CORNUCOPIA (2022)


Short animation film, 7’49’’

written and directed by Ani Antonova and Dimiter Ovtcharov
hand-drawn animation | indian ink on paper | 3D Rendering
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Sound: 5.1 Multichannel Surround Sound
Producers: Kopfkino Verein für alte und neue Medien (AT), Omega Films (BG)
With the financial support of:
Federal Ministry Republic of Austria for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport,
ORF Film/Fernsehabkommen,
City of Vienna - Cultural Department MA7, Bulgarian National Film Center

© Ani Antonova & Dimiter Ovtcharov 2022
www.kopfkino.xyz

SYNOPSIS
A man wanders in constant search and pursuit, driven by the longing for a magical cornucopia. His vicissitudes are brought to life on an ancient vase’s surface, continually rotating on a pottery wheel.

Come here! Try out the ideal of beauty!

Everyone knows that Venus de Milo's sculpture is kept in the Louvre. The Venus is made out of Parian marble and is 203 centimetres high. If the sculpture was a real woman, her measurements would be 89-69-93 cm. For centuries this body measurements have been vastly accepted as a standard for female beauty. Nowadays, beauty is increasingly robbed by mass culture and advertising.

Welcome, wash your hands!

In our exhibition, Venus de Milo is 15cm tall. Made of home-made soap. It is boiled in a small village, in a kettle and contains lard, fat, water and caustic soda. Does this Venus de Milo continue to be a standard of beauty? Art is accessible to everyone, and the Soap Venus is just the next episode of the soap opera that our lives have transformed to.

Exhibition concept

Three Venus, made out of soap, are placed in a site that resembles a rural fountain with three spouts. They are pouring different amounts of water on the three sculptures. From the constant water flow, the three sculptures are slowly deforming and changing their shapes. The audience is also invited to help with the transformation of the sculptures. The visitors can touch them, wash their hands with them. The installation can be exhibited anywhere and in any conditions. The water supply system is closed and autonomous. It is powered by an insulated battery that supplies power to an automated submersible pump.

I had the pleasure to work with the animator Ani Antonova and create the handdrawn documentary animation "The Outlander".
The film is about the 16th Century elephant Süleyman, who makes a long journey from Ceylon to Portugal, then walks the whole way from Lisbon to Vienna trough the Alps for five months. Being a living royal gift is not an easy job, where even the death is not a peaceful end.

"The Outlander" is based on the historical research of Dr. Annemarie Jordan Gschwend and is a cooperation between "Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias" (Lisbon, Portugal) and the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences (Sankt Pölten, Austria).

Credits
screenwriter & director: Ani Antonova
animation: Ani Antonova, Dimiter Ovtcharov
compositing: Dimiter Ovtcharov
sound design: Valeria Popova
animation supervisor: Pedro Serrazina
producer: Omega Films

Technical specifications
Film Type: Animation, Documentary, Short
Runtime: 5 minutes 16 seconds
Completion Date: October 7, 2018
Film Language: English
Shooting Format: Hand-drawn animation, Digital
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Film Color: Black & White

The Greek hero Orpheus descends into the underworld with his voice and the music of his lyre to persuade the god Hades to release his wife Eurydice. Orpheus saves his loved one but under the condition that he doesn’t turn around on his journey back – which he fails to do. Eurydice vanishes, this time forever. This myth reveals the eternal human desire to look into the underworld in order to find out what is hidden in this “other world”. At the same time, it evidences the unrealisability of this desire. Access into another world inevitably leads to its destruction. Breathless / Außer Atem is an expression of this eternal desire and its predetermined result in the form of an interactive video installation.

The project "Breathless" refers to the world famous film directed by Jean Luc Godard in 1960. The film is both, grumpy and elegant, scandalous and gentle. It contains typical desires of young directors like Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jean Luc Godard and is both, innovative and unique. The film is an icon for the French New Wave, which has changed the cinema forever. Every author desires to be accompanied by the emotions that he feeds of during the creation of his works. These emotions can be identified with the shadows of the hereafter.The project "Breathless" is the try to resurrect these shadows from the past.

The visitor can discover the installation in two levels: From the outside the construction resembles a sarcophagus in human height. It is made from natural materials, but its surface is covered with virtually drawn stones. Every visitor gets a candle in his / her hand that allows him / her to enter the second level of the work. If you move the candle over the screen, a gap between the stones drawing opens and one has the possibility to dive into a kind of "underworld". The visitor is able to discover different pictures, because they are controlling a virtual light in the "other world". Every picture represents a memory and draws itself simultaneously, but if the light source is removed, the animation runs backwards and the drawing disappears again into nothingness.

SOMAPHONY
an audiovisual composition

concept by Antony Rayzhekov
performed by Katharina Köller
3D design and assembly by Dimiter Ovtcharov & Nikola Malinov

SOMAPHONY is a project commissioned by Intel in 2016, resulted in an audiovisual composition that can be played as an instrument and is embodied in a physical object representing the interface to the composition itself. The interface is named - SOMAPHONE - a device integrating generative music and visualization technology in one combined audio-visual instrument. It uses biofeedback, such as heart-rate, Galvanic Skin Response, movement and gestures as a natural and expressive interaction between the composition and the performer.

Click here for more info...

This is the documentation of the stage-design i did for the theater play "Bonjour Tristesse" (French: "Hello Sadness") originally a novel written by Françoise Sagan. The piece was played between 20.4. - 13.5.2017 in Theater Spielraum Vienna.

The Novel was published in 1954, when the author was only 18 and it became an overnight sensation. It is a story told by Cécile, a 17-year-old girl holidaying on the Côte d'Azur with her widowed father, a man devoted to a life of sensual pleasure, who has brought along his young girlfriend. The daughter is exploring her own first sentimental adventure, a swiftly consummated romance with a handsome law student, when the unexpected arrival of an older woman, a friend of her late mother, disrupts the self-indulgent haze of high summer. First the newcomer takes charge, ordering Cécile to terminate her romance in order to stay indoors and do her homework. Then she and the father fall in love. To prevent their marriage the daughter devises an ill-fated plot in which the pretence of an affair between her boyfriend and the father's dumped girlfriend is intended to provoke jealousy and restore the status quo ante. A fatal accident brings the tainted summer idyll to an end and propels the protagonists into the next phase of their lives.

Actors : Johanna Hainz, Christian Kohlhofer, Nicole Metzger, Sandra Riedl and Reinhardt Winter
Directed by: Katharina Köller
Stage design: Dimiter Ovtcharov
Costumes: Anna-Miriam Jussel
Light: Tom Barcal

Some publications about the play:
Kurier (german)

European Cultural News (german)

Schick Magazine (german)

Using the figure of Ivan Stoaynovich (Agelleto) the film is making an analysis of the life in the first decade of New Bulgaria. Agelleto is a revolutionist, social and state activist, member of BTCRK, many years director of Bulgarian Post, Telegraphs and Telephones. In his Ideological development he travels quite a path: from nihilist to courtier. His fate is destined to be part of the rise and collapse of Bulgarian statehood. On 14th of February 1947 Ivan Stoianovich dies. Two days before his death, he shares these words with his relatives: "In cocktail of spite, envy and mainly ignorance you will spend your lives. So - going away from this world - I pity you". The movie consists of a mixture of animations and documentary reenactment and had its world premiere at the "History Film Fest" held in Rijeka, Croatia. The film is black and white, and has a runtime of 1 hr. 15 min. visual content.

IMDB LINK...

Everybody recognizes Paganini as a virtuoso in his work. Nobody knows, however, that ants are inhabiting a guitar, performing his music. It is hard for an ant to share a world with Paganini. Slow-motion camera. Grand Sonata in A Major!

A young man traveling on a train falls asleep for a moment. In his mind this moment is infinite and filled with fantastic visions. Will the world still be the same when he opens his eyes?

Art is often a form of violence to the natural course of life. Authors always believe they can control their works. But what happens when art becomes more authoritative than its creator?

When I was a student, my mother worked as an editor in a newspaper. Every day she brought a pile of newspapers home. At dinner, my whole family read them and they never looked aside. My Dog “Fräulein” didn’t care what was happening neither in the world, nor in our country. She was lying gently under the table, and she looked wiser than people. As the newspapers were piling up, we were transforming into a family of newspapers. The only thing left for me was to transform them into sculptures.

The work is presented within the space so both one and the other side can be seen. Bosch, Giotto, Dante and Brecht all dealt with the seven deadly sins and virtues. Like all great artists, they, neither condemned the sinners, nor praised the saints. All they presented was “reality”. The Project “Sins and Virtues” aims to communicate the feelings of postmodern individuals at the fragile barrier between sin and virtue. The seven deadly sins and seven virtues are presented in Latin in a specially developed font on the two sides of the windows. The letters` structuring element is the tape of the audio cassette. Just as the tape has two sides – A and B – virtue can easily be converted into sin … or the other way around.

This is a presentational clip for the organization MEN VIA Austria. The team of MEN VIA put their efforts to help and support men who are affected by human trafficking. The animation clip was created as part of their campaign to raise awareness about this problem.

Concept | Animation | Rendering
Dimiter Ovtcharov & Ani Antonova

Sound design
Valeria Popova

Voice-Over
Patrick Messe

Client
MEN VIA Austria

Together with the interdisciplinary studio TEAM, we developed the Key Visuals for the Music Festival - Frequency 2020. The Mission was to shape a futuristic add-on featuring the existing icons and mascottes for the Festival's 20th Anniversary. We established a Parallel Universe ruled by Intergalactic cats, flying musical instruments and six-pack beercan drones. The Visuals will be used as Video content for the Live Performances at the Festival, for Social-Media Channels & Print.

My business card - 2013.

Nr.1 - "An instinctive feeling of innocence" / roman by Dana Grigorcea
publisher - Black Flamingo Publishing 2017 - ISBN 9786197362091 / dimensions - 130 / 210 / 25 mm

Nr.2 - "All Russians Love Birch Trees" / novel by Olga Gryaznova
publisher - Black Flamingo Publishing 2016 - ISBN 9789542915904 / dimensions - 130 / 210 / 25 mm

Nr.3 - "Summer lies" / short stories by Bernhard Schlink
publisher - Colibri 2017 - ISBN 9786191509942 / dimensions - 131 / 222 / 17 mm

Nr.4 - "Journey into the past and other novels" / by Stefan Zweig
publisher - Colibri 2017 - ISBN 9786191508372 / dimensions - 130 / 210 / 19 mm

Nr.5 - This is a work for the book of my brother Todor Ovtcharov "Die Leiden des jungen Todor" ("The sorrows of young Todor"). The book is a collection of his columns, published in the Austrian radio station “FM4” and in the Viennese monthly lifestyle magazine "Biber". The short stories in the book tell the story of a Bulgarian "low-life expert" living in Vienna. (Among all the funny stories you can find some sad ones too.) I have designed the cover for the book, where you can see my brother in his favourite position.
publisher - Redelsteiner Dahimène Edition 2013 - ISBN 9783950335941 / dimensions - 124 / 195 / 17 mm

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"Between Obelia 2 and Hope", 360° Panorama, Print/Photoetching, 52x10, 250gr, 2015`

“The Dentist”

They use high technology, but their tools look like medieval instruments of torture. People are afraid of them. Dentists. The mere mention of the word creates an irrational fear. Dentists are masters of pain. But ants are stronger than they are. One day every dentist will be food for ants and his technology will disappear with him. Nothing is for ever – not survival, nor progress – only fear.

2013`, aquarell, indian ink, computer manipulated

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Ever since the first days of human world, man parallels his society with that of ants. Man, the Crown of Creation often looks down to his feet and notices these tiny fellow creatures created as if to remind him of how small and busy the human being itself may seem, watched from the heights of the Creator. From Homer to Bernard Werber poets and writers try to understand the difference and the similarity between the existence of men and ants.

EURAMAX FACADE CONTEST DESIGN PROPOSAL

CONTEST LINK<

Nikola Malinov (Architect) and me took part in the Euramax Competition for a new design of the facade of the factory using their coating printing method.
Our design proposal suggests a surreal inside look into the Euramax factory. The image we have created invents a fantasy space inside the building, where a magical coating machine tells the story of the invention of the printing process.
Although provoking the geometry of the existing building, the image is intended to perform as a statement rather than an optical illusion. We believe that recreating the manufacturing process through a surreal, magical painting mounted on the front façade of the building, would represent the company’s integrity, creativity and innovation. Narrating the story of the invention of the printing process through a magical coating machine symbolizes company’s social role and ambitions. Beginning its story from the earliest acts of printing in human history and going through the different cultural stages, the narrative band ends into the coating machine that is still printing...