ART FEST filmmakers offered four superheroes to Astana

Participants of the youth contest ART FEST held during the 3rd ASTANA Action Film Festival made four superheroes of Astana, Tengrinews.kz reports. “There were four categories. We were not intending to create one hero in four categories. We wanted to come up with a collective character from different genres. In the end, we have Abulkhair in the movies category, Wolf in the costumes category, an Egg born at Baiterek in Astana that becomes a superhero in the comics category and a small and remarkable hero in animation,” media director of the film festival Lyazzat Kokkozova commented the decision of the jury who had to make a difficult choice from among hundreds of candidates in the four categories: One Day Video, Comics Contest, Costumes Contest and Animation Contest. The final part of ART FEST started in the morning and the participants spent a whole day waiting for results from Iren Vanidovskaya, Bakhyt Syzdykova, Kuralai Nurkadilova and other juries. According to the participants, the victory was not that important for them after the work they had done and after they had met so many interesting people: “The work was indeed very difficult, as we had tight deadlines, but we managed to do everything in time. Communication is the thing we will remember! As this is a huge experience. We had participants from Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Russia and Kazakhstan. We were all united. It doesn’t matter who wins, I will be happy the winner whoever it is,” the costumes contest’s participant from Astana and young designer Anastassiya Romanova said. According to the main guru and the inspirer of the film festival Timur Bekmambetov (film director of Kazakh origin), the event was successful and all the participants deserved special attention: “I have reviewed all the works made by our wonderful participants and I think that the biggest achievement of our festival is that we have managed to gather the young forces of Asian and Kazakhstan film industry and the experienced directors who have come to help them and make them interested in creating these works. Hundreds of young filmmakers spent these days together. I hope they will make friends and their countries will be friends, so that we can make movies together here in Kazakhstan, Korea, China or Japan, but what is important is that we do it together. I want to believe that this community that has been created here will remain a community,” the filmmaker said at the official closing of the festival. An international quartet of Vladimir Sim and Roman Sukhossyr from Kazakhstan and Hao Li and Chin Tintin from China with their Abulkhair movie won in One Day Video category. Kazakhstan-Chinese duo of Dina Bussikova and Evan Kim who made the Wolf-Boy character in two days won the Costumes Contest. Chinese animators Jao Cheng and Liu Jang won in the Animation Contest with the original cartoon called Heroes. The winners in comics category Dzhu Ui Chen and Lu Ming from China and Yekaterina Baskakova from Kazakhstan made a comics called Astana Superhero. The youngest but a very talented participant of ART FEST, 11-y.o. Dana Zheksembayeva, received a special award from the festival’s organizers. Her comic about Astana’s superhero was not shown to public but it was evaluated by jury. Dana’s work has been highly evaluated by experts who already see a big potential in her. After the official closing ceremony, the festival’s guests were shown The Amazing Spider-Man movie. By Shynar Ospanova