"Multimatograf" in Vologda

Vologda hosted the Fifth festival of video creativity, where animators from all over the country got to show off their skills. The bulk of the works fell into the "Cartoon" category, where technically simple animations alternated with beautiful three-dimensional imagery and cinematic camera work.

The most madcap works were gathered into a little folder with the fitting title "Wild Stuff". A chance visitor to the festival could easily have recognized a "wild" video by the characteristic laughter from the front rows of the jury. The jury lineup, meanwhile, was "star-studded": the curator of the "Masyanya" project Pavel Muntyan, the flash developer Ivan Dembitsky, the producer of the RuTube portal Askar Tuganbaev, the founder of the Chaos Constructions computer festival in St. Petersburg Vsevolod Potapov, and Alexey Zorin, a specialist in multimedia technologies.

The most boring works fell into the "Clip" category, while the brightest and most thought-out turned out to be the cartoon "Upgrade 8 1/2", sent in by Sergey Aniskov from New York (the only work from abroad). "Upgrade" tells of the inner world of the MacOS operating system and its attempt to avoid yet another update.

Also at "Multimatograf" there was an exhibition of retro computers. Visitors could play to their heart's content the beloved Pacman on machines from the Soviet and Western past. Many computers were on display, and they all belong to a single Vologda collector of beautiful things.

On the whole, the atmosphere of the event was friendly; people got acquainted, chatted, exchanged experience. This was helped along by lectures on the Adobe Flash/Photoshop/After Effects CS4 software products and on more general topics connected in one way or another with animation and film production.

At the close of the festival, a festive concert and an afterparty at the club "Hardy-Gardy" awaited the guests.