Creative Film Studio Vanima is a nonprofit organization from Varaždin, Croatia which is dealing with creation of children animated movies for 26 years. More than 400 children made more than 150 films during that period.
Vanima started as a small school activity and now has about 50 members – children and youth who are doing their animated films during whole school year. Vanima is mostly focused on classical animation and individual approach.
Among the main activity, leaders of Vanima (Sandra Malenica and Hrvoje Selec) are also doing workshops and from 2010 they are organizing VAFI - International Children and Youth Animation Film Festival in Varaždin.
The main idea for VAFI was to have the center of children’s animation in this part of the world where all little animators, their mentors but also professionals could learn, have fun and see the best children and youth animated films from all over the world.
Also there was noticed that children animated films were just part of the program on the other festivals or they weren’t categorized. That’s why VAFI is specialized for children animated films and has three categories – MINI for authors up to 10 years, MIDI for authors from 11 to 14 years and MAXI for authors from 15 to 18 years. For this kind of concept VAFI got first prize for the most innovative and creative project in Croatia for year 2010. Every year VAFI also has a partner that is represented during festival.
4th VAFI will be held from 25 to 28 April 2013. Until now all together VAFI had around 500 films from 30 countries applied. More than 200 guest participated and VAFI partners were Borivoj Dovniković Bordo, Los Angeles International Children’s Film Festival and Japan.
In last year VANIMA got one more big recognition – it was made managers of old (and only) cinema in Varaždin which was closed. VAFI now has a place to be in, but also VANIMA has an important role in programming and promotion of european film, films for children and educational projects involving children and cinema/films.
VANIMA is also part of ECFA and leaders are part of ASIFA and AWG.
