The Festival of Lights is back! We all have seen these visuals before: Light installations with crazy patterns, shapes and graphics, or colorful 3D videos moving on Berlin monuments, sights, streets and squares, transforming places we all know too well into colorful wonderlands. For 12 years now, the Festival of Lights turns Berlin and other places around the world into visual spectacles. It’s crazy what nothing but light can do to our perception of stones and walls we pass by weekly. Despite the partial silliness of gigantic buildings like the Berliner Dom shimmering in shocking pink, plus giant rotating panda spaceman, it’s just fun to gaze at every year. The animation on the Berliner Dom and other places even have sound to them, giving you that full audio-visual experience. In case you missed your chance to see all of these glowing larger-than-life artworks on sights like the TV tower, the Humboldt University or all of Bebel Platz last year, the Festival of Light runs until Sunday, starting at 19h every day until midnight.
Read on…
by Andy | Art, Events
illustration: Rob Flowers
Berliner creatives, rejoice! Once a year, our incredible city becomes home to one of the coolest designer and artist gatherings, Pictoplasma Berlin, which showcases the latest trends in character design, bringing together artists, video game and animation designers, virtual and augmented reality creators, but also illustrators, graphic designers, even kids’ books and ceramic designers, inviting them to explore how far they can push their genre boundaries, and our grasp of what’s real.
As its central event, Pictoplasma holds a conference where creators and producers have the chance to exchange ideas on new strategies on characters and trends. And while they do their thing, the wider festival invites us to enjoy multiple screenings of selected short films, bringing us the latest anime eye candy, combined with the opportunity to learn a thing or two, as the makers hold Q&As right after the screenings. Along with that, exhibitions run in galleries all around Berlin: there, one gets the unique chance to be part of quite rare exhibition tours by artists themselves, where they present originals and new productions. Cool huh? Parties and further art happenings is also part of the deal- enabling some fun interaction with the festival’s audience and production members.
Read on…
by Stella | Art, Design, Events, Galleries
GIFs: Yoyo the Ricecorpse
Sometimes I think that I have the attention span of a GIF. The upside of this daily struggle of working with the internet is that anything that fits into a short loop can catch my attention really good. No wonder I am better at looking at GIFs than reading, let alone writing any text. Unfortunately, looking at GIFs doesn’t pay the bills (even though I cannot be sure that it might become a sustainable profession in the future, as the future is unknown and full of mysteries).
Speaking of looking at GIFs, I recently stumbled upon a really interesting GIF series that I wanted to share with you. The London-based artist running by the unorthodox name Yoyo the Ricecorpse visited Berlin a while ago. When she was here, not only did she take some pictures, but also created unique illustrations of all kinds of animated creatures. Inspired by Japanese anime and the classic Game Boy game Pokemon, her funny-moving animals do all sorts of crazy things all over Berlin. Maybe it is not everyone’s cup of tea to see our so-called rough and dirty city overwhelmed by all this pink Japanese cuteness, but for a change I quite like it.
If you like what Yoyo does, you should also check out the animations she did in the streets of Paris and Tokyo. More funny and cute GIFs after the jump.
Read on…
by Claudio | Art
Last night was the final screening of the Oscar-nominated Short Films at Babylon Mitte presented by shorts.tv and our friends from Mobile Kino. Because of the 3rd anniversary party of Mit Vergnügen I had to choose between the animations and the live action shorts. I decided for the later and did not regret it. The five live action films were all amazing and I have to admit that I sobbed through half of the program as a lot of them were utterly heartbreaking. My favorite ones were the Oscar winner Curfew and Henry. Curfew is about a guy who sort of messed up his life and wants to commit suicide but gets interrupted by a call from his estranged sister enquiring him as a last minute baby sitter for her daughter. The film is heartbreaking and encouraging at the same time and has an amazing musical scene in it. Henry is a film about an old man, a pianist, looking for his wife who is supposedly in danger. But more and more he realizes that reality and his perception of the world around him don’t match.
As soon as those two gems get released online I will feature them in our Short Sunday section for you to see them. For now I have one of the animated short films for you that I missed in the screening: Adam and Dog. It’s an endearing story of a dog and his ancounter with Adam in paradise. Enjoy the lovely film directed by Minkyu Lee after the jump.
Read on…
by Frank | Movies, Videos
Today something sweet and light-hearted in our short film section: PIOK – an animated movie by Clément Dartigues & Théo Dusapin about a half-plucked chicken encountering a ship-wrecked alien. Quite funny. Enjoy after the jump.
Read on…
by Frank | Movies, Videos
This absolutely charming and unique water-colored animated short film by Sabrina Cotugno will definately sweeten your Sunday. Enjoy Kagemono – The Shadow Folk after the jump.
Read on…
by Frank | Movies, Videos
