DOK Leipzig 2026
Animation Events
Animation Perspectives is an artistic blind date, a film programme, a workshop tour and a host of surprises, all rolled into one. Edition #8 is a meeting between Anton Cla and Franz Impler – with their animated short films, performance-style animations, music videos and experimental micro-reels.
The two former DOK Leipzig competition participants from Ghent and Leipzig set most of their short philosophical incidents in places that are human-made but scarcely feature any human being. Strange characters and sounds oscillating between elusive noise and precisely placed musical motif have crept into a new housing estate, an empty playground or a precisely trimmed hedge. Ambiguity pervades all. Refreshing, striking design, bright colours and quirky figures often carry a dark, disturbing undercurrent. A lull signals that something disturbing is already going on. Lived independence turns out to be unpleasant isolation.
Where Franz Impler and Anton Cla obviously see eye to eye is in their enthusiasm for video games as the starting point for their own artistic explorations. Some of it may be due to influences from their youth. Above all, though, it is their very contemporary, remarkably refreshing and strongly artistic perspective on this medium that makes their works so internationally acclaimed. Each in his own way, they explore the charming limitations of early electronic animated games. Glitches, image noise and polygons step in as independent players. Game rules and their violation lead to absurd scenes.
It is particularly impressive how profoundly Impler and Cla toy with the tremendous narrative potential of space. They scramble spatial coordinates in a remarkably confident manner and make their characters feel the effect, or they define spaces in a minimalist, stage-like way; indeed, space itself sometimes becomes the sole protagonist. Wherever the story takes us, Anton Cla and Franz Impler will open up unexpected perspectives.
– André Eckardt
From the earliest beginnings of film and cinema history, right through to the start of the Hollywood era, animation and animated effects served as the primary vehicles for conceptualizing outer space, functioning as a bridge between astronomical science and pure fantasy. Directors utilised stop-motion, hand-drawn sequences, and miniature models to explore the as yet unseen outer reaches of our galaxy in an era before humankind had even begun to make its first rudimentary steps towards space travel.
From Georges Méliès’ use of stop-frame techniques in his early sci-fi film “A Trip to the Moon” (1902), through to Max Fleischer’s educational space-themed animated short “Eclipse of the Sun” (1918) and legendary abstract animation filmmaker Oskar Fischinger’s special effects work on Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi classic “Woman in the Moon” (1929), animation has played a special role in visualizing cosmic environments in the modern popular imagination.
To celebrate this history, this year’s Animation Night invites you to leave behind Earthly reality and venture with us out on a cosmic journey to far away places beyond the outer rim of everyday cinematic experience. Through a programme of short films from an interstellar selection of experimental directors and animators, we will voyage together into deep space, explore alien landscapes and enter into parallel universes.
Following the film programme, sound and visual artists Kay Kalytta (Germany) and Alberto Couceiro (Argentina) present their latest work, “Proyecciones Cósmicas.” The live performance combines stop-motion animation, 16mm projectors, film loops, modular live synthesis, and a small orchestra of tape cassettes and radios. The work opens a portal to unknown and imaginary worlds through an expansive and multi-layered cinematic experience, saturated in analogue sci-fi aesthetics.
– Ben Sassen and Franka Sachse a.k.a. Powerkunst
