Bucheon International Animation Festival

For those of you who don’t know, Kyle is an animator! Because of this I decided to search for animation festivals in Korea and found this one. The Bucheon International Animation Festival (BIAF) has been going on several years (since 1999) but has also been morphing some over time. It used to be called the Puchon International Student Animation Festival (PISAF) but they recently changed the name both to incorporate more than just students into the festival, and in an attempt to make it more foreign-friendly (Bucheon is the romanic version of Puchon.) There are competitions with awards, exhibits, and screenings.

2015 Festival

This year (2015) the festival was October 23-27 but we just went one day (the 26th.) It was a little bit confusing for us how the festival worked. Initially, we got off at the Samsan Gymnasium stop on the metro and walked over to the Korea Manhwa Museum area.

We saw a booth outside and asked if we needed tickets for this portion but we didn’t which was nice. We walked in and saw some neat pieces of art/sculptures on our left, and to the right there was a line of booths representing different colleges in Korea.

College Displays and Professional Displays

Some of the colleges had their student short films playing and we stopped to sit and watch a few. Some were interesting, others were annoyingly sexist, just like the animation and film industries and ok, world are as a whole. We also looked through some of the sketch books containing character designs and storyboards at one booth. Not too surprisingly, there are quite a few colleges that have animation programs in Korea. Korea even has high schools which specialize in animation.

We wandered around the downstairs and entered a room which has some 3d sculptures of superheroes and 2d art work of various subjects. We found the art appealing but were not sure if we could take pictures in this area. Outside of the room, there was another area which contained pillars with information on some of the animation producing companies/studios in Korea. Finally, we went upstairs and found another room which was a traditional animation exhibit.

Short Film Exhibition

We watched 3 short films (traditional animation style) on a screen, each of which were quite interesting. The auteurs of the films were women from Korea, China, and Japan (yay!)

I looked it up and these films can be found online so I have provided links for anyone interested. I am going to provide the synopses at the end so you can watch them and interpret them as you would like before checking out what we thought about them or what the artist was trying to communicate:

“Airy Me” by Yoko Kuno

“My Milk Cup Cow” by Yantong Zhu

“Little Sweetheart” from Yewon Kim

Truly Inspiring

I felt inspired by the 2d work and feel a desire to create my own 2d animation. Of course I must preface this by saying that I am a person who is easily inspired (perhaps the reason I changed my major 9 times) and part of the reason I sometime encounter problems accomplishing things is that I am inspired by everything and try to do everything without really focusing on anything completely for very long (“If you try to be good at everything you will never be great at anything,” “Jack of all trades, master of none,” blah blah etc. I will work on it.)

Because of this I am careful to monitor the media I consume (which I think everyone should do anyway and I may write about later.) Back to animating: it’s not really realistic in our current set-up and lifestyle but I hope to make my own traditional 2d animation someday. I think I would prefer it to computer animation because it simply feels more involved, creative, and natural. You have more control over it and really bring everything to life.

Back to the exhibit:

Some of the original art, storyboarding and sketches from these films was on display in this room as well.

After we were done looking at all of it we headed back downstairs and out. We thought there might be another building/area associated with the festival in that area but if there was we did not find it. Next, we headed over to the other area for the film screenings.

There were different ones/types each day. We were more interested in the short films (over quicker if we dislike them and more variety.) It was a pretty long walk (we passed two more metro stations) but it was an opportunity to see some of Bucheon.

On to the Next Building

It was sprinkling which was great too (I love rain and it was our first rain since in Korea while out.)

We passed by a HomePlus and an Emart so we stopped in to check them out and just see what they had since we hadn’t been to those stores yet. We continued on and went into Bucheon City Hall, where we thought we would find more festivities.

Nothing was going on there so we looked at a map and walked a little bit back in the direction we came from to another area.

We went inside the building where the screenings were supposed to be and went to use an elevator where a rude woman tried to close it on me. Koreans are usually very nice and polite and so I don’t think this woman was Korean. Traveling up, we realized that the films looked like they screened in an actual theater and that the rude woman worked for the festival. We found the ticket buying process confusing and did not understand what a ticket really covered.

So we decided we didn’t want to spend money, especially when we didn’t know what we were buying, and ended up leaving and taking the Metro to Insadong which is where we planned to go next anyway. We did not regret the walk over because we enjoyed it and got to see more of Bucheon.

Info on the short films:

Airy Me:

Actual Synopsis:

“After injection of medication, the test subject girl turned into Chimera when her switch of nose got pressed. What kind of sight can be seen when no longer a human being keeps humane needs or wants? Is the creature moved by memories, admiration, love, or hates? Who saw the world of this fragmentary story that swinging camera works tell?”

Our opinion:

Trippyy, but impressive animation. It’s what you might expect to see if you took acid or another similar hallucinogenic drug while sick in the hospital, and so not surprisingly it was premiered by Dazed and Confused Magazine when it was first produced in 2013. It is kind of anime-esque and I usually hate anime (unless Hello Kitty counts?) but it’s growing on me.

The style used to bother me to so much it would make me throw up. In recent years Kyle has made me watch some anime, though, and has also made me watch many other low-budget styles of animation on television which I used to find aesthetically atrocious (for example, South Park) so I have slowly acclimated to it, gotten over it, and learned to appreciate it more. I actually really like this animation and I feel I could have come up with something with a very similar vibe.

My Milk Cup Cow.

Actual Synopsis:

“The father tells his daughter Nunu a lie that there is a cow in her milk cup. She believes it and drinks up milk, but there isn’t any cow. Her father tells her a variety of lies, which Nunu finds increasingly difficult to believe.” Here is an excerpt from an interview with the creator as well: “Yes, it is based on my childhood with my father. We are in a single family at that time, but I remember my father gave me a very happy childhood with full of imagination.

That story about the cow is real, I hated to drink milk when I was a child, so he pushed me and told that lie. I tried to make this more like a story, not just a documentary of my childhood, which maybe not enough for a film. So I created some lies in the script actually, I think they’re more suitable for this animation.” Also: “It is still the 1980s in the SouthEastern part of China. I went there and took some pictures, it really changed in city parts, but countryside it is the same as my childhood.”

Our opinion:

This short film has won many awards. It was pretty straightforward/did not take much to figure out. The only exception was that I could not determine whether or not her father used drugs. We both thought it was good.

Little Sweetheart.

Actual synopsis:

We could not find it. Sorry!                              

Our Opinion:

I don’t know what this film was about. Kyle thinks it was about the parents making the child feel small and not approving of her relationship with the boy and then later approving of it. I could see it.

Keep Up To Date:

This is an annual festival, so it’s going to happen every year. The exact location, dates, and times are subject to change however. So, you should check out their site here to get the most relevant information.

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

 

~B~