Animation festival «Ô Cách Animation»

   Three days of animation in Long Biên, free of charge: Á Space puts Vietnamese and Southeast Asian animation side by side on one screen, from independent films to artists' practices. If you are curious where Vietnamese animation goes beyond the box office, this is a good place to find out.

   Presented by Ô Cách Ciné, Ô Cách Animation is a small festival built around three screening programmes that survey animation practices in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, plus a special screening revisiting a significant moment in the history of Vietnamese animation.

   In Vietnam, animation has a history closely tied to cinema and keeps taking shape in independent filmmaking and artists' work. Yet these films are usually made and shown in different contexts, for different audiences, and are rarely seen as parts of one shared trajectory. The festival places them next to each other, then widens the view to Southeast Asia, where each context has its own history, production conditions and path of development.

   Back in the summer the organisers ran an open call for «ani-mate: independent animation in Vietnam», a programme of personal films made outside commercial and commissioned production, by students, beginners and self-taught animators, in techniques from hand-drawn and digital to stop-motion, collage and found footage.

   The festival is organised by Á Space in collaboration with SiamANIMA from Bangkok, Thailand, with support from Purin Film Fund. Á Space is a non-profit independent space for experimental art, running in Hanoi since 2018.

   It is for animation lovers and indie film fans, film students, and anyone who wants to see animation as an art form rather than only as something for children.

   Films are shown with Vietnamese and English subtitles. The screening schedule and registration details will be announced by the organisers in the coming days.

   Á Space sits at the far end of Alley 59 Ngô Gia Tự: at the end of the alley turn right and walk about 500 m.

   Make room for late October at Á Space, where the time of the hand becomes the time of the eye.