its scenic and natural beauty and also its culinary and eno-gastronomic delights – says the mayor of Bagheria, Filippo Maria Tripoli – with this spirit and appreciating the goodness of the program, every year, now for ten years, we choose to be at the side of Animaphix, its director and creator Rosalba Colla, because this international festival offers us not only a cinematic offer of shorts with a wide European scope but also because it opens a window precisely on the many who come to the City of villas and taste to follow this now ten-year festival.”
Filippo Maria Tripoli (Mayor Bagheria).
“The tenth anniversary of Animaphix is an important event because it represents ten years of project, ten years of work, ten years of commitment to the promotion of culture and ten years of promoting the image of our city, Bagheria,” says Councilor Daniele Vella, “and of our community on the national territory and even beyond. That is why the municipal administration strongly wanted to confirm, again this year, to stand by Animaphix and its organizers for a festival that can live up to these expectations.”
Daniele Vella (Councillor for Culture – City of Bagheria).
“Animaphix celebrates its tenth edition: ten years of culture, experimentation and innovation. A festival open to the world, looking at the future not only of cinema, but of a territory. We have never lost focus on our context, rich in contradictions, but also an expression of great intelligence and foresight. When I founded this small festival I imagined its first ten years, with its path and mutations. Today, as I prepare to celebrate them, with a hint of pride, together with the people who have gone through it and strongly believed in it, I imagine the next ten.”
Rosalba Colla (Co-Artistic Director Animaphix – New Contemporary Languages Film Festival).

ANIMAPHIX –  New Contemporary Languages Film Festival
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