About the Power of Art – Interview with Maria Steinmetz animation filmmaker
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Why did you choose animation to tell stories?
Animation includes all genres of art; dramaturgy, sound and music, all kinds of visual arts, and is therefore rich in opportunities to tell stories.
You use several types of animation techniques in your films. How do you decide what format you will use?
It is very interesting for me to combine different techniques in my work. Such software like After Effects gives a lot of possibilities for this. The idea which format to use comes usually from the story, when I think about which material could support the way I want to tell it, which technique can help me to put an accent on this or that.
You are running animation workshops for kids as well. How can you catch their attention and get them involved in making animations?
Children’s perception is very fast, they very easily understand how a video arises from still photos. They are fascinated to bring objects or figures to life. Also for me, the magic of the process of animating hasn’t faded over the years.
You made your last film, “Alba’s Memory”, with Andrea Martignoni, an Italian sound designer and your partner, you have Russian roots, and you live in Germany. Do you like to mix cultures in films?
Even iff it comes up, then it happens unconsciously. Until now, only in Alba’s Memories was it important for me to reflect on a specific culture, to create the atmosphere of Italy in the 1950s. In other films, I did not pursue such a goal… On the contrary: I tried to work universally and avoid typical motives of any specific cultures. But, of course, the cultures in which we live and we are brought up do influence our worldview, and we cannot completely take distance from them.
As a jury member, what aspects are you considering when you will evaluate the films?
Free art does not follow any rules, and I can only judge subjectively, according to my taste. I pay attention to how well drama interacts with image and sound. But sometimes a film can impress and touch us so strongly with something that cannot be explained with words. This is the power of art.