Meet The Curator

We are honored to have Marco De Blois (Cinémathèque Québécoise) curating this year’s special category, 'Variations of Isolation'.

At Anibar, we offer a variety of exciting activities to our festival goers; from panel discussions and presentations, to workshops and concerts. We place a lot of care into making sure that Anibar activities are productive, artistic, exciting and memorable. However, nothing can be more central, have more meaning, and reflect more on who we are than our animation screenings. Each year brings uniqueness, beauty, humanity, complexity and inspiration in the form of animation. This year Marco will be curating our ‘Variations of Isolation’ category. Without a doubt, every movie is worthy in its own way, but we must select a limited number of them to screen in our festival. This is truly a herculean task,a task which this year has been placed into the hands of Marco De Blois, who like Hercules is also curly-haired! 

A student of animation, critic, researcher, curator and programmer; Marco is a truly talented individual. His artistic vision has served as the creative foundation behind the animation archived at the Cinémathèque Québécoise, a renowned Montreal-based film museum and archive. He has also organized retrospectives for various Canadian venues and has played a part in the acquisition of many film collections of Canadian animation pioneers, as well as in the restoration of what could be the earliest independent works of animation in Canada. Marco has been the outside force serving as a saving grace to works that otherwise would have ultimately been doomed to remain unexposed and isolated in darkness. Simply put, Marco understands animation and isolation.

Not too long ago, Kosovo faced a similar fate. While impending doom is no longer a reality, isolation and lack of exposure remain. However, as a consequence of the pandemic, people from around the world have had experiences which have resulted in comparable feelings of despair. While unfortunate, the pandemic has produced a universal understanding of what we need and what it means to be human, our collective potential for empathy has increased immeasurably.

For as long as it has existed, whether intentionally or not, animation has served as a medium through which all people could connect and receive comfort. Now more than ever, we place emphasis on animation being able to communicate these messages and serve these purposes. As we begin with Anibar 2021, we take a deep sigh of relief because we are confident that Marco has composed a lineup that is not necessarily what we want, but what we need.

This program is made possible through the support of the Embassy of Canada to Croatia and Kosovo in Zagreb.