A scene from the animated cartoon Kamene. (source: Courtesy of FoolMoon Film)
A SLOVAK animated cartoon, Kamene (Stones) by director Katarína Kerekesová, was the winner at the Fano International Film Festival in Italy, which has focused on short and medium-length audiovisual works since 1989.
Kerekesová’s musical cartoon is a melodramatic story of a woman who seeks to meet a husband at a quarry where ten men work, all of whom have begun resembling the stones they quarry. The woman disrupts their all-male atmosphere and rhythm of work as she offers her emotion and humanity as well as her desire to bear a child. However, the woman soon comes to realise that this is not the proper place for her new life. Marek Piaček composed the music based on the libretto of Mila Haugová’s poems translated into English.
Kerekesová, 37, is an illustrator and produces animated cartoons as well. Her medium-length movie, The Origin of the World, has been shown at several festivals and her recently-released Mimi a Líza animated series was chosen in September for the prestigious Cartoon Forum.
Kamene has been screened at short-movie festivals in France and Mexico and in November it will be shown at the Brest European Short Film Festival, at the Cinessonne 2011 festival in France, at the Vox Feminae film festival in Croatia and at the Animated Dreams film festival in Estonia.
