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Kaboom Animation Festival

Kaboom Animation Festival is a yearly event where animation professionals and fans meet, inspire each other and enjoy everything animation has to offer. Ranging from cutting-edge experimental arthouse to colorful stories for families and kids.

Not only does Kaboom celebrate animation in all its shapes and sizes, but they also celebrate the Dutch animation industry. Kaboom encourages auteurs to present the audience with their thought provoking art, design efforts and provocative experimentation.

Industry

Kaboom sees celebrating the Dutch animation industry as one of her core tasks. To inspire people and unite animators and creatives. That is why Kaboom organises the ‘Industry Day’ as an important part of the festival. There is an extended program with panels, showcases and presentations for students and young professionals from the animation industry.

Kaboom ’21

In 2021, the theme of Kaboom Animation Festival is Big Bang! Like many festivals and cultural organizations, 2020 was a difficult year for Kaboom. They will come back in 2021 and they will do so with a (big) bang. Inspired by the idea of the big bang, Kaboom ’21 will screen film programs that ask questions about the beginning of the universe and life on Earth.

Kaboom ’21 will also go back to the “big bang” of animation: in a special program, the milestones of animation history will be shown, such as the first colored animation and the first animation with sound, including some rarely seen films.

Societal relevance

Where 2020 was a turbulent year (political and cultural), Kaboom Animation Festival also explicitly sees instability as a breeding ground for new culture and new ways of thinking. As in the rest of the festival programming, Kaboom connects the theme program specifically social developments, with a strong focus on how recent developments such as the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and the protests of Black Lives Matter can be seen in the animation industry.

History of Kaboom

Kaboom Animation Festival had its first edition in 2019, as a merge between KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival and Holland Animation Film Festival (HAFF).

After eleven years of co-existing, KLIK and HAFF joined forces, used differences to complement each other: they merged into a brand new animation festival that combines the best of both worlds… Kaboom Animation Festival.

More about HAFF

Holland Animation Film Festival (HAFF) in the old centre of Utrecht was an international festival for animated film, founded in 1985 and since 2009 an annual event. The festival provided a national and international platform for animation. It was a national and international meeting place and source of inspiration for animation professionals and rising talent.

HAFF screened the newest developments, organizes competitions and presented thematic programmes and retrospectives, talkshows, masterclasses, debates and an educational programme. There were international competitions for features, shorts, student films, films for 8+ and web films. And there was a competition for Dutch animation.

More about KLIK

The KLIK foundation was a national and international force in provocative quality animation. With different themes each year they were not just entertaining their visitors, they were also trying to make them think about larger issues at play in society.

KLIK treated animation as an independent art form instead of treating it as a genre of film and aimed to make the medium of animation, in the broadest sense of the word, accessible to a wider audience in fresh and exciting new ways to stimulate the emancipation of the medium as a fully realized art form. To this end, KLIK organized the annual KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival since its inception in 2007 and a host of other activities throughout the year.

The first edition of Kaboom Animation Festival

A small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind

The theme of this memorable first edition was ‘To infinity and Beyond’, celebrating men stepping on the moon exactly 50 years ago.

Kaboom Animation Festival 2019 kicked off in Utrecht in November. The official opening at the Louis Hartlooper Complex was themed ‘100 Years of Dutch Animation’ with live music. There were six locations in Utrecht that hosted Kaboom. Louis Hartloopercomplex, Kinepolis and Het Huis Utrecht. Workshops took place at the Library and the Kids bookstore.

The festival continued in Amsterdam with special guests from all over the world. The heart of the festival was the Westergasterrein where Het Ketelhuis hosted Kaboom.

Information & Accreditation

Aneta Ozorek (1979) – Artistic Director

Next to being Artistic Director of Kaboom Animation Festival, Aneta Ozorek has extensive industry experience as the curator and organizer of film events, educational workshops, exhibitions and festivals in the European market.

She is Head of Short section of CEE Animation Pitching Forum, a member of the board of REX Animation Festival (Sweden) and Short Film Conference. Ozorek is also a member of the European Children Film Association and an illustrator of six children’s books.

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Annabet Langkamp – Business Director

Annabet is no stranger to the world of film festivals. After finishing her Master Film & Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam (2002), she joined the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) as a festival producer. Since then, she has gone on to become a much-appreciated production coordinator and HR-manager there. She was part of the growth and professionalization of IDFA and is now taking on a whole new challenge: leading Kaboom well into the next decade as the biggest animation festival in the Netherlands.

Allegedly, she isn’t an animation film buff just yet. However, legends tell Annabet liked Jan Svankmajer’s stop-motion version of Alice (in Wonderland) so much, she named her daughter after it. She is all about women & work, inclusion and creating team spirit.