About the General Program

Solar - Cinematic Art Gallery hosts another exhibition, ANIMAR, already in its 15th edition. This exhibition will be the center of a series of diversified activities that, in addition to exploring the relationship between cinema and the visual arts, promote playful learning in these fields of artistic creativity and at the same time facilitate the decoding of content, through documentation and demonstration of the processes that lead to the completion of the works, from the initial idea to the most varied stages of production.
The activities to be developed are aimed at the widest range of audiences, with an emphasis on the training of children and young people of school age, from the first cycle of basic education to university, not forgetting the little ones and the context of their families.
ANIMAR 15's programming, which also includes cinema sessions dedicated to age groups divided into M3, M6, M10 and M14, although centered on animation cinema, covers the various areas of cinema, such as fiction and documentary, providing an opportunity to make known some of the most relevant short films in recent national production.
This exhibition starts from a very special film, “Uncle Tomas, The Accounting of Days”, Regina Pessoa's most recent work in animation cinema. It is also the celebration of Regina's 20 years as a filmmaker, centered on a film of undeniable quality, technical and aesthetic boldness, but also particularly interesting in terms of ANIMAR's themes and objectives, because it shows a perfect combination between the universe animation and documentary. In addition to the artistic installations motivated by prominent elements of the film, such as music, aspects of plastic creation or objects used in animated sequences of the film, the career of the filmmaker and, also, plastic artist, will be explored in a route that will make known, perhaps for the first time, the diversity of her work.
The artistic installations were imagined and developed, in a collaborative work between Solar's team, the director and its producer, Abi Feijó, exploring various technical devices and their possible articulations with the gallery's physical space, reflecting the creative processes involved in the film. The distinct elements of each stage of production are also explored, from the textual and graphic records that document the initial idea, to the various storyboards, to the reference images that inspired Regina Pessoa, to the very visual correspondence with Andreas Hykade (director of German animation cinema, which accompanied the development of the film), some of the objects that belonged to Uncle Tomas, including pages and his amazing accounting, all in a documentary and, at the same time, immersive scope. Regina Pessoa's remaining films, "The Night” (1999), “Tragic Story with Happy Ending” (2005) and “Kali, the Little Vampire” (2012), will also be the target of some notes, including some toys and the display of their posters, which will contextualize other aspects of their graphic work. A video recording of a ‘master class’ will also document, in the first person, Regina's creative process.
Regina Pessoa has been receiving artistic recognition, both nationally and internationally, for numerous awards in international film festivals of high reputation. Her career is guided by artistic collaborations with the activity of Curtas Metragens CRL, namely in the programming of past editions of ANIMAR, such as his participation in the ANIMAR 8 exhibition in 2013, or the retrospective of her films at the Closing Party of ANIMAR 14, last year.
A second animated film, awarded at Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival last year, “Purpleboy”, by Alexandre Bohrer Siqueira, will feature as a result of a special invitation. Given its undeniable quality and thematic relevance, Solar's artistic direction could not have been indifferent, right on its debut in Curtas, exploring the possibility of its participation in Animar as well. In addition to showing a series of preparatory visual studies and the 'stoyboard', other elements highlighted in the film will also be explored, as will be the case with the original music. Reference for another playful pedagogical aspect of the exhibition, also inspired by “Purpleboy”, the creation of a vegetable garden on Solar's terrace, which follows a model taken directly from one of his plans, in the shape of an airplane.
In addition to this exhibition, ANIMAR 15 promotes workshop visits, also at Solar, cinema sessions at the Municipal Theater of Vila do Conde and at schools, 'stop-motion' workshops, pixilation and optical toys, in addition to workshops, with emphasis on animation cinema but also on documentary.
These activities constitute a set of new tools, means and methodologies that introduce the principle of learning through a playful and participatory experience. An innovative proposal to raise awareness of art, through the decoding of the moving image and the mobilization of transversal knowledge, stimulating the imagination through the principle of learning to play.

The Animar Party, at the Municipal Theater of Vila do Conde, opportunely takes advantage of a new synergy between Animar's programming and the growing influx of audiences to sessions dedicated to children and adolescents under the responsibility of the Municipal Theater of Vila do Conde, with the exhibition of a feature film of animation for a large audience, in any way adjacent to the themes of the program, making known some of the artists and entities that will be present throughout the program at the other times and places, in a sense of promotion as wide as possible. The Closing Party, in the same theater, will be an event with a scale similar to the first and the moment when the public will be able to glimpse what may have been some of the most remarkable moments of the program, through the projection of a 'making-of' and of the short films made in the moving image studios, considered long-term, guided by experienced animation directors. The session will end with a film screening or an audiovisual show, also adjacent to the programming theme.