KATERINA ATHANASOPOULOU
Katerina Athanasopoulou is a Greek artist living in London who creates animated films for cinema and gallery space. She studied Fine Art at Aristotle University in Greece, and graduated with an MA Animation from the Royal College of Art. Her award-winning films have been shown internationally at film festivals and galleries, including Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Tampere Film Festival, Thessaloniki Biennale 3, Holland Animation Film Festival, Zebra Poetry Film Festival, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb. She has created films for Channel 4, London College of Fashion, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and she won the Lumen Prize in 2013 with her short film Apodemy. Katerina is a Tutor (Research) within the MA Animation at the Royal College of Art. Prior to this position she taught extensively within University of the Arts London and Westminster University, and has been a guest lecturer at Kingston University, Middlesex University and Goldsmiths. She completed her doctoral research with Plymouth University, on the intersections of documentary, VR, and AR, through the lens of animation.
A flock of birds circles and moves a cage vehicle, seeking escape from a city half-finished and abandoned, with roads interrupted by fragments of fallen statues.
CREDITS
A film by Katerina Athanasopoulou
Original Music by Jon Opstad
Violin: Claire Wheeler
Commisioned by the Onassis Cultural Center for Visual Dialogues 2012
Studio: kineticat
AWARDS
LUMEN PRIZE
Winner
BRITISH ANIMATION AWARDS
Best Commissioned Animation Finalist
LONDON GREEK FILM FESTIVAL
Best Animation
ANIMASYROS
Best Greek Animation
LUKUSZ INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Official Competition
SOUNDTRACK COLOGNE
Nominated for the Peer Raben Award
LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
Official Competition
AESTHETICA SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
Official Competition
KLIK! AMSTERDAM ANIMATION FESTIVAL
Official Competition
BELO HORIZONTE INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
Official Competition
HOLLAND ANIMATION FESTIVAL
Official Competition
REVIEWS
Plato likens the human soul with a cage, where knowledge is birds flying. We’re born with the cage empty and, as we grow, we collect birds and they go in the cage for future use. When we need to access knowledge we put our hand in the cage, hunt for a bird – and sometimes catch the wrong one.
Ornithology uses the term “Zugunruhe” to describe the turbulent behaviour of birds before they migrate, whether free or caged.
These two images, birds inhabiting the human soul and the distress of the migrating bird became the starting points for this film, commissioned on the theme of Emigration.
A flock of birds circles and moves a cage vehicle, seeking escape from a city half finished and abandoned, with roads interrupted by fragments of fallen statues. Those hands are simultaneously the pursuit of knowledge and also the heroes/leaders of the past that we have rejected but are still haunting us.
In a time when Europe seems to be imploding, this is my portrait of Athens.