Tilting at windmills and winning: Shachar Tzin and Daria Cohen - seniors of the Department of Visual Communications - have won first place in the Maratoon competition where competitors have five days to create short animated videos. Two department graduates, Tamar Akavia and Dorit Megidor, have won the second place for the screenplay they wrote.

The theme this year was Don Quixote, marking the 400 anniversary of the second volume written by Miguel de Cervantes. The competition was held, for the 7th time, at the Holon cinematheque. 

Knight to 5, the winning video, follows the adventures of a modern day Don Quixote as he faces daily challenges and struggles. The judges said that the video “combines high levels of animation, humor and an allusion to world of gaming, and also that it deals with heroism in the modern era and the importance of romance in this day and age”.

Watch "Knight to 5":

The film by Tamar Akavia and Dorit Megidor that won the award for best screenplay follows the adventures of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza, using cutout animation and other elements from the original creation.

According to the judges, their work “perfectly reflects one of the main concepts in the novel – an amusing way to portray the unclear limits between reality, fiction, the role of the creator, the heroes, and the other characters”.

In a festive ceremony at the end of the Maratoon competition, Mr. Juan Villar Escudero, the Spanish Counsellor to Israel, awarded the prize to Shachar Tzin and Daria Cohen – a three night trip to the international animation festival in Lleida, Spain. Yaakov Gross, the nephew of the late Yoram Gross, and Sandra Gross, awarded a 2,500 NIS second prize, in the name of the Gross family, to Tamar Akavia and Dorit Megidor.

Watch Akavia and Megidor’s version of Don Quixote:

The Maratoon is a unique tradition that kicked off 7 years ago. It challenges the competitors to create short animation videos in a limited time frame according to a topic that is revealed at the starting point of the competition. Competitors have 5 days to complete the assignment and afterwards they are to present a minute long video. 

Among the judges this year we had Einat Talmon, manager of the cultural department at the Cervantes institute. Assaf Gamzo, the curator of the Comics and Cartoon Museum in Holon, and NIr Shalmon, animation director and head of the Department of Animation at Minshar. 

Top: screen shot from the winning video of Shachar Tzin and Daria Cohen