A Lithuanian Animated Film in the Competition Programme of AniFest

A film created this year by directors Algirdas and Aurika Selenis, The Gipsy and the Dragon, has been selected for the competition programme of one of the most significant international animation film festivals AniFest ( Czech Republic ).

The festival will take place on May 4 – 19 this year in Trebon, South Bohemia .

The international animated film festival AniFest is a member of EEIG film festivals coordinated from Europe . It is held by a Prague company Corona organising cultural programmes, exhibitions and projects together with Slovakian Film Institute and Austrian ASIFA as a partner. AniFest will feature the most recent animated films from all over the world. This international animated film festival is special because next to the competition programme it will also have a film  fair, seminars, exhibitions, schools for youth and children, which will be held by world famous animated film creators and teachers.     

In 2004 Algirdas and Aurika Selenis participated in the competition programme of this festival with their animated film Egle the Queen of Grass-Snakes.

The animated film The Gipsy and the Dragon (6.5 min.) is the second film from the gipsy series (the first one, The Rustler’s Ruse was 3.5 min, 1998 m.), and the first film from the new series was The Gypsy’s Tricks. The film is based on Algirdas Selenis’s humorist tale The Gipsy and the Dragon. This is a funny story about a cunning, generous adventurer Gipsy who has liberated a princess from the dragon’s grip. The smart Gipsy deceives the stupid dragon by skunking him with ‘fingers’. This way he frees the princess and cashes in winning the golden coins she has cried out abundantly. However, he refuses to marry the princes for he does not want to lose the greatest value: freedom.

This animated film with didactic advertisement inserts on the harm caused by smoking and what to do in a fire situation addresses children and their parents.

The style of the drawn and coloured film The Gyspy and the Dragon imitates a tangling thread: a ball of thread rolls in at the beginning of the film, from which the characters and the environment are formed, and at the end, everything rolls into a ball that rolls out of the shot.   

The animated film The Gypsy and the Dragon continues the author’s experimentation started in the film The Rustler’s Ruse.