!VAR HAGENDOORN

Sand Animation

Earlier this year 24 year old Kseniya Simonova won Ukraine's Got Talent 2009 competition with this amazing sand animation performance, a dramatization of Germany's invasion of Ukraine during WWII.

Her performances in the previous rounds are no less impressive. Here's another clip.

Like dance, sand animation is something best seen live, because you can see both the performer and the animation. What I find intriguing about sand animation is that you can see images and narratives appear and disappear and that the disappearance of one image can coincide with the appearance of another.

Here you can find some videos by Ferenc Cako a Hungarian animation film director and sand animation artist and one of the great masters of the genre. The picture is a capture from one of his live performances. There's more on his homepage.

And some more by Ilana Yahav. (Click watch on YouTube for bigger videos).

The Owl Who Married a Goose by Caroline Leaf is not a live performance but a great example of sand animation nonetheless.