The Animattikon Project is an animated film festival that takes place in the town of Pafos, Cyprus, annually, organized by the Kimonos Art Center.

 

It is an event that embraces a wide range of activities revolving around the subject of animated film: animation workshops open to the wide public, conferences and lectures on the history and theory of animation, presentations of works in progress, round tables, cine-concerts. 

 

All these activities are not merely side events of the festival's screenings but are proposed as central elements of the festival, in the same level as the screenings. The actual meaning of the word "festival" is the celebration. Celebration presupposes participation, not simply attendance. To celebrate something means to be together in something and to enjoy doing it. This is the purpose of the Animattikon Project: to make the notions of the creation of animated films accessible to everybody. Through the workshops, conferences and lectures, the public is introduced to the wide range of animated techniques, to the multiple levels of forms the animation film can take and to the plethora of situations it can be applied to.

 

This way, the screenings of films are offered to a much more instructed and better informed public and are proposed as something to read into. People will have the opportunity to understand the implications of the animated films they are watching in a deeper level. The knowledge they can access through the festivals activities will allow them to appreciate and better understand the work that goes behind what they are watching.

 

Another of the main aspects of the Animattikon Project is its location. Even though the project takes place in three other places in the town of Paphos (the café Ananas 8bit, the cultural center Technopolis20 and the Kimonos Art Center) the center of its activities is the historical cinema theater Attikon (after which the Project is named).

 

The Attikon is one of the first cinemas of the town of Paphos. It opened in 1938 by Nicolas Taliotis (also known as Attikos, a name people gave him after his cinema). It was located in an old warehouse owned by the Turkish Cypriot Moustapha Ahmed-Rasheed, a well known benefactor of Paphos at a time where the two communities coexisted without troubles.

 

The cinema changed owners and name around the end of the eighties. It was renamed Othello (after the Shakespearian character of the story taking place in Cyprus, a name quite popular in the island). Around the begining of the 2000s it closed and remained abandoned for several years, up until Paphos was awarded the title of the European Capital of Culture for the year 2017. The cinema was then renovated and transformed into a cultural space, where screenings, theaters, concerts and exhibitions can be hosted.

 

The great thing about the Attikon Cinema is that it is one of the few (if not the only) space in Paphos that survives as such, without losing its function in the passing of years. It has always been a cinema, a meeting place for people of all ages, all along the twentieth century. The generational gap separating the memories people of different generations have of the town of Paphos (a town that changed rapidly and without much thought) does not exist when it comes to Attikon. People may remember it as Attikon or as Othellos, the building's arrangement may have been different from time to time, but it is for everyone a place rich in warm memories, a place of enjoyment. It is, in other words, a common place.

 

The Animattikon Project started as an event hosted by the European Capital of Culture PAFOS2017. It took place from October 28 to November 9 2017. It was the occasion for concerts, conferences, lectures, workshops and screenings revolving around animated film. Now, we are attempting at making an annual event out of it.