Animate water: Students create films on water in cooperation with IHE Delft
In an animated short film, a futuristic figure pops up to put a halt to people’s water-wasting habits. In another, a human-like amphibian suffers from the daily grind in a grey city and turns happy only when green nature and blue water appears – but there’s a twist to the story. These films are some of the finalists in an IHE Delft competition titled Animate water.
A jury selected the film with the futuristic figure, titled Save Water and created by student Seongjun Jeon, as the winner, noting that it conveys a serious message in a creative way. Jeon and the other finalists are in the first year of their studies for a Bachelor of Arts in Animation and Visual Arts from the Prague School of Creative Communication in the Czech Republic.
The competition asked participants to unleash their creativity on the topic water and climate change. The resulting films range from melancholic to humorous.
Wasting water is dumb
“I wanted to show how dumb we are when we waste clean water. All the small actions can make a big difference. It is not so difficult to change the future,” Jeon wrote in the introduction of the film.
Zdeněk Durdil, a Czech film director and animator who teaches the students who took part in the competition, said the project’s topic motivated the students.
“The environmental topic of water resonates with the young generation, not only as part of their environmental fear, but mainly for searching solutions and hope for a better coexistence of humankind with nature,” he said.
Water and art in synergy
The competition, launched in February and concluded in September 2023, was proposed and led by Ajna Laville, an IHE Delft student intern from Italy with a background in art history and visual arts, under the guidance of IHE Delft colleagues.
“I wanted to create a practical synergy between water and environment topics and fine art subjects,” said Laville, who is studying diplomacy and international cooperation at the University of Trieste, Italy. “Often, these two areas don’t interact, but when they do, a visual language emerges that holds the potential of reaching a bigger and more diverse audience.”
“The environmental topic of water resonates with the young generation, not only as part of their environmental fear, but mainly for searching solutions and hope for a better coexistence of humankind with nature,”