The full Fantasia 2009 lineup will be announced soon, but here are some of the animation highlights of North American's largest cult film festival, right in fps's home base of Montreal.

I'm excited about Genius Party Beyond, Studio 4C's companion to Genius Party, shown last year at the festival.


Hells Angels is a Madhouse production with a star crew behind this manga adaptation. Cencoroll is an anime feature that seems quite intriguing. Seems equally intriguing, but with a more sedate, less over-the-top storytelling style.

The feature Les Lascars is based on the French cult show of the same name and should go over well with the boisterous festival crowd (if you've not yet made it to a Fantasia festival screening, the involvement of the audience is worth the price of the ticket alone).

Tokyo Onlypic 2008 looks like it will be a side-splitter. It's an anthology of animated and live-action shorts describing outrageous Olympic-style events. Check out Bill Plympton's Race For Love in the trailer.


DJ XL5's Razzle Dazzle Zappin' Party promises another year or crazily juxtaposed shorts (many animated) simulating the channel-changing experience... to the power of ten.

Celluloid Experiments always features edgy animation selections in its roster. I doubt this year will be any different.

You'll be able to view the full schedule online and procure a printed festival program with a DVD full of trailers on Friday. Hope you can survive the wait!

Labels: Fantasia festival, features, festivals, France, Japan, Madhouse, shorts, Studio 4C

The entire lineup looks promising at the Fantasia film festival this year, running from July 9 to 29. While fps focuses on animation, Fantasia (the largest event of its kind in North America) is a combination of the best cult film worldwide, and has an impressive lineup of film of all types, including live-action and animated horror, action, fantasy, science fiction, weird and edgy films.

As I said, we like to stick with animation around here, but I have to mention this year's opening film, even though it's got (gasp) real people in it.

This year's opening film is the live-action feature Yatterman that began life as a manga in the 70s, which shortly after became an anime series (that was recently updated in 2008).
This is the part where we usually begin a lament (but not always). Definitely not this time!


The director is the irreverent Takashi Miike who made films such as Audition and Sukiyaki Western Django. To me this is more reason to see it. However, if viewers are worried about how he would do an all-ages film, I point to the fantastic film The Great Yokai War, which featured his signature style, but also was a wonderful film for younger viewers.

I think this film will be the type of fare which is best watched with an enthusiastic audience, in the same way that the live-action version of Cutey Honey (directed by animator Hideako Anno) wowed audiences just a few years ago.

The full Fantasia lineup will be available on Friday, July 3.

Labels: anime, Fantasia festival, features, festivals, Japan, live action, manga

Animafrik, an African animation film festival that seeks to promote African art and animation will take place October 5th to the 9th, 2009.

Animafrik draws the relationship between art and animation and plans to offer a platform to showcase Africa's finest works with screenings, workshops (including workshops for children), exhibits, and professional meetings under the theme "Telling Our Own Stories". There will also be regional screenings in various cities following the festival.

DVD submissions may be sent by courier to: Animafrik Festival, No.5. Anowa Link, Tesano, Accra, Ghana; or by mail to: P.O.Box KN 150, Kaneshie, Accra, Ghana.

The submission deadline is July 31 2009.

More information can be found on the Animafrik 09 website

Labels: Africa, call for submissions, festivals

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) is reminding everyone that there are only a few days left to submit films for the 2009 Festival taking place October 14 to 18 in Canada’s capital.

Animators are invited to submit their recent work in six major categories including Independent Short films, Feature films, New Media, Commissioned films (TV series, commercials, music videos etc), Student films and Work Made for Children.

The OIAF 09 entry deadline is June 1, 2009 and preview DVDs must be received by June 15. Entry forms are available on the Festival’s website at www.animationfestival.ca.

Further information about this year’s Festival, as well as online entry forms, are available on the OIAF website at www.animationfestival.ca. If you have questions about submitting a film, send an e-mail to entries@animationfestival.ca or call 613-232-8769.

Labels: call for entries, festivals, Ottawa International Animation Festival

Whoa! Christmas shows up early for Montreal animation lovers. This year's Sommets du cinema d'animation de Montreal (Montreal Animation Summit) literally explodes this year, with an expanded lineup, including exhibits and great guests.

As in recent years, Marco de Blois, animation curator at the Cinematheque quebecoise, has gathered some of the year's best animated shorts in two programs screening on Friday and Saturday. This year, the audience gets to vote on their favourite and award a public prize to the best director.

This is just the beginning. This weekend includes a program of the notable international student films from 2006, 2007, and 2008; the best recent Canadian animation; and a free screening of Acme Filmworks and Animation World Network's The Show of Shows, presented by Ron Diamond.

I'm not done yet: A major restrospective, Du praxinoscope au cellulo (From Praxinoscope to Cel), is divided into three programs, two of them specifically targeted to include younger viewers. This film series focuses on the evolution of French moving images, and touches on drawings, marionettes, and pin, cell, cut-out, mixed media, and computer animation. This is an extraordinary chance to see shorts by Emile Cohl, Ladislaw Starevich, and Paul Grimault, among others.

Now get a load of these prices.
Free 0–5 years accompanied by an adult
Free Show of Shows
$4 6–15 years
$6 students and seniors
$7 adults
$50 CinéSommets passport, all-access pass

For the full schedule, including parties and concurrent exhibits, download the PDF program.

Labels: Canada, events, exhibitions, festivals, France, Montreal, schools, shorts

Joseph Chen, curator of the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, likes to highlight the fact that animated films are neither tied to a specific genre or animation technique, nor are they thematically hide-bound – the only thing linking them is that they are animated and generally do not include much live-action (although some do mix it up). The “Midnight Madness” screenings are, in Joseph’s words “all about edge” – both story-wise and in the techniques used to “paint” the story.

This year’s two midnight screenings were We Are the Strange (by MDOTSTRANGE, a filmmaker based in San Jose) and From Inside (by John Bergin, a Missouri-based artist and feature filmmaker).


We Are The Strange is definitely edgy - an assault on the senses for which I wasn't really prepared, but which had me thinking for some time afterwards. It was a clever composite of 8-bit, pixelated gaming imagery, cut with stop-motion animation, a couple of live-action appearances, and anime-style animation. The soundtrack was cranked to 11, and, frankly, you're not meant to be comfortable with it. But I was definitely engaged - and it was as visually complex and interesting, as it was disturbing. Not for everybody, but I really liked it.


From Inside was the Saturday night midnight screening. John Bergin, the writer, director and animator, warned us before the movie started that the story was as bleak as the weather outside (it was windy, bitterly cold and snowing). What followed was a visually stunning, dark allegory. How do you find hope in a world going to hell - what can you do to stop it, and should children be brought into this chaos? Or are children the only redemption we have? I loved this movie - it combined 3D animation along with awesome 2D 1930s-inspired, dark illustration. Again, not for everyone, but a truly beautiful piece of artwork, and a story that ends on a more hopeful note than you're lead to expect.

Labels: border-crossing, features, festivals, From Inside, Joseph Chen, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema

On Day 2 of the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, we got to see a screening of an original 35mm print of Grave of the Fireflies. This is an Isao Takahata, 1988 Studio Ghibli film, based on a short story about a 14-year-old boy who tries to care for his sister after their ailing mother is killed during a raid in the 1945 Kobe bombings. He and his sister experience the fear-inspired selfishness of an aunt and he must find a way to take care of himself and his sister on his own.

There was a panel discussion following the film lead by Fred Schodt, author of Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics; John O'Donnell, founder of Central Park Media (the publishers who license the film for North America); and Fred Ruh, author of Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii.

The conversation between the panelists and the audience covered debates as to whether the film was anti-American or rather just anti-war generally, given that the American bombers were barely referred to directly except by the subtle display of some American signage a couple of times on the bomber planes. Another point was raised about the divide between the themes considered culturally sensitive in western animation versus the plain-speaking storytelling of Japanese anime. As a nod to the animated film genre, it was agreed that this socially important, and poignant story couldn't be told the same way in a live-action film (a live-action version was made in 2005), given the youth of the actors required to play the parts and the fact that they couldn't be represented as realistically in the unhealthy conditions in which they were portrayed for the anime version.

This screening was also presented by UrbanEx and their Out Of The Cold programme.

Labels: anime, features, festivals, Fred Schodt, Grave of the Fireflies, Isao Takahata, Mamoru Oshii, manga, Studio Ghibli, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC

Quirino Cristiani's parents had really wanted him to be a doctor. Just after the turn of the 20th century, the Italian immigrants in Argentina had hoped that Quirino would "get over" his penchant for drawing, and be a doctor in the Buenos Aires hospital where his father worked.

Young Quirino only wanted to draw and was especially fascinated with representing movement, and later made a living drawing political satire cartoons for various newspapers and magazines. Newsreel producer and entrepreneur, Frederico Valle, first commissioned Cristiani to make artwork for the end of his newsreels, and wanted Cristiani to see if he could make them move. This lead to them making El Apostol: a 70-minute animated feature satirizing Argentina's President Yrigoyen, which premiered in 1917 and was a runaway success, playing to packed cinemas for six months.

None of the footage survived a fire that destroyed all of Valle's precious stock in 1926. But we know about it - and its impact on the history of animation from the Italian documentary, Quirino Cristiani: The Mystery of the First Animated Movies.

Labels: Argentina, documentaries, El Apostol, features, festivals, Quirino Cristiani, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema

This year’s Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema kicked off last Thursday night with a screening of Europe’s first animated feature film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Arbenteuer des Prinzen Achmed). Considered Europe's first animated feature film, it is 81 minutes long, and was made in 1926 by Lotte Reiniger (along with her husband and two others).

Reiniger made the film with paper cut-out shadow puppets – apparently over 100,000 of them. What was particularly special about Thursday night’s screening was the live soundtrack performed by Miles and Karina, who were commissioned earlier this year by The Northwest Film Forum to compose a new score for this amazing piece of cinematic history. I lost myself in the story – a tale based on 1001 Arabian nights – partly because the beautiful details of the animation worked so well at propelling the story, but also very much because the music was such a brilliant complement to the visuals… Miles and Karina’s music evoked the moods and humor of the story beautifully – and so subtly that I completely forgot the music was being performed live!

Labels: features, festivals, Lotte Reiniger, silhouette animation, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema

If you didn't get a chance to attend Richard Williams' masterclass at the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival, and live on the west coast, you may have another chance to catch him. Beginning today, the award-winning animator will be touring several west coast cities until November 7th.

Tonight, ACM SIGGRAPH's Vancouver chapter will host a free two-hour masterclass, signing and a screening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

On Wednesday the 29th, he will be in Redmond, WA, at as a run-up to Seattle's 2D Or Not 2D festival. While the event is free, it is open only to DigiPen BFA alumni and working professionals, so follow the link if you qualify to find out how to get your tickets.

On Thursday the 30th, it's Portland time with the Cascade ACM SIGGRAPH chapter. The event is free for chapter members and 5.00 dollars for everyone else, but attendees need to RSVP by the 28th.

The last public event on November 2nd happens in San Francisco. A benefit for ASIFA-SF, this event will feature the two-hour masterclass and the event will be moderated by author and chapter president Karl Cohen (shown above, left, with Richard Williams, and Cohen's wife Denise McEvoy at the OIAF Animators' Picnic). The admission is only 9.00 dollars and only 6.50 for a child or a senior. A mere pittance for the wealth of information and experience that will be available and to help a great organization.

Labels: 2D Or Not 2D, ASIFA, events, festivals, Portland, Richard Williams, San Francisco, Seattle, SIGGRAPH, Vancouver

Michel Ocelot's Azur and Asmar had its US premiere tonight at the New York International Children's Film Festival, starting a five day run of the film at the IFC Center in Manhattan.

Ocelot, best known for his well-received previous film, Kiriku and the Sorceress, has created an engrossing fable with Azur, a film that links themes of racial and cultural barriers, immigration, prejudice and superstition with a resplendently rendered fairy tale.

Azur's art is both elegant and exotic; its characters navigate the film's Arabian setting as if Ocelot cut paper dolls from the pages of illuminated manuscripts of the Islamic Golden Age and brought them to life.

Complementing the film’s visual feast is a skillfully woven tale of two boys, one Caucasian (Azur), one Arab (Asmar), raised as brothers by Asmar’s mother, who regales the pair with tales of faraway lands and a fairy Djinn, who waits for a hero to free her from captivity. Azur is separated from Asmar and his mother, only to find himself in their company years later in an unfamiliar country where the fairy tales he heard as a youth unfold in waves of enchanting encounters, engaging characters and rich landscapes.

Azur and Azmar will be screened October 17 through 23 at the IFC Center in Manhattan.

Previously on fps
Azur and Asmar at Ex-Centris

Labels: Cannes, festivals, Michael Ocelot, New York, NYICFF

Independent animator Bill Plympton's feature Idiots and Angels will be screened this Saturday at the 2008 Toronto After Dark genre film festival, running from October 17th to 24th.

Plympton's 2007 short, Shut-Eye Hotel, will also be shown on Sunday as a part of the Shorts After Dark program, which also features Michael Langan's Doxology, and includes an even split of live-action and animation shorts.

Previously on fps
Bill Plympton

Labels: Bill Plympton, features, festivals, Michael Langan, shorts, Toronto, Toronto After Dark

Ryan Larkin, who animated Walking, and who was also the subject of the Oscar-winning Ryan, has a posthumous co-directing credit on Spare Change (with Laurie Gordon). The film will be showing at the Festival du nouveau cinema. It will also be showing before the feature, All Together Now, a documentary about the Beatles and Cirque du Soleil, which is also premiering at the FNC. Spare Change will precede the feature as it screens across Canada in the next week:

October 10

Vancouver: Ridge Theatre
Toronto: Royal
Québec City: Cinéma Quartier
Sherbrooke: La maison du Cinéma

October 12

Montreal: Cinema Du Parc

Labels: Festival du Nouveau Cinema, festivals, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, Ryan Larkin

It's been a crazy year, but I have been looking forward to the Ottawa International Animation Festival, well.. since the last one ended. This is always the case.

Emru will miss his first festival since 1988, but Brenden Fletcher, Rene Walling and I will be taking in the fest, and we'll try to bring some of it back to you, too.

As usual, there lineup is exceptional. I don't know how I am going to make to all of the special screenings and retrospectives. Just a few of my must-see list items include the Michael Sporn and Jonas Odell retrospectives, Brainwashed! Cartoons That Tell Us What To Think, and The New Wave of Japanese Animation.

Richard Williams' presentation (in interview with John Canemaker) would be in my list, but it's sold already out, which is altogether unsurprising considering the circumstances. If there are any seats left 15 minutes before the event, rush tickets will be sold, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I will have to satisfy myself with a special screening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? instead. I'm also looking forward to the Yo Gabba Gabba! presentation on Saturday.

I haven't even gotten into the masterclasses, workshops and panels. Honestly, it's like trying to bail out the ocean with a bucket. I'm going to enjoy trying!

Labels: features, festivals, Jonas Odell, Michael Sporn, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Richard Williams, shorts

Anime After Dark is a new event being kicked off this year by the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. On October 18, a collection of anime features will be screened at the Somerville Theatre from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. (Among the lineup: Grave of the Fireflies, Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society, Cat Soup, Project A-ko, Tekkon Kinkreet and Millennium Actress.)

The cost? A mere twenty bucks if you buy tickets now, $25 if you wait until September 20, and $30 at the door.

Labels: anime, Boston, festivals, Ghost in the Shell, Grave of the Fireflies, Tekkon Kinkreet

The Montreal chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH is holding its season opener with an open-air screening in the park next to their usual haunt, the Society for Arts and Technology. Selections from the 2008 Computer Animation Festival will be shown, and while the event is free, you can pick up your annual membership to help support the chapter.

"Doors open" on Saturday, September 6, at 9:30 at Parc de la Paix. There's more info on the SAT website.

2008 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival trailer

Labels: events, festivals, Montreal, shorts, SIGGRAPH

While much of the flavour of the Japan Media Arts Festival is Japanese (duh), they actively look for contributions from around the world, and indeed foreign entries have won top awards in the past.

The Japan Media Arts Festival is very open in what they look for; when they say media, they include animation, manga art, Web works, photographs, installations, still photos, commercial work, independent work, amateur work, etc. (What I cover for Frames Per Second is just a fraction what they display every year.) This is what makes their categories so rich and interesting, in my opinion.

Like last year, the Festival is again seeking recommendations from people about works they may have missed. Complete details for people who want to enter or make recommendations can be found on the Japan Media Arts Plaza. Better hurry, though: while submitters have until September 26 to get their works in, aficionados only have until August 29 to submit their recommendations.

Labels: anime, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival

Every year there's something in the Japan Media Arts Festival's Entertainment Division which also happens to be animated, and worth a mention. (The categories are porous like that.) This year that honour goes to the music video for Ryukyudisko's "Nice Day."

The entire video is a progression of still photographs starting somewhere in the 1970s, with a couple getting busy under the covers and producing a young boy. We watch him get older, get a job, and then he hits the clubs and meets a girl–and the whole starts going into reverse, as we go back into the girl's history. However, we find ourselves going back even farther than her parents, for reasons that eventually become apparent—and the eventual trip forward again carries its own surprises.

There's a lot of whimsy in this video, and the pity of the Flash-based video above is that you lose some of the detail in the historical photos, as well as the deliberate colour choices to replicate older film (up to a point—director Junji Kojima skimps a little when he starts getting into the 1930s and earlier).

By the way, if you think the tune is catchy you can drop a couple of sawbucks for an import of the single at Amazon.

Labels: anime, Beat Crusaders, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, Junji Kojima, music videos, Ryukyudisko, shorts

Veterans of animation festivals know that the term "short film" is pretty elastic, from Malcolm Bennett's 30-second Rocky to Yuri Norstein's 29-minute Tale of Tales. They also know that the longer films are usually programmed at the tail end of a given screening, and that prior to the end of the Cold War many of those films were from Eastern Bloc countries—often gorgeous, sometimes inscrutable, sometimes dark.

What's surprising about the 2007 Japan Media Arts Festival's award-winning works is that there are four films that pass the twenty-minute mark. The longest, Love Rollercoaster, is the most straightforward. The remaining three are reminiscent of those old Eastern Bloc films.

I'll start off with the 21-minute Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor because (a) director Koji Yamamura pretty much roped me in with his Mt. Head and The Old Crocodile a few years back; (b) it's actually based on the work of the Jewish-Czech Kafka, which gives it that weirdness that can be supplied only by Eastern European creators in general, and Kafka in particular; and (c) I can't help re-watching it whenever I can. Like any Kafka story, A Country Doctor starts with a seemingly normal premise combined (a country doctor is summoned at night to take care of a young patient) with some bizarre aspect ("unearthly horses" transport him there instantly). As in Kafka's better-known The Metamorphosis, the introduction of the preternatural element marks the moment the protagonist can never go back to the way things were. As in Yamamura's Mt. Head, the pace, sketchy images, and hand-drawn transformations complement the story nicely. At the rate A Country Doctor has been racking up awards, I think Yamamura's going to have to put serious thought into new shelving.

Ryu Kato's The Clockwork City also mines the surreal with traditional tools. The film is pretty much wordless, and you should expect to have to work at sorting some aspects of it out. A young visitor comes to a new city, and it's quickly apparent she doesn't quite fit in—every person, every bird, and even a few buildings have these wind-up mechanisms stuck in them, and she doesn't. After exploring the city for a little while she meets with the town's honcho (who wears a wind-up crown) and exchanges fruits and other goods. Soon after the city goes to war with an unknown enemy, its soldiers identically featureless and wearing blue ties and white shirts. In the aftermath, our protagonist confronts the top man and his flunkies over the discovery of a giant wind-up key; what mysteries does it hold? This is definitely on my "must rewatch" list.

Yusuke Sakamoto's The Dandelion Sister takes us into the realm of stop-motion animation, where a young girl has to contend with her older, sick sister—who happens to be a giant dandelion. There's a lot going on here: There's the younger sister missing out on social activities because of her responsibilities; her resentment of how much attention is heaped on her sick sister; her inability to draw, and express her feelings; and her fear of her sister's death. Like The Clockwork City, The Dandelion Sister is wordless, but as its concerns are more grounded in reality it's open to a number of interpretations about adolescence, caring for sick relatives, and acceptance.

Labels: anime, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, Koji Yamamura, Ryu Kato, shorts, Yusuke Sakamoto

Another odd little parallel shared by some of the award-winning animation shorts in the Japan Media Arts Festival: three of them had to do with birthdays—after a fashion.

My least favourite of the trio was also the longest: Hiromasa Horie's Love Rollercoaster unfortunately has nothing to do with the Ohio Players song, but is instead about a cutesy young bear cub named John trying to solve the mystery of a mysterious birthday present left behind my his late mother. Involved in the search are his friends, and they soon drag in the creepy Lovegun, an eyeless, sharp-toothed green-skinned critter who lives half in and half out of a rocketship. I like the idea behind some of the characters (especially the pair of mischievous panda siblings), and the overall story idea is a solid one—the ending is particularly sweet. But the whole thing is killed by the execution.

As a clay animation fan it shouldn't bother me that a CGI film tries to emulate a plasticine look for its characters. And I've never had a problem with Japan's cult of kawaii. But whenever the characters talk or scrunch their eyes, their skin wrinkles and folds in an a way that quickly renders them uncute. I'm sure John's initial concept drawings were very cute, but his textured skin, along with the bags under his eyes and all that wrinkliness just made me ill. Throw in excessive camera movement, the same kind of needless bobbing and weaving that bothered me in Skyland, and a half-hour–plus running time, and, well... let's just say that sometimes I watch these things so you don't have to.

(As an aside, I should mention that Love Rollercoaster is one of several projects generated from a Japanese talent incubator called Anime Innovation Tokyo. I'd rather have seen just about anything else their creators have put together.)

The much shorter, lo-fi Ushi-nichi (or, as the English titles say, Happy Birthday) is pretty much Love Rollercoaster's exact opposite. Created with pencil and paper (complete with smudges) by Hiroko Ichinose, the nine-minute short features a motley crew of characters each going through their own machinations. A man stands in the desert waiting to hitch a ride, but turns down almost everyone who stops for him; a man wakes up every morning transformed in some way (extra-long arms, a huge 'fro) and cheerily skips to the employment office to find new work based on his condition; a woman starts eating pieces of her pet giraffe, mindless of the transformations it causes to her own body. Everything comes together in a whimsical denouement. Deep meaning? Who cares? The jittery, rough and utterly charming style makes the whole film a pleasure.

Meanwhile, Toshiaki Hanzaki's Birthday puts another spin on the word, relating the evolution of life on Earth from one-celled organisms to man and, it seems, beyond. Working mostly with silhouetted forms, it's slicker than Ushi-nichi, but it is, if anything, more whimsical, with its portrayal of a giant fanged asteroid killing the dinosaurs and aliens accelerating our evolution. (It's also in the opposite direction of Hanzaki's earlier Birds, my favourite of the Digital Content Association of Japan's 2005 Digital Creators Competition's award-winning works.) Finally, at about a minute and a half, it's more compact. It gets where it needs to go, and then ends. Brevity really is the soul of wit.

Labels: anime, CGI, festivals, Hiroko Ichinose, Hiromasa Horie, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, shorts, Toshiaki Hanzaki

One of the pleasures of film festivals, whether you're watching them or organizing them, is in discovering unintended themes in the films. Sometimes it's inevitable, such as when social or political issues are on everyone's mind, but these are so unsurprising as to almost be banal. It's the small, quirky and sometimes trivial themes that are the most interesting to discover, and this year's award-winning short animation offerings from the Japan Media Arts Festival has a few worth mentioning.

One thing I look forward to in any compilation is when people take a backward step, especially when it comes to CGI. There's such a tendency to lard on the detail, be it photorealistic or natural-media or whatever, that few make the deliberate choice to step back and pare things down.

This year three films made a point of dialing down the detail, each in different ways. Youhei Murakoshi's Blockman goes the furthest. The viewer peers through a telescope to a strange world where everything is made up of identically sized cubes. Some are black, most are white, some make larger blocks, and some of the larger blocks have faces, courtesy of dots or lines on individual blocks. The curious lifeforms walk, fly, float, combine and come apart in a variety of ways, with the telescope lazily floating from one vista to another. The effect is similar to that of the even more minimalist Dice—an earlier Japan Media Arts Festival honoree—but perhaps more mesmerizing.

Sejiro Kubo, Ichiro Tanida and Katsunori Aoki collaborated on Copet, a series of shorts starring a cast of animals that are all straight lines and simple curves, plugged together like deranged Lego. At first glance it's appallingly cute, but little touches like camera shake and nifty bits of business (like a gorilla who repeatedly shivers himself out of a stupor) are at odds with the simplistic motion, and the tension works. But what really kept my attention were the bits that didn't follow the simple-is-better formula, like an erupting volcano, a meteor streaking toward Earth and water that looks, well, watery. The characters' occcasional forays into the live-action world, along with incomprehensible but still amusing storylines were also bonuses. If you can read Japanese you can check out the Copet website, which goes into the shorts' world in considerable depth and pimps Copet merch, including a DVD.

Hiroshi Chida's Boneheads was produced by Polygon Pictures, which I mention because it shares a certain aesthetic sensibility with Polygon's Polygon Family shorts, in which the characters' blockiness is celebrated, rather than smoothed and textured to death. But Polygon Family is mostly monochrome, whereas Boneheads' colour pops with Day-Glo intensity. The latter's characters are also ever so slightly asymmetrical, which just makes them kookier.

Moreover, where Polygon Family's animated used the anime and fighting videogame idioms, Boneheads is pure, non-stop Tex Avery-style mania (it's running time of seven minutes makes it even more reminiscent of a Golden Age cartoon). Roccos and Bone are two primitive creatures fighting over bananas—between themselves, and between other critters who get wind of the tasty fruit (or them). The whole thing is really just an escalating chase scene, but as every Blues Brothers fan knows, that's not really a bad thing. Radar Cartoons reps Polygon in the U.S., and Boneheads was produced for Viacom, so here's hoping that it pops up on our screens soon.

Labels: anime, CGI, festivals, Hiroshi Chida, Ichiro Tanida, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, Katsunori Aoki, Polygon Pictures, Sejiro Kubo, shorts, Youhei Murakoshi

Film festival venues can be overwhelming and conference venues can be overwhelming, but when you combine them... well, the experience hovers somewhat above the horizon. That said, here are some tidbits:

1. Much discussion, several panels, and two full days of screenings of stereoscopic (3D) films, commercials, sports events, games and scientific visualizations on the first day of the conference. 3D is the agenda for 21st-century digital releases. I took in the two-hour screening of 3D clips and then heard fine artist and installation/performance artist Catherine Owens speak about collaborating with Bono on the 3D film of U2's concert in Buenos Aires. She spoke convincingly about "experimental" exploration and commitment to "idea" in relationship to her personal art, as well as in relationship to her directorial debut of the film U2 3D.

2. The Computer Animation Festival is programmed into seven two-hour screenings that most often repeat the commercials, trailers, and synopses of film titles submitted. For example, Rhythm and Hues showcased effects scenes of the polar bears in "The Golden Compass" and that is screened alongside the commercial from Bridgestone Tires many have seen of the squirrel running onto the highway to retrieve a nut as a car swerves to miss killing him. The festival is screening two impressive studio shorts worth mentioning here: Pixar Studios' Presto and Disney Studios' Glago's Guest. If you've seen WALL-E you've seen Presto before the feature screens.

3) A wonderful Tribute To Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas happened today with Tom Sito moderating a panel that included Frank Thomas' son, Theodore Thomas, documentary filmmaker, as well as a group of celebrity animators who had worked with the two of them in a mentor relationship. All of them delightfully shared their experiences with Frank and Ollie and were very well received. More on this later.

A closing note in case you don't want to wait: you may go online to read about all the sessions at SIGGRAPH 08 and can listen to them on DVD. All panels and discussions have been recorded are available for purchase.

I have constantly forgotten the number one rule for attending film festivals and conferences: find a place to sit, eat well and if you do this, thinking might follow! That said, I will return to report more soon, in spite of the L.A. smog my allergies are swimming in...

Labels: 3D, CGI, Disney, events, festivals, Los Angeles, Pixar, SIGGRAPH

We love our Lego around here, and when it's moving around, all the better. So we're happy to pass on this bit of news about the upcoming Nicktoons Network Animation Festival, which is happening this October in Los Angeles. Nickelodeon is specifically looking for stop-mo shorts using Lego bricks and minifigs, no more than two minutes long.

The contest is open to just about anyone who isn't living in a country on the U.S.'s "ain't no friend of mine" list, so Cuban animators will have to look elsewhere. Peep the rules and regulations, and find out how you can win $25,000 to create a new Lego short for Nick. Don't forget to read all the fine print so you don't have any surprises when it comes to rights. The final due date is September 15, so get to it, blockheads!

Labels: contest, festivals, Lego, Los Angeles, Nickelodeon, Nicktoons, stop-motion

Normally around this time I'd be gearing up for the annual SIGGRAPH conference; in fact, if things had gone as planned I'd already be in Los Angeles right now. But a number of things about SIGGRAPH and the way we're covering it are different, and I figured I should pass this information on to you.

A little over a year ago, I was selected to be the chair of SIGGRAPH's Computer Animation Festival. My first order of business was to restructure the festival, which was then divided between the theatrically screened Electronic Theater and the constantly running Animation Theater. The idea was to provide a new structure that kept the spirit of SIGGRAPH while more closely resembling a traditional animation festival.

Working out the overall framework and ideology was about as far as I got before the precursors to my leukemia started to hit in November. I'd started working out a few details here and there about the jurying process with my director, but that was about it.

Back during the initial meetings, I was concerned about how Frames Per Second was going to cover SIGGRAPH. After all, we'd been covering the conference since our days as a print magazine (I believe our first report was in 1996), but there was the issue of conflict of interest. I ended up sitting down with the people responsible for SIGGRAPH's media relations, and we worked out a solution that we're going to follow even though I ultimately participated far less in the process than intended.

This year our SIGGRAPH coverage will be handled by Janeann Dill (who wrote up a SIGGRAPH festival report with me back in 2005), but utterly independent of me. That is, nothing she writes about is discussed with me beforehand, and I won't be editing any of her blog posts, even for things like typos. (Any editing will be handled by Kino Kid.) In short, no editorial intereference from the guy who was on the inside. Janeann's posts will be as fresh to me as they are to you, and I anticipate enjoying them just as much as any other reader, as well.

Labels: CGI, computer animation, festivals, SIGGRAPH

They say the best things in life are free, and in this case it's hard to argue. Since July there's been an exhibition in Manchester called How Manga Took Over the World, and they've been offering free anime screenings that will continue through to September 21. The roster is staggering: there are daily screenings of the first episodes of Astroboy, Tetsujin 28, Noein, Naruto: Unleashed, Otogi Zoshi, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Dominion: Tank Police.

But that's just the appetizer. Every Thursday through Saturday, there are screenings of anime features, many of which have been seen on DVD but really deserve to be shown on the big screen. Drool-worthy entries include Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle in the Sky (start lining up—it's this Thursday!), the Cowboy Bebop movie, Akira, and the wonderfully old-school Golgo 13. Check the Urbis website for dates and time.

[Thanks, Nausicaa.net.]

Labels: anime, features, festivals, United Kingdom

I'm all for do-it-yourself projects. Self-starters can take part in Montreal's newest film festival, M60. Participants will make a 60-second film, animated or live-action, which must be completed by August 24th, to be screened for 2 days in September.

Register at the launch party on Thursday, July 24th from 9:oo pm to midnight. The theme will be revealed during the launch. While you're there, enjoy the short sets from several bands, one of which is Ragni (including fps's newest blogger, Brenden Fletcher).

Labels: festivals, Montreal, shorts

The 2008 Animation Block Party begins on Friday, July 25 and continues until Sunday, July 27. If you're near Brooklyn you can catch three different programs of animated shorts. Friday's program will be screened outdoors at Rooftop Films and the remaining programs, played twice each day, can be seen at the BAMcinematek. Not only do you get to see tons of shorts, the event lives up to its name with beer and live music every night. Party on!

Labels: festivals, New York, shorts

Montreal is home to the world's largest comedy festival, Just For Laughs. The festival's annual live action and animated Eat My Shorts program begins today and continues until July 18. Among the animated offerings are John and Karen and Lapsus (pictured above) two recent shorts I enjoyed.

Space Chimps, a CG feature by the Vanguard in the UK and Starz Animation in Canada, will also be previewed tonight.

Labels: CGI, features, festivals, Montreal, shorts

The audience of the Monday screening of Fear(s) of the Dark was treated to a bonus before things got rolling: Hot Dog, the third in a series of shorts by independent New York animator, Bill Plympton. Many know Bill Plympton's name, but those who don't will immediately recognize his trademark style in the clip shown here. Only a portion of the short is in the clip, and gets much funnier as it moves from one stage to the next.

His current feature, Idiots and Angels, seems distinctly different in tone. In Plympton's words:

The look of the film is very Eastern European - something like what Jan Svankmayer might make, or David Lynch if he made animation - very dark and surreal.

Fear(s) of the Dark will replay again tomorrow at the Fantasia festival, but without Hot Dog preceding it. Later in the day, Plympton will present the Canadian premiere of Idiots and Angels, and continuing the festival's spotlight on Animated Auteur Visions.

Previously on fps
2008 Fantasia Festival Animation
Review: Plymptoons: The Complete Early Works of Bill Plympton

Labels: Bill Plympton, Fantasia festival, features, festivals, New York, shorts

I had the opportunity to catch the Canadian premiere of Fear(s) of the Dark, a French film that understands what it is to tell a story, many in fact, about fear in various forms. The six stories are not told consecutively, a surprising but successful choice, as viewers are often used to stories being discrete. As a result, the viewer is briefly disoriented at times, returning to a story that was not quite over.

Some fears are completely mundane. Others are truly horrifying, because they are so outlandish, like Charles Burns' story, or because they may have actually happened, like the one by Blutch.

The standout piece was by Richard McGuire and Michel Pirus. It is a taut story that is not incredibly scary (this is arguable - my viewing companion was squirming in her seat), it is beautifully conceived visually, aurally and had the complete attention of the audience.

The DVD will be out later this summer, but it is definitely worth catching if it shows theatrically at a theatre near you.

The screening I attended was also a fundraiser for my brother, the creator of this site and the original Frames Per Second print magazine. All the ticket proceeds will be given to him and his family. I would like to extend my thanks to all who attended and the Fantasia festival team for offering their support.

Peur(s) du Noir screens again in French with English subtitles on Wednesday at the Fantasia film festival.

Previously on fps:
2008 Fantasia Festival Animation
Peur(s) du Noir Screening at Fantasia to Benefit fps Editor

Labels: comics, Fantasia festival, festivals, France

The Canadian premiere of Peur(s) du Noir on Monday is a part of Fantasia's 2008 spotlight, Animated Auteur Visions. Not all of the six shorts are horror films, but each features a black and white animated exploration of fear. Contributors include comic artists Charles Burns and Blutch.



The screening will also be a benefit for fps editor, Emru Townsend. A portion of the profits from each ticket sold will go toward Emru and his immediate family as he prepares for his upcoming bone marrow transplant.

(Earlier this year, Emru wrote a message letting people know that they could help to save his life or that of another person waiting for a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. In June, a potential match was found in the system where there previously were none among over 12 million people registered as potential donors. You can read more about his experience on the Heal Emru blog.)

Previously on fps:
2008 Fantasia Festival Animation

Labels: comics, Fantasia festival, features, festivals, France, shorts

There is a reason Batman has his own label on fps. Besides many of us being big comic fans, many of us are huge fans of the Bat specifically. He has numerous animated interpretations and the notable incarnations in the 90s and 00s have definitely left their mark on (what was) Saturday morning television, cable television, comic book adaptations, and Warner Bros. television animation.

So people are a little nervous about an anime version of Batman since Batman: Gotham Knight was announced. I am a huge Batman fan and a huge anime fan, but I won't champion one at the expense of the other. After hearing about the talent behind the series of interrelated shorts, both American and Asian, I was somewhat relieved, but I was also willing to wait for a final verdict once I'd actually seen the shorts. After getting a peek at the soon-to-be released DVD in a theatrical setting gearing up for the 2008 edition of Fantasia, I think people's fears are largely unfounded.

Disliking the stories because they use the visual style of anime is just as bad as only liking it because it is anime. What you need to know is the stories are told well. What you need to know is these stories all embody something about the Legend of the Bat and are consistent with the characters that have already been established. It does look great!

And the same people that dismiss the anthology because it is anime will probably be the ones who refuse to notice that there are six very distinct visual styles that are employed to tell each story. The level of interestingness does vary depending on the style you are drawn to, but this is also the case of a decades long comic-collector who has some artists they prefer over others. Like these artists, Batman's look changes at the whim of the artists involved. The two stories with styles I found the most recognizable and distinct from the others were produced by Studio 4°C. They were even distinct from each other. Selecting one of these as the first story in the set was a great choice as it breaks conventions of what people consider the "anime style."

There are no spoilers in this entire post. I am not interested in ruining it for anybody, especially the die-hard Batman fans. However, if you are told or read spoilers elsewhere, you will not find out anything new about Batman if you already know his character. You will feel comforted by the way the stories fit easily into the mythos that has already been created from past stories. Just go and watch the stories unfold, and enjoy another glimpse of Batman's early days as he tries to learn the ropes of crimefighting.

You can catch a theatrical screening of Batman: Gotham Knight at Montreal's Fantasia festival on Saturday at noon, before it is released on DVD next Tuesday.

Previously on fps
2008 Fantasia Festival Animation
Batman: Gotham Knight Promo Video Online
DC Comics OAVs
Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo
The End of Justice League

Previously on The Critical Eye
Batman Animated
Batman & Batman Beyond
Paul Dini
Bruce Timm & Glen Murakami

Labels: anime, Batman, border-crossing, comics, DC Comics, Fantasia festival, features, festivals, Madhouse, shorts, Studio 4C

It's a week of firsts for this blogger - this is my first post on fps and my first experience with Montreal's famous genre spectacle, the Fantasia Film Festival. Illustrator and fellow fps blogger Matt Forsythe and I attended the press symposium and were treated to a preview of what we can expect from July 3rd-21st.

This year's animated offerings feature an unusual and unintentional focus on collaborative efforts and collections of short films, from DC Comics' Batman: Gotham Knight, Studio 4C's aptly named anime extravaganza, Genius Party, and the cutting-edge showcase, Best of Ottawa Animation Festival 2007. There are only two single-narrative feature-length animated presentations in the entire fest - Bill Plympton's poetic, pencil-scratch surrealist vision, Idiots and Angels and John Bergin's bleak, post-apocalyptic fable, From Inside. We'll cover each entry in more detail throughout the festival.

Continue past the jump for a full schedule of the animated films screening at Fantasia 2008:



July 4th - 7:30PM - Hall Theatre - Genius Party
July 5th - 12:00PM - Hall Theatre - Batman: Gotham Knight
July 5th - 1:00PM - J.A. De Seve - Best of Ottawa Animation Festival 2007
July 6th - 1:00PM - Hall Theatre - Genius Party
July 7th - 9:45PM - Hall Theatre - Peur (s) Du Noir
July 9th - 3:00PM - J.A. De Seve - Peur (s) Du Noir
July 9th - 7:30PM - Hall Theatre - Idiots and Angels (Hosted by creator, Bill Plympton)
July 12th - 2:40PM - J.A. De Seve - Outer Limits Of Animation 2008 (Shorts from around the globe)
July 13th - 9:40PM - J.A. De Seve - From Inside
July 14th - 3:00PM - J.A. De Seve - From Inside

(Okay, who's the putz that programmed Batman: Gotham Knight to screen at the same time as the Ottawa Festival shorts?! ...sigh... guess I'll have to watch you at home on Blu-ray, Batman...)

Tickets go on sale July 2nd at 2PM at the Concordia Hall Theatre (Guy-Concordia Metro) and throughout the Admission Network at $7.50 each.

Directions:Hall Theatre - 1455 Maisonneuve O. (Guy Metro) Map and Directions
DB Clarke Theatre - 1455 Maisonneuve O. (Guy Metro) Map and Directions
J.A. De Seve - 1400 Maisonneuve O. (Guy Metro) Map and Directions

Previously on fps:
2007 Fantasia Line-Up
Batman: Gotham Knight Online
Genius Party Trailers
Plymptoons: The Complete Early Works of Bill Plympton

Labels: anime, Batman, Bill Plympton, Fantasia festival, festivals, From Inside, Genius Party, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, shorts, Studio 4C

It's a given that even with such a wealth of animated shorts on the Internet, there's nothing like rubbing shoulders with like-minded people at a film festival. But when it comes to festival compilations on DVD, things get a little trickier. After all, if you're going to watch a bunch of shorts on the small screen, why buy them on DVD when you can probably find many of them, legally or otherwise, online?

That question plagues the third iteration of the annual Animation Show DVD release; a quick glance at its contents revealed three shorts that I'd seen online already, and I'm sure most, if not all, of the rest are lurking around somewhere.

Ah, but then you wouldn't have the distinct pleasure of watching 103 minutes of some of the best shorts of the past three years by pressing just one button from the comfort of your couch. Really, there isn't a false note here. I've seen Rabbit, City Paradise, Tyger and Learn Self Defense a gazillion times, and cheerfully sat through them from start to finish again. The kaleidoscopic Collision was serviceable and short enough not to be too taxing, and One D entertained me despite its one-note gag, unsurprising animation in-joke and glaring technical inaccuracy. (Hello, these characters are two-dimensional, not one-dimensional. Watch Ladd Ehlinger, Jr.'s interpretation of Flatland to see it done right.) Overall, a nice variety of films in a nice variety of styles.

Also, you wouldn't get great extras like an animatic and three video interviews, along with text interviews you can read by putting the DVD into a computer. That's some good bang for the bucks.

For all that, though, there are a few things that bother me here. I'm still not sure if I'm keen on the DVDs including a bunch of shorts that weren't screened during the theatrical run. I expect to see shorts on the big screen that I won't see on DVD due to rights issues, but it feels kind of odd that neither medium, by itself, is the complete experience.

Most glaring, however, is the inclusion of an eight-minute trailer for MTV's The Maxx, which is stuck in the middle of the festival extras instead of with the MTV trailers. (The Animation Show DVD is distributed by MTV Home Entertainment.) It's strange, because it's not part of the festival content, but its placement implies inclusion in the festival. Er, um, why exactly? It feels like a bit of corporate pimping, which doesn't reflect well on anyone involved.

Where to Get It
Buy The Animation Show, Vol. 3 on DVD from Amazon.com

Labels: Animation Show, festivals, reviews, shorts

In case you didn't know, Kino Kid and René Walling, the two longest-serving Frames Per Second co-conspirators (aside from, well, me) have both been working on Anticipation, the 67th annual World Science Fiction Convention (aka the Worldcon), which is happening right here in Montreal next year. Just this morning I got word that I can take the gag off my mouth and spread the news: this year's Guest of Honor is none other than Ralph Bakshi, one of the few people I can call a maverick without rolling my eyes. Bakshi spent close to four decades in the animation business, starting on Terrytoons productions like Mighty Mouse but ultimately making his mark with gritty urban fare like Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin along with fantasy fare like Wizards, the first Lord of the Rings feature, and Fire & Ice—and along the way worked with comics and animation legends like Frank Frazetta, Jim Steranko, Virgil Ross, and a kid named John Kricfalusi.

Many of Bakshi's films continue to cause controversy, if not heated discussion, but the best part about all of them is that they display his belief that no subject is out of bounds for animation. When I wrote the introduction to our July 2004 interview, I commented that if he ever came to Montreal the drinks would be on me. I don't know if he ever read that, but the offer still stands.

Labels: festivals, Montreal, Ralph Bakshi

Late last year we reported that the town of Spring Lake, Michigan, birthplace of animation pioneer Winsor McCay, was mulling creating a monument and an animation festival to honour their local boy who'd made it big. While they haven't quite got to the monument and they've ditched the inaccurate label of "birthplace of animation" for the town, they are going ahead with a festival of sorts. July June 17 will be the first Winsor McCay Day as part of the Spring Lake Heritage Festival. As expected, there will be a Winsor McCay Film Festival in the evening, featuring McCay's short films and John Canemkaer's Remembering Winsor McCay documentary.

Like any good film festival, they also encourage activities about films beyond just watching them. Preschoolers will be able to make their own stuffed Gerties, and older kids and adults can enjoy an introduction to McCay and his work as well as a drawing class. You can find out more about the festival and Spring Lake on the organizing committee's blog.

Labels: festivals, shorts, Winsor McCay

Toon Boom Animation, the University of Trinidad and Tobago and the Animae Caribe Festival have teamed up to launch the first Caribbean and Latin America Edition of the Toon Boom Animation Festival. As in previous editions of the festival, they're looking for short films produced in the Caribbean and Latin America using Toon Boom Studio, Digital Pro, Adobe Flash, Shockwave or similar packages. The submitted shorts must fit the theme "Bridging the Caribbean and Latin America through the Arts and Local Festivals." The top ten finalists' work will be shown at this year's Animae Caribe festival, which is being held September 25–27 in Trinidad.

Labels: Caribbean, festivals, Flash animation, Latin America, Trinidad

Signe Baumane dropped me a line to let me know that two of her fellow New York-based independent animators are screening the American premieres of their recent features at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. Nina Paley's longtime endeavour Sita Sings the Blues—which we featured in our November 2005 issue—will be showing from April 25 to May 2, while Bill Plympton's Idiots and Angels runs from April 26 to May 3. Screening times and ticket info below.

Tickets: Visit the Tribeca Film Festival site, or call 646-502-5296.

Sita Sings the Blues

Friday, April 25, 8:15 pm
AMC Village VII (AV7)
66 Third Avenue (at 11th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Sunday, April 27, 3:45 pm
AMC 19th Street East (A19)
890 Broadway (at 19th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Monday, April 28, 10:45 pm
AMC Village VII (AV7)
66 Third Avenue (at 11th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Thursday, May 1, 1:45 pm
Village East Cinemas (VEC)
181 Second Avenue (at 12th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Friday, May 2, 3:00 pm
AMC 19th Street East (A19)
890 Broadway (at 19th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Idiots and Angels

Saturday, April 26, 5:30 pm
AMC 19th Street East (A19)
890 Broadway (at 19th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Sunday, April 27, 9:30 pm
Village East Cinemas (VEC)
181 Second Avenue (at 12th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Wednesday, April 30, 11:00 pm
AMC Village VII (AV7)
66 Third Avenue (at 11th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Saturday, May 3, 8:00 pm
Village East Cinemas (VEC)
181 Second Avenue (at 12th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Labels: Bill Plympton, festivals, Flash animation, New York, Nina Paley, Tribeca Film Festival

The Japan Culture + Hyperculture festival at the Kennedy Center is the place to be in Washington D.C. this weekend for exciting anime. We've been falling all over ourselves because of Genius Party anthology for a while, and its North American premiere and the world premiere of Genius Party Beyond will be screening at the festival on Friday and Saturday. The other three anime screenings on Sunday are equally notable: it just depends on the type of animation you like to seek out. The east coast premieres of Appleseed: Ex Machina and The Piano Forest are firsts, but Five Centimeters Per Second, despite being listed as an east coast premiere, screened last November at WFAC.

Thanks to a head's up from Amid at Cartoon Brew.

Previously on fps
Genius Party
Masaaki Yuasa interview
Eiko Tanaka interview

Labels: anime, features, festivals, Genius Party, Japan, Studio 4C, Washington DC

The Italian animation festival Cortoons is looking for submissions of animated short films. The festival takes place March 27-30, 2008.

Submissions must have been produced on or after January 1, 2005. Italian or English-subtitled films have preference.

There are five competition categories:

• Short Italian movie from 1 to 20 minutes
• Short International movie from 1 to 20 minutes
• Short movie realized with Flash
• VFX
• Animated Videoclip

Submissions must be received by January 1, 2008. There is no fee for entry.

For more information, contact:
Coritalia
Via Paola Falconieri 3
Roma, Italy

+39 06 45436533
redazione [at] cortoons.it

Labels: call for entries, festivals, Italy

The Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema is a small festival in the quiet town of Waterloo, Ontario, dedicated to long-form animation. WFAC's lineup has grown at a reasonable pace, from three anime films each for its first and second editions to a dozen or more selections since from all over the world, including independent features from North America.

The website is live and all the films are listed here.

"The World Cinema programme includes Oscar-nominated Leslie Iwerks’ The Pixar Story, a chronicle of the history, the challenges, the triumphs, and the people of Pixar Animation Studios and the art they pioneered: computer animation; the charming re-imagined fairytale The Ugly Duckling and Me, the hilarious and completely outrageous Aachi and Ssipak, master Czech stop-motion animator Jan Balej's incredible horror film One Night In The City, the infamous hilarious Norwegian romp Free Jimmy, Shinkai Makoto's heart-wrenching anime drama 5 Centimeters Per Second, vampire action RH+, and the edgy hard-boiled Film Noir, and Otto Guerra's irreverent hippie satire Wood & Stock: Sex, Oregano and Rock 'n Roll."

Balej's Fimfarum 2 was one of my personal favourites from last year's festival, but One Night In The City seems to be in a whole other league. On Saturday at 6:30 p.m. EST, Ladd Ehrlinger's adaptation of Flatland will be screened and the director will be present for a Q&A afterward, both of which will be broadcast live online. As if that weren't enough, Katsuhiro Otomo's latest short project is screening in the timeslot just before it.

The festival is about 90 minutes from Toronto, ON, 3 hours from Rochester, NY or Detroit, MI. I'd say it's definitely worth at least a day trip for animation fans in search of more than the slim pickings at the cineplex.

Labels: features, festivals, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC

New Yorkers have four opportunities to catch a screening of 11 Croatian animated shorts between Saturday, October 27 and Wednesday, November 14. Light Drawings: The Zagreb School of Animation is part of the Beyond Boundaries: The Emergence of Croatian Cinema series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which begins tomorrow.

The Loner, Vatroslav Mimica, 1958; 12m
Concerto for a Sub-machine Gun, Dusan Vukotic, 1958; 14m
The Inspector Is Back! Vatroslav Mimica, 1959; 11m
The Piece of Shagreen Leather, Vlado Kristl, 1960; 10m
Don Quixote, Vlado Kristl, 1961; 11m
The Substitute, Dusan Vukotic, 1961; 10m
The Wall,Ante Zaninovic, 1965; 3m
Curiosity , Borivoj Dovnikovic-Bordo, 1966, 8m
Revelry, Zlatko Bourek, 1966; 9m
Passing Days, Nedeljko Dragic, 1969, 10m
Satiemania, Zdenko Gasparovic, 1978, 14m

Labels: Croatia, festivals, New York, shorts, Zagreb

The Cinematheque Quebecoise focuses on German animation this week. Filmfest Dresden Presents New German Animation screens on Thursday, October 25 at 6:30 p.m., and repeats on Friday at 4:00 p.m.

Our Man in Nirvana Jan Koester
Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker Stefan Müller
Delivery Till Nowak (attending)
Close Your Eyes and Do Not Breathe Vuk Jevremovic
Lovesick Speka Cadez
Bildfenster/Fensterbilder Bert Gottschalk
The Tell-Tale Heart (Der Verrückte, das Herz und das Auge) Annette Jung
Diary of a Perfect Love (Tagebuch einer perfekten Liebe) Sebastien Peterson

As part of its World Animation Day events on Sunday, October 28th, Hints of Excellence: Classics of the DEFA screens for free.

Labels: events, festivals, Filmfest Dresden, Germany, Montreal, shorts

Animation fans in LA who didn't make it to the Platform International Animation Festival (or those who simply want to relive it) will get a chance to see selections from the festival during a screening on Monday, October 15, at 8:00 p.m. at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater.

There were many notable shorts during the festival although I haven't been able to find out the full lineup for this screening (Luis Cook's The Pearce Sisters and work by Don Hertzfeldt and Miwa Matreyek will be featured), I don't doubt for a moment that the variety and selection of shorts will be entirely worth your time.

Previously on fps
Platform International Animation Festival coverage

Labels: events, festivals, Los Angeles, Platform, shorts

Le Festival du Nouveau Cinéma is known for its wolf that adorns its publicity materials. The fest has a track called Les P'tits Loups or, in English, Little Wolves, with programming geared towards children, and only two shorts in that entire track are live-action. The selections will definitely be of interest to parents and guardians, and honestly, I think if you left the kids at home you might not notice.

The track begins on the morning of Saturday, October 13 with U, a feature from France that appears to be a fairy tale on the outside and is a coming of age story underneath it all, despite the unicorn and the castle. It deals with concepts of love and adolescence in a very disarming fashion.

Sunday, October 14 features an hour's worth of Komaneko: The Curious Cat shorts. I can't recommend this highly enough. Our heroine is the ultimate do-it-yourselfer and amateur auteur. This little stop-mo cat creates her own stop-motion shorts, makes her own props, sets and puppets, and can be found outside filming her surroundings. One of her partners in crime is a little cat who builds robots and fixes mechanical objects.
Kids take away a great lesson, and the shorts, although suitable for children as young as 3, can entertain someone in their 50s just as easily. The shorts are well-crafted, include engaging characters and they have a simple, but coherent story. In Japan, it is distributed by Geneon Entertainment. It's too bad that they'll no longer be distributing DVDs in North America. I hope that someone else distributes them here. For now, you can get them at Yesasia.

For a more diverse selection, Sunday, October 21 features the various shorts, mostly animated, including the hilarious Isabelle au Bois Dormant/Sleeping Betty from Claude Cloutier at the NFB. If the festival's selection doesn't get local kids interested in film and animation, I'm not sure what will.

Labels: features, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, festivals, FNC, France, Japan, live action, Montreal, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, shorts, stop-motion

When I sat down to watch Persepolis, the opening film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, I was already a fan of the comics it was based on—even though I'd never read them. A year ago Kino Kid introduced me to Marjane Satrapi's work via Poulet aux prunes (Chicken with Plums), another comic set in her native Iran, and it quietly blew me away with its lyrical storytelling. Like Charles M. Schulz's work, Satrapi's style is deceptive: It would be easy to look at its simplicity and starkness (like most of Schulz's work, her comics are in black and white, with no greys) and declare it childish or naïve. It would also be an injustice. With heavy-lidded eyes, wide-open mouths or rubber-hosey limbs, Satrapi's characters convey everything from gleeful, kinetic action to stark terror to heart-rending anguish—which is perfectly fitting for the autobiographical Persepolis.

The movie opens in Tehran, just a few years before the Iranian Revolution. Marjane's educated, progressive and politically aware parents are anticipating the fall of the Shah, and when the demonstrations start they're out on the streets protesting. In the middle of all this upheaval Marjane is starting to piece together her world view in that broad, semi-understanding, somewhat egocentric way that only a child can. As the situation becomes more dangerous (the protests turn violent), then hopeful (the Shah goes into exile, political prisoners are freed), then horribly awry (the rise of Islamic fundamentalism) she's forced to learn complicated, terrible lessons in a very short time.

One of the hardest lessons for Marjane to learn is to temper her smart mouth. A bright child raised by socially conscious parents, she had long been encouraged to question and to speak her mind—not an especially bad thing during the Shah's last days in power, but a dangerous trait in an increasingly restrictive society, and especially in one that devalues its women. When she's fourteen, her parents realize that Marjane can't thrive in Iran, so they send her to a French school in Vienna. It's there that Marjane suffers the trials and confusion of culture shock, racism and adolescence, sometimes separately, often all at once.

I ended up reading the first two collected Persepolis volumes after seeing the movie, and was struck by how well they complement each other. Because of the way comics telescope time, there are some things that the movie compresses, and others it extends. In some cases, it's a mix of both: A scene in which the Guardians of the Revolution, Iran's militia and moral police, break up an illicit party is given more play in the movie, but Marjane's emotional aftermath is reduced to mere moments—and the result is that much more powerful.

The movie, which is co-written and co-directed by Satrapi (along with Vincent Paronnaud), is extremely faithful to her style; though it includes more grey tones to provide some texture, there are only slight concessions to the animated medium. (Again, a comparison to Schulz's Peanuts is apt here). Faithful, however, doesn't mean slavish: rather than using the comics as a literal storyboard, the movie uses them as springboard. As loose as the comics' style is, the movie takes advantage of animation's possibilities, especially with regards to the chadors and habits of the strictly religious Iranian women and nuns who have the misfortune to cross Marjane's path. Bodies bend, curve and coil; rarely to extreme, but often with a liveliness that's just a step above Satrapi's more contemplative comics. Several one- or two-panel elements (or even just speech balloons) from the comic get extended, sometimes hilarious play in the movie, including a whimsical take on the Shah's father's installation by the British, and the best rendition of "Eye of the Tiger" ever.

Persepolis is the cinematic sibling of other autobiographical films that encompass cultures and experiences that most in the West have heard or read of, but only really know superficially, like Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies; but it's also quite different. There's no singular, epic tragic moment as in Barefoot Gen, nor is there the shadow of death that hangs over Grave of the Fireflies. What we do have is several decades of a life, rather than a tiny sliver; and by observing the growth of that life, we're given a nuanced look at the culture and the people that shaped it. Satrapi's gaze is unflinching as she exposes everyone's good and bad sides; she not only reveals her own failings and hypocrisies, she exposes the good in people it would be easy to write off. When two militia members stop her family late one evening, she and her grandmother try to get to the apartment quickly so they can ditch her father's supply of alcohol. When the grandmother plays at being hypoglycemic for their excuse, one of the guardsmen softens for a moment and says, "Just like my mother. Go on."

This is Persepolis's magic. It presents a complex, layered, compassionate and often humorous look at the people of a country that has been presented only superficially to Westerners, most recently as a member of the "axis of evil" with a lunatic as a leader. It's a shame that the people who most need to see Persepolis likely won't, but in the meantime we can experience the joys and sadness of a life that is at once alien and familiar, in glorious black and white.

Labels: features, festivals, Iran, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Persepolis, Sony Pictures Entertainment

Since Persepolis and Madame Tutli-Putli each screened at Cannes and won awards this year in May, they have appeared at animation and mainstream film festivals to acclaim. Montrealers can now finally see both films by attending the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, which begins today.

Animation seems to have taken on a more important role in the festival with more shorts than ever. However, a few might slip through the cracks if you aren't careful. The visceral Face lies in wait in Competition 1, on Thursday, October 11 and Wednesday, October 17th. Madame Tutli-Putli is showing during Competition 2 this Friday, October 12 and Tuesday, October 16. Selina Cobley's Crow Moon screens in Competition 3 next week on the 17th and 18th.

The National Film Board of Canada Stereo Lab is screening four stereoscopic shorts, which 2004 OIAF attendees might have seen, but this screening includes the premiere of a stereoscopic version of Theodor Ushev's phenomenal Tower Bawher.

Previously on fps
Festival du Nouveau Cinéma coverage
Persepolis coverage
Two Podcasts for Madame Tutli-Putli

Labels: computer animation, events, features, festivals, France, Madame Tutli-Putli, Montreal, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Persepolis, shorts, stop-motion, United Kingdom

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Persepolis [2007] Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi, France

BEST INDEPENDENT SHORT ANIMATION
Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor [2007] Koji Yamamura, Japan

BEST STUDENT ANIMATION
Milk Teeth [2007] Tibor Banoczki, National Film and Television School, UK

BEST COMMISSIONED ANIMATION
Golden Age [2007] Aaron Augenblick, Augenblick Studios, USA

BEST CANADIAN ANIMATION
Sleeping Betty (Isabelle au bois dormant) [2007] Claude Cloutier, National Film Board of Canada, Canada
Honourable Mention: I Met The Walrus (2007) Josh Raskin, I Met the Walrus Inc., Canada

ANIMATION SCHOOL SHOWREEL
Bezalel Academy for Art and Design (Israel)

INDEPENDENT SHORT ANIMATION COMPETITION
Narrative Short Animation under 35 minutes: Madame Tutli-Putli [2007] Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski, National Film Board of Canada, Canada

Experimental / Abstract Animation under 35 minutes: Framing (Bildfenster / Fensterbilder) [2007] Bert Gottschalk, Germany

Honourable Mention: Teat Beat of Sex [2007] Signe Baumane, USA

STUDENT ANIMATION COMPETITION
Adobe Prize for Best High School Animation: Herbert [2007] Aven Fisher, King’s View Academy, Canada

Undergraduate Animation: Doxology [2007] Michael Langan, Rhode Island School of Design, USA

Graduate Animation: t.o.m. [2006] Tom Brown & Daniel Gray, International Film School of Wales, UK

COMMISSIONED ANIMATION COMPETITION
Promotional Animation: National Lottery ‘The Big Win’ [2006] Marc Craste, Studio AKA, UK

Music Video: OOIOO ‘UMO’ [2007] Shoji Goto, Japan

Television Animation for Adults: John and Karen [2007] Matthew Walker, Arthur Cox Ltd., UK

NEW MEDIA COMPETITION
AniBoom Prize for Animation Short Made for the Internet: L’eau Life [2007] Jeff Scher, Fez Films, USA

ANIMATION MADE FOR CHILDREN
Best Short Animation: Zhiharka [2006] Oleg Uzhinov, “Pilot” Moscow Animation Studio, Russian Federation
Honourable Mention: Nightmare at School [2007] Catherine Arcand, National Film Board of Canada, Canada
Honourable Mention: Aston's Stones (Astons stenar) [2007] Uzi Geffenblad & Lotta Geffenblad, Sweden

Television Animation for Children: Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends 'Squeeze the Day' [2006] Craig McCracken, Cartoon Network Studios, USA
Honourable Mention: Pocoyo 'Dance Off' [2007] Guillermo Garcia & Alfonso Rodriguez, Zinkia Entertainment & Granada International, Spain & UK

NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PUBLIC PRIZE (Voted by the Audience)
Sleeping Betty (Isabelle au bois dormant) [2007] Claude Cloutier, National Film Board of Canada, Canada

Labels: features, festivals, Madame Tutli-Putli, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, shorts

The Animator's Picnic in Strathcona Park was plenty of fun. Lots of people were glad to see familiar faces and make new connections. This was my chance to see Martine Chartrand and Pilar Newton again. Pilar was one of the winners in the annual pumpkin carving contest again this year.Her pumpkin toaster was a hit with the crowd, along with many others. Another prizewinner was a pumpkin inspired by Luis Cook's Aardman Animation short, The Pearce Sisters.

It was also a chance for the animation community to come together to help the family of the late Helen Hill. During the picnic, donations were contributed to an education fund for her son, the Francis Pop Education Fund.

Labels: Aardman Animations, events, festivals, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival

People often forget that not every event at the Ottawa International Animation Festival requires that you get a babysitter before you leave home. There are many opportunities to take the kids with you. Here's a list of family friendly events.

Labels: events, festivals, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, shorts, workshops

Festival madness: Animatu 2007 kicks off its appreciation of digital animation in Beja, Portugal on October 17, featuring shorts like Ark, Codehunters and Guy's Guide to Zombies; in Spain, Animadrid starts off strong on September 28, opening with Nocturna; I'm still a little peeved at Aurora (formerly Norwich International Animation Festival) for dumping the word "animation" from their name because they think it's too restrictive, but damn do they have a lot of cool animation and animators in this year's fest, which starts November 7; Animae Caribe hits the University of the West Indies, Trinidad on October 25 and will feature a history of African animation; and the awesome Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema returns to the tiny town starting November 15, with an undoubtedly incredible lineup and steady supply of excellent hot chocolate.

Two new additions to our Sites We Like blogroll (over on the lower right sidebar, in case you hadn't noticed): Fill This Space is Patrick Smith's space for ruminating on the art and animation that he makes, and that inspires him; Diego Stoliar's self-titled blog features his personal and creative work. I featured Patrick's Moving Along in our Flicker newsletter a while ago, and praised his Handshake ever so briefly in my review of the second Avoid Eye Contact DVD; Diego was a participant in the National Film Board of Canada's most recent iteration of the Hothouse project, and you can see his contribution, One, along with the rest of them here. They'e both great guys, and I hope one day we'll all share beers together.

In the past we've mentioned the weekend animation workshops that the National Film Board hosts for kids here in Montreal; I should also mention that the NFB in Toronto has been running the same kind of program at the Mediatheque, for budding animators aged 3 to 13. The current program runs through to April 2008, but you can jump in at any time.

The Iranian feature Persepolis has been making the festival rounds for most of the year, but it looks like Sony Classics is giving it at least some sort of a theatrical release. I don't know about the rest of the continent, but Montrealers will be able to catch it in English and French starting January 11.

Speaking of Sony, the company is picking up where Disney left off with direct-to-DVD sequels of its feature properties; the first title is Open Season 2. Fans may howl at the resurgence of cheapquels, but I imagine it's hard for executives to ignore the heaping piles of money they generate.

Labels: Canada, features, festivals, Montreal, Persepolis, Portugal, shorts, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Spain, Toronto, Trinidad, United Kingdom, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC

Film: VEXILLE
Country: Japan
Director: Sori (Fumihiko Sori)
Length: 110 minutes
Rating: 14A
Distributor: FUNimation

Watching Vexille is a lot like going on a date with that hot airhead from high school: five minutes in, you wonder what excited you so much to begin with.

Vexille is the story of Vexille Serra (or Serra Vexille, if you live in the West), a member of a UN Special Forces unit called S.W.O.R.D. that monitors the advance of robotics and cybernetics technologies. The year is 2077, and for ten years Japan has lived behind a veil of electro-magnetic cloaking, building up the Daiwa Corporation robotics empire and refusing to allow real communications or travel in or out. Now the world fears that Japan has developed an android capable of passing as a human being, in violation of the same international treaties that caused Japan to withdraw from the UN years ago. And you guessed it: they have, and only through a chain of explosions, pseudo-scientific explanations, and thunderous Paul Oakenfold club anthems can the world be saved from a Bodysnatchers-like plot of android replacement.

Vexille has serious problems that render it more suitable for a late-night pizza-and-beer DVD rental than a twenty-dollar film festival movie ticket. But it's not all bad: Fumihiko Sori was the visual effects director for Appleseed, and fans of that silken, motion-capture-against-digital-vistas style will not be disappointed. The environments, particularly the slums of Tokyo and the toothy, glittering expanse of Los Angeles, are lovely. Tiny details, like snowflakes hitting a windscreen or grit kicked up by a tire, are well done. And the mechanical designs are fabulous. The aforementioned Oakenfold soundtrack keeps pace with the action. And the actions scenes themselves are good -- Sori knows how to execute a chase scene, if not how to inject one with any tension or suspense.

From frame one, the film plays like a bid to the Bubble-era "Techno-Orientalist" anxieties that Toshiya Ueno attributed to the West. It's all there: the threat of individual humans being replaced by human automatons as a result of Japan's technological superiority, Japan's hubris eventually becoming its downfall, Japanese people nobly sacrificing themselves en masse so that their virus cannot spread... The trouble is that the Bubble popped years ago. America has other fears now in China and Iran. Vexille might be an acknowledgement of those fears, or a parody of them. And if the film were smarter, it could have worked as the latter.

But the film is not smart. Every interesting plot point (the replacement of world leaders with "bio-metal" androids, or the giant, metal-eating desert sandworms borrowed from Dune) gets dropped in favour of yet another chase scene. And the titular character, Vexille, is just plain boring. Although the audience is supposed to believe her as a member of an elite fighting force, she does not behave like a well-trained or functional soldier. Yes, she pilots a mechanized suit very well, but so does everyone else on her squad. She seems to have no special skills to bring to the table, and frequently screams at the camera, bemoaning the fate of androids and humans alike instead of doing something useful to help herself or others. After watching a younger, more capable, smarter heroine in Terra, seeing Vexille Serra scream, cry, and follow secondary characters around causes no small amount of yawns and eye-rolls. It's telling when a titular character's most interesting plot development is learning via flashback that her boyfriend was in love with someone else ten years ago.

I saw only four films this Festival, but the other three audiences were loads more enthusiastic than this one. They laughed. They cheered. They held their breath. At the end of Vexille, the audience stood up and filed out quietly, more inspired by the need to find the night's last subway than the film they'd just seen. If you're an anime fan and you want good news from this year's Toronto International Festival, listen to this: Takeshi Miike and Quentin Tarantino are anime fans, and they've worked together on a live-action film called Sukiyaki Western Django. It's violent, funny, and plays like a lusciously-coloured manga flip-book. And there are anime in-jokes. Do yourself a favour, and wait for it instead.

Labels: anime, CGI, features, festivals, Japan, TIFF, Toronto, Toronto International Film Festival, Vexille

Film: TERRA
Country: Canada
Director: Aristomenis Tsirbas
Running Time: 85 minutes
Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Luke Wilson, Brian Cox, David Cross, Amanda Peet, Dennis Quaid, Rosanna Arquette, and James Garner

Today I saw Terra at the Toronto International Film Festival. My screening was packed, and I was lucky enough to attend a Q&A with the director. Tsirbas is a Montreal native, and remarked that premiering his first feature film at TIFF was a "moving and rewarding experience." There has been serious buzz about Terra, and after attending the film I learnt why.

Terra is the story of Mala, a young Terrian (a peaceful, art-loving, techno-wary race who resemble cute tadpoles) whose passion for designing and constructing gadgets makes her something of a misfit at school and home. One day, Mala (Evan Rachel Wood) and her friend Sen notice a mysterious alien ship. When it deploys several smaller ships, one of them crashes and Mala finds Lieutenant Jim Stanton (Luke Wilson) of the Earth Forces after he emerges from the wreckage. With the help of his robot Giddy (David Cross), she builds him an oxygen-friendly environment and learns his language. After the Earth Forces take Terra's father as a "test subject," Mala agrees to help Jim repair his ship if he takes her to the human mothership, known as the Ark, so that she can rescue him. Naturally, it all goes terribly wrong, and soon Mala and Jim are embroiled in a struggle for the planet Terra: Earth Forces military want to terraform Terra and render it uninhabitable for the native Terrians, and the Terrians must confront their warlike past in order to defend themselves.

Terra is not for everyone. It is not for neo-conservatives, although they would probably benefit most from seeing it. It is not for viewers who cannot stand violence in their animation. (Terra is very violent, but not graphic -- you'll see very little blood, but experience quite a lot of tension.) It is not for viewers who do not enjoy CGI, although the animation here is anything but the cheery plasticity of Cars. However, it is meant for people who enjoy great music, fast-paced action (including some fantastic aerial dogfights), and the sort of plot that Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks will never, ever create on their own. Although Tsirbas shied away from applying any sort of definitive moral to his story, Terra is already being discussed as an allegory for the Iraq War. Terra presents the sort of difficult moral world that Miyazaki fans will remember from Princess Mononoke. (But Mononoke does it better, thanks in part to a more eloquent script.)

Terra has a few other flaws. The character designs are somewhat at odds with the environmental and mechanical ones. The humans in particular look as though they have all been stamped from the same mould, which is partially a product of military costume: flight suits and shaved heads. One notable exception is the villainous General Hemmer, whose face one audience member called "copied from George W. Bush." In addition, there are the usual scientific errors that populate most film-based science-fiction: Terra is supposed to be a helium atmosphere, and at certain moments Jim's respirator helps him metabolize it into oxygen. And the script is not particularly witty -- instead it evokes feeling mostly through high-pressure situations and the grace of good actors.

That said, Terra is probably leaps and bounds more unique than most animated feature films due out this year, and it has a good shot at distribution. The kids at my screening had a great time, and the popcorn-munching died down quickly. During the final sequences, I could hear every tiny rustle in the seats -- the film held everyone's attention in a tight grip. I hope you all get a chance to see it, and decide for yourselves what the story's message is.

Labels: CGI, features, festivals, Terra, TIFF, Toronto, Toronto International Film Festival

Ever since I first discovered CG-Arts and the Japan Media Arts Festival, I've been delighted to find that every year the festival features at least one short that looks and feels unlike any film I've ever seen—my criterion for an excellent film fest. This year one of the most striking was Tomonori Hayase's Mix a Miniascape.

Set to music by Jumpei Yamada, Hayase's film uses Adobe Photoshop and After Effects to create a funky, unusual Tokyo travelogue. Hayase took hundreds, if not thousands, of photos of people, places and thing as he passed by them, or they passed him. He then assembled the images into a collage, animating his travels through the city by erasing the image of, say, a building piece by piece at the same time as the next image of the same building is being built piece by piece. The effect is of moving through a fractured urban landscape, propelled by Yamada's breakbeats while navigating periods of both chaos and calm.

While Mix a Miniascape was an example of something new, there were also some nice reprises. Tochka Factory's Pikapika made its Japan Media Arts Festival debut—if you haven't already heard about this literally brilliant short, you should read my earlier praise—and Hikaru Yamakawa followed up last year's Oh Hisse (itself a followup to the previous year's Tope Con Giro) with La Magistral.

In Oh Hisse, Yamakawa presented a surreal world in which hundreds of faceless schoolboys marched in increasingly outlandish geometric processions, to the utter disregard of a man sitting on a bench and three schoolgirls talking among themselves. Oh Hisse's hypnotic appeal lay in its minimalist colour palette (black, white, a few shades of grey and spots of red), the mannequin-like quality of its characters, and its rhythmic and only vaguely natural movement. In La Magistral, Yamakawa explores the same concepts, but opens things up a little bit. The range of colours has expanded to include blues, greens and browns, as seven nearly identical men in grey tracksuits ride unicycles along a slender beam, observed on by swaying figures in coloured tracksuits, all of whom have spheres, cubes and cones for heads, and often casually defying gravity.

Not only does La Magistral have more colour than its predecessor, it also has a more dynamic cameral and yet, it's just as mesmerizing. Another distinction, however, is that Yamakawa decided to give La Magistral an actual ending—one that induces a chuckle, maybe, but otherwise doesn't offer much.

A more compelling film, however, was also perhaps more modest, at least in its tone. Naked Youth is directed by Kojiro Shishido, who coincidentally composed the music for La Magistral. As the film starts, a young man emerges from a school's shower stall. His towel falls, and just as he pulls it back up someone steps out of another stall. The two wordlessly face each other, and the camera cuts away to another scene. We soon see the boys training together and learn that they're members of a boxing team. There's little in the way of linear narrative here; the camera lingers with equal summer laziness on the sunlit trees and blue skies in their Japanese suburb, the mundane scenes of road trips, and the boys' vigorous exercise and practice regimen.

And then there's that shower scene, which appears and disappears like a metronome tick, four times throughout the film. Like the rest of Naked Youth, the scene is wordless and features just the right sounds to establish a sense of place and mood. But that mood is ambiguous, and increasingly charged with tentative eroticism whenever the boys face each other.

Are there clues to their relationship in other scenes? The boys sometimes work out together, sometimes alone; and they look away from each other as often as not. When one of them changes out of his shorts next to the boxing ring—a seemingly common occurrence, as no one really pays him any mind—is the other boy looking at him, or you know, looking at him? The delight of Naked Youth is that it obeys the maxim of "show, don't tell," but it doesn't go out of its way to show everything, either. Subtlety is king here, and the audience still has to work to figure out what it can.

From the standpoint of technique, Naked Youth presents its story in a way that seems very traditional, and yet unconventional. It's hand-drawn in what we consider the anime style, though its characters are perhaps a little less streamlined and a little more detailed—closer, one might say, to more of a manga style. The animation direction also favours a look and feel that's less flat than most commercial anime. Athletic scenes feature a moving, "handheld" camera, with figures looking more as if they're moving through three-dimensional space, with little of the exaggeration that's common in anime. Much of this look is a result of strikingly stylized integration of 3D computer animation, hand-drawn animation and beautiful lighting and texturing effects.

Shishido gives Naked Youth space to breathe by providing many moments of figurative, if not literal, silence, in which nothing more happens than, say, the team waiting out a summer downpour or sunlight filtering through the trees as crickets chirp. Of course, these kinds of moments aren't new to anime; for decades, this appreciation of stillness has been part of the medium's appeal. But in Naked Youth these scenes are even more engaging, as Shishido uses light CGI touches and careful audio work to effectively place the viewer in the scene. That downpour, for example, is pretty convincing, and while one nightttime scene is a just a little CGI-flashy—since when do moths flitting around a street light cast such stark shadows?—it beautifully conveys that feeling of being out alone on a quiet summer night.

It's films like Naked Youth that put the lie to the sentiment that animation must necessarily be simple, childish, or fantastic in subject matter; the complicated yet simple Naked Youth's exploration of a slice of adolescent life could well have been told in live action, but it would have been all the poorer for it.

Labels: anime, CGI, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, music videos, reviews, shorts

If you're an animator looking for work, you need to get yourself over to the Ottawa International Animation Festival if you can humanly manage it. For a number of reasons, but one is the Animators For Hire event featuring companies like Blue Sky, Nelvana and Walt Disney Animation Studios.


It's simple, just go to the OIAF website, check out the list of interviewees, and follow the steps (but do it all by this Friday, September 14):

1. Review what each company is looking for to make sure you would be a good fit. Take note of what countries they can take applicants from, and the level of experience they are looking for.

2. Once you have decided on a company you'd like to meet with, follow that studio's information on our website to the correct email link. Include your name and contact information. Please paste your resume into the body of the email. Do not send attachments. We will be doing a quick look at your application to ensure that you meet the basic job requirements.

3. We will let you know on Saturday, September 15 what meeting times you have been assigned.

Forget speed-dating. Clean up your portfolio, and get ready for the speed-meeting that could really change your life.

Labels: events, festivals, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival

There's just a week to go before the Ottawa International Animation Festival opens, and the lineup is impressive. If you'll be in Ottawa for the first day, Wednesday, September 19, then you will be among the first to see the film adaptation of Persepolis, adapted by the author Marjane Satrapi. It won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes earlier this year and screened recently at the Toronto International Film Festival. Unless you will be at the VFF in October, you won't want to miss it in Ottawa with a crowd that can't be beat for enthusiasm when the film is deserving.

Following the opening feature, Short Competition 1 also features a notable selection including instant personal classic, UMO, the visceral J-Pop video directed by Shoji Goto. The video melds multiple techniques, including stop-motion, CG and 2D, and effectively makes you want more when it ends. It won't be the first or last animation short that you will see over the course of the festival the latches onto you.

Labels: comics, features, festivals, Iran, Japan, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Persepolis, shorts, visual music

One of SIGGRAPH's (many) hidden gems is the collection of digitally animated shorts from the previous Japan Media Arts Festival. Hidden because in the middle of the constantly repeating Animation Theater, the 90 minutes or so of selected Japan Media Arts Festival shorts are each shown exactly once, across three half-hour programs. However, those screenings represent just a slice of all the films shown during the nine days of the festival. (For that matter, films are just one part of the fest, which includes manga, artwork and installations.)

A case in point is that the two films lodged most firmly in my brain were in the festival's Entertainment Division, and both are rooted in live action. In Tadashi Tsukagoshi's Arrow, a man notices that the cigarette butts he's extinguished under his shoe form an arrow, which points straight to a procession of ants marching... in the shape of an arrow. Digital trickery (as well as creative prop placement and hair gel) creates the procession of pointers that the man follows first out of curiosity, then out of dark compulsion.

Koichiro Tsujikawa's dreamy music video to Cornelius's "Fit Song" spends its entire time in the confines of a house, where CGI brings everyday items to a strange sort of life. Strange because aside from a few objects (most amusingly, a discus-throwing action figure and a top-heavy, ambulatory magnifying glass), almost none are anthropomorphized—and many replicate themselves with more of an eye to what looks good and, above all, what works with the music, rather than any strict adherence to physics. I'm a lifelong puzzler, so I was delighted to see a ball of matches explode into a floating array of early 20th-century Japanese matchstick puzzles, some of which solved themselves as the camera floated by. And is it just me, or is the rolling (and, yes, self-reproducing) sugar cubes' initial dance a nod to Norman McLaren's 1964 film, Canon?

The Entertainment Division did have some fully animated works, however. Satoshi Tomioka's Exit online ads for Taito are frantic and deliriously absurd, both involving noisy and chaotic chase scenes with characters looking for a way out of predicaments they've brought on themselves. (A naked man with a bored, negligée-clad girl in tow flees a woman—her mother? his wife?—down a hotel corridor; a cat tries to liberate a fish from the dinner table of an elderly couple. Oddly enough, in both cases the pursuers have glowing laser eyes and preternatural abilities.) Every time I watch these one-minute ads I think about the buckets of money companies like Dreamworks spend trying to make 3D CGI more cartoony, while smaller studios just sit down and do it—sometimes with better results.

Labels: anime, CGI, commercials, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, live action, music videos, reviews, shorts

If you couldn't make it to this year's SIGGRAPH conference in San Diego (or your local chapter's screening of selected Computer Animation Festival shorts), you're in luck: I've pulled together links to all of the shorts from this year's Electronic Theater and Animation Theaters that are available online in their entirety. (Rather, I think this is all of them: if I've missed any, please let me know.)

Of course, you're not really getting the whole experience as most of these shorts are squished to easily-downloadable sizes. Most of the shorts are on three DVDs available directly from SIGGRAPH's Video Review website; while they're not listed on the site yet, you can send them e-mail to get all the info. The discs are a little pricey, though (they're $60 each, or $40 each for ACM members), especially if you're looking for specific shorts. If you're hunting for something in particular on DVD, you can sometimes find shorts for a little less on the creators' websites or on Stash's monthly DVD compilations.

For now, however, here's what's available online. This list makes up just a little more than half of all the shorts that were shown, so you'll get a good idea of what the festival was like this year. And to save you clicking back and forth, all of these links open in a new browser window.

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27 Storms: Arlene to Zeta
90°
Adidas: Adistar
Aditya Birla Group India
Beach Ball
Beck: Girl
Budwiser: King Crab
Building Blocks
Burning Safari
Cafard
Capturing and Animating Skin Deformation
Cascades
Chevrolet: Buildings
Chocolate Pillows
Codehunters
Crow
Dynamo
En Tus Brazos
equilibrio
Esc
Fed Ex: Moon Office
Fetch
Fight Night Round 3
Froggy
Gears of War
Gorillaz: El Mañana
Half Life 2: Episode 2
Happiness Factory
High Fashion in Equations
HP Hands: Jay-Z
HP Hands: Paulo Coelho
It's JerryTime!: The Big Time
Johnnie Walker: Human
La Marche des sans nom
Lenovo: Virus
L'Uomo Uccello
Marvel Ultimate Alliance: Intro
Microsoft Zune: Two Little Birds
Moutons
Nissan Animal
Oli's Chance
Paraworld
Pepsi: Dance Tron
Portal
Raymond
Respire, Mon Ami - Breathe, My Friend
Sears Tools: Aboretum
Sky HD: Feel Everything
swirl
Ted
The Adventures of Baxter & McGuire: The Soccer Game
The Animator and the Seat
The End
The Grandfather of Soul
The Itch
Tournis
Travelers: Snowball
U2 and Green Day: The Saints Are Coming
Versus
Video 3000
Vigorsol: The Legend
Volkswagen Touran
Warhammer Online: The Age of Reckoning
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

Labels: CGI, festivals, shorts, SIGGRAPH

The annual SIGGRAPH conference ended less than a week ago, and Emru is still in recovery. Here's something for those of us who couldn't make it.

Our local chapter, ACM SIGGRAPH Montreal, is hosting a screening of selections from the Computer Animation Festival in Parc de la Paix, the space next to the Society of Arts and Technology (SAT) at 1195 Saint-Laurent this Saturday, August 18. An outdoor screening would be great, but in case of rain, it will move next door to the SAT who are always gracious hosts.

You can view the 2007 trailer here.
Find your local SIGGRAPH chapter.

Labels: CGI, events, festivals, Montreal, shorts, SIGGRAPH

I've given much love to the Japan Media Arts Festival in the past (and my review of this year's works is coming up soon), so I should mention that the 11th annual festival's Call for Entries site is now open. While most of the festival's work is from Japan, don't let that discourage you from entering: two of this year's prize-winners were Alexandre Petrov's My Love and Vladimir Bellini's The Crane and the Giraffe.

In something of a twist on the concept of audience participation, this year the festival is launching Open Form, where the public can recommend works that they believe deserve recognition. As with the rest of the festival, there aren't really any subdivisions like shorts, features, advertising and so on—just the basic four categories of Art, Entertainment, Animation and Manga.

Open Form's submission deadline is August 31, and the call for entries is open until October 5.

Labels: anime, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival

The second animated feature to be shown at the Fantasia film festival this year was Aachi & Ssipak, a Korean film that, violence and urban dystopia notwithstanding, is miles apart from fest opener Tekkon Kinkreet, or from other Korean features like Sky Blue or My Beautiful Girl, Mari. Unlike those other three films, which profess some kind of introspection, Aachi & Ssipak is an outright and outrageous comedy, whose entire basis is, er, crap. (So maybe the touchstone should be Doggy Poo.)

It's like this: in the future, the world's new energy source is human feces. Everyone has an implanted anus ID ring, so that when someone goes to the bathroom they're rewarded with Juicybars, yummy—and, as it happens, addictive—popsicles. Blue mutants, led by a muscled, pierced, dreadlocked messiah, have been heisting Juicybar shipments in Shit City to such a degree that the city's disturbingly doll-headed fascist leader has commissioned a mad scientist to create a super-cyborg out of cadavers to fight them. Meanwhile, Aachi and Ssipak, two idiot petty Juicybar thieves, find themselves in trouble thanks to their no-good associate, the auteur-wannabe porn producer Jimmy. It's in the course of Jimmy's payback that they encounter the sexy Betsy (Beautiful in the English subtitles), and Ssipak falls head over heels for her on first sight. Betsy becomes the movie's MacGuffin when she's forcibly implanted with a new anus ring that delivers mountains of Juicybars whenever she hits the can, which further complicates things to the point where everyone is trying to catch and/or kill everyone else, with Betsy as the main prize.

At this point, reasonable people would no doubt shake their heads in bewilderment and move on. They'd also miss one of the funniest and well-crafted animated movies I've seen this year. Kino Kid put it well after we saw the film when she said, "It is what it is"—not in that shoulder-shrugging, "what are you gonna do?" way, but in the sense that in the first ten minutes, between the exposition and the car chase/gun battle, you know what type of story it is. And once the basis is established (the world is powered by shit!), there's no need to go for gross-out jokes or squishy sound effects; it's just part of the world, right down to its advertising. (Sure, the ads about happy communities crapping together is absurd, but is it any more absurd than animated marching cigarettes or winking Esso signs? Not really.)

Scatology aside, Aachi & Ssipak is also a relentless action movie that manages to be both ultra-violent (those blue mutants make for excellent exploding-body cannon fodder) and cartoony. If you check out the film's official website, you'll see what I mean. Even as the cyborg mows down mutants with a fervour and style that would be the envy of any Terminator, his body and his equipment maintain the same kind of squash and stretch we expect from gag cartoons. And bonus points to director/screenwriter Jo Beom-jin for putting in all kinds of movie in-jokes that are actually funny without calling attention to themselves (unless, as in the case of Jimmy's Jiffybar-overdose freakout, that's the point). If you've seen Battleship Potemkin you'll howl at the extended riff on the Odessa steps sequence, but if you haven't it's still funny and exciting on its own.

In terms of animation and design, Aachi & Ssipak is both consistent and ambitious. Everything in this dirty, corrupt world holds together visually, and the film is crammed with the kind of dynamic composition, animated camera moves and quick but clear editing that drew many people to anime over the last four decades.

One of the film's many movie posters declares that it contains "2D funky action in an awesome 3D reality!" It's true that there's some 3D work in there, but with one or two forgettable exceptions it's integrated quite well. Having watched the film only once (so far), I'd venture that 3D digital tools were largely used for anything that would be too complicated by hand, but the director set the "too complicated" bar pretty high. The result is that we still get some of that exaggerated, sometimes-snappy, sometimes-elastic feel in many action sequences, rather than fairly literal motion and acceleration. (This is why I'll take the space combat scenes in Macross over those in Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles any day.)

It's refreshing to see that the subject matter didn't make the filmmakers lazy, or too self-satisfied in their subversiveness. Aachi & Ssipak's story and animation work together to make a tight, hilarious action film. I don't know how likely this it is to get a domestic release, but fortunately the Korean DVD includes English subtitles.

Aachi & Ssipak
Directed by Jo Beom-jin
90 minutes
Buy the Aachi & Ssipak DVD (Region 3) from YesAsia.com

Labels: Fantasia festival, features, festivals, Korea, Montreal, reviews

One of the most obnoxious things about Hollywood movies is the tendency to put kids in danger to mine a little extra anxiety from the audience. It's a cheap stunt, because bad things rarely happen to kids in Hollywood films. (Steven Spielberg is a serial offender here. Remember Short Round on the bridge in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or Tim climbing the soon-to-be-re-electrified fence in Jurassic Park? Right.)

There's none of that fake danger in Tekkon Kinkreet, the Studio 4°C film that opened the Fantasia film festival this year. The young protagonists live in a harsh, gritty world that gives no quarter, and that sometimes takes the movie to places that Hollywood movies fear to tread.

Tekkon Kinkreet is the story of Kuro and Shiro (whose names literally translate to Black and White), two of the many orphan children who prowl the streets of Treasure Town. Shiro, the younger of the two, is the innocent, while Kuro has no problem with getting his knuckles (or a length of pipe) bloody to protect him or their turf. In this mix are two cops (one older and wiser, who keeps an eye out for Kuro and Shiro, the other a young rookie); a young yakuza who's leading his boss's advance into Treasure Town; and a mysterious and sinister elfin character who aims to turn a fair chunk of Treasure Town into a massive theme park.

There's a lot going on in this movie, and every one of its 100 minutes is put to good use. The kids, the cops, the yakuza and the developer all have some sort of interplay between each other (sometimes with words, sometimes with violence, sometimes with both), but just as importantly, they each have some sort of interplay with the city itself. In fact, Tekkon Kinkreet is as much about our various relationships to the urban landscape as anything else.

Based on the Taiyo Matsumoto manga Black & White and directed by Michael Arias, Tekkon Kinkreet shares elements of other anime films that feature outsider children. Like Grave of the Fireflies, Kuro and Shiro have struck out on their own, with the older character willing to take on any burden to protect the younger's health and innocence. Like Akira, the movie dwells mostly among those who live in the city but who have dropped out of society. And like Kakurenbo, these kids' relationship with the urban landscape has little to do with its intended use, but is in many ways more intimate and more thorough than for ordinary citizens.

The movie looks fantastic, with Treasure Town a lush forest of rooftops, fire escapes, cables and signs. The characters who inhabit Treasure Town are angular, slope-shouldered, asymmetrical—they owe more in look to Mind Game than, say, Naruto—and fit right in with the bustling, chaotic city. I was quite surprised during the post-screening Q&A when an audience member implied that most of the film was clearly CG; not only because it's obviously not the case, but because if there's any film that proves it doesn't matter which elements are CG and which are hand-drawn, it's this one. The appropriate tool is used at the appropriate time, and it's put together not with the express intent of hiding the seams, but of making the scene work. The end result is something you'll want to repeatedly freeze-frame when the DVD comes out, but which you should catch on the big screen when its limited North American run starts on Friday, just to drink it all in.

Tekkon Kinkreet
Directed by Michael Arias
100 minutes
Buy Tekkon Kinkreet Limited Edition on DVD (Region 2) at YesAsia.com
Buy Tekkon Kinkreet on DVD at Amazon.com
Buy Tekkon Kinkreet soundtrack CD at Amazon.com
Buy Tekkon Kinkreet soundtrack remix CD at YesAsia.com

Labels: anime, Fantasia festival, festivals, Montreal, reviews, Studio 4C, Tekkon Kinkreet

I'm still reliving the highlights from the Platform Animation Festival last week. I confess I didn't get quite as much sleep as I should have, and upon my return from Portland, I found myself struck down with the common cold. There is something terribly wrong about catching a cold in July. I digress. In case you missed out on Platform, here's your chance to catch a few festival clips, without catching the common cold. Regretfully, presentation on a glorious big screen with a room full of animation fanatics from around the world are not included:

The Platform trailer (Smith & Foulkes of Nexus Productions)

From the Portland Animation Showcase (not in the official competition) here's a clip from a personal favourite, the memorable Operation Fish (Jeff Riley)

Party clips:




Impromptu tabletop animation by Audrey M. Eschright at the LAIKA picnic.

drinking + drawing, the party hosted by Dan Meth and Channel Frederator. The finished film premiered close to 2am, after many sharpies had been put to good use.



PikaPika 2007. Check out this impressive trailer of light painting.

And of course, a few winning films:





Best Film For the Internet: Secret Lives of Robots (Lee Rubenstein and Dan Meth)

Best Sound: I Met the Walrus (Josh Raskin)
Perhaps some controversy could be stirred up here, as the audio was recorded almost 40 years ago. However, it is the meticulous timing of the visuals to the audio that creates a most compelling storytelling experience.

Best Performance by Animated Character: No Room For Gerold (Daniel Nocke) Feel the tension of simple human conversation.

Best Series for Children: Shaun the Sheep: Still Life (Chris Sadler)
Aardman shines with this series, cleverly illustrating their nack for picking up clay and making something great.

Check out this local community radio interview of Scott McCloud by illustrator/animator S.W. Conser. It's currently available as a podcast from KBOO FM.

Another radio interview podcast discussing the animation installations, one of the truly hybrid elements of this festival.

A few more things to look forward to:

Amid & Jerry at Cartoon Brew previewed a handful of exciting new projects. In addition to their beta portal http://www.cartoonbrewfilms.com/, they've crafted a glorious collection of the Worst Cartoons Ever! http://www.cartoondump.com/ is coming soon! Jerry also happens to have two new books forthcoming. The Hanna-Barbera Treasury (Hardcover) (October 23, 2007) and Harvey Comics Classics Volume 1: Casper (Paperback) (August 1, 2007)

Check out the Sita Sings the Blues clips online to see how the film is progressing. Nina Paley previewed a work in progress screening of her very own Flash feature film on Friday, and she indicated it should be wrapping up production in approximately 8 months!

Last month, CBS aired 3 episodes of the American Creature Comforts before pulling the plug on the show. Sadly, there are no plans to broadcast episodes 4-7. American producer Kit Boss gave us an elaborate look at the production of the series, and we were given a very special screening of episode 4.

Kit also happened to mention despite the disappointing cancellation, a DVD release of the entire series would be forthcoming, perhaps even ready for a fall release.

Labels: festivals, Platform, Portland

There's once again talk of a Samurai Jack feature, but this time, rather more sensibly, it's to be animated, with creator Genndy Tartakovsky directing. Fred Seibert has launched Frederator Films (along with Kevin Kolde and Eric Gardner), with the aim of producing animated features for under $20 million. Aside from Samurai Jack, the other initial projects are stop-motion The Neverhood (based on the game I praised last year, with creator Doug TenNapel on board to direct) and the hip-hop The Seven Deadly Sins, with Don King signed to provide a voice (!).

If you happen to find yourself in Beja, Portugal in the next two months, the Animatu digital animation festival is screening the best of last year's films. In July they'll be screening a short every hour from 9:00 p.m. to midnight at the Galeria do Desassossego; in August they'll be screening a short before every feature on Mondays at the Pax Julia Municipal Theatre. And if you're a digital filmmaker, don't forget: you've still got just under two weeks to submit your work for this year's festival. (The new deadline's July 15.)

Teheran's Experimental and Documentary Film Center wants to kick-start Iran's animation industry by supporting the production of more animated shorts, as well as theatrical features, with an emphasis on films with a distinctive directorial touch. I'm all for auteur cinema, especially those that are distinctly of the culture that produced them, but I'm curious as to the flavour of the films that will be produced, as Iran has a history of being less than supportive of films the government deems anti-Islamic, anti-Iranian or anti-government (including the recent Persepolis). In some cases that makes the resulting films more interesting, as directors find new, creative ways of slipping in their messages while getting around state censors and critics.

This Saturday the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco plays host to Blast Off!, an exhibition on comics and manga that will feature taiko drumming, cosplay, panel discussions with Gilles Poitras and Fred Schodt, and more. The event, which ties into the museum's Osamu Tezuka exhibit, appears to have the goal of connecting teens who are into manga and anime with a deeper understanding of Japan, anime and manga. Cool.

July 11 will see a tribute to Woody Woodpecker in Hollywood, at Mann's Chinese 6 Theater. On the guest list are Leonard Maltin, Billy West, June Foray, Maurice LaMarche and Phil Roman. (I'm assuming that there will be actual Woody Woodpecker cartoons screened as well, but there's no mention.) People in the neighbourhood can go to this event for free, and the rest of us can watch the show online. Either way, you'll need to visit the website to sign up.

Labels: Animatu, anime, events, festivals, Frederator, Iran, Los Angeles, Persepolis, Portugal, Samurai Jack, San Francisco, shorts, The Neverhood

Before the inaugural Platform Animation Festival rolled into town, one could already make a case for calling Portland a truly animated town. Birthplace of Bill Plympton and Matt Groening, HQ for Will Vinton, and now home to Laika, Dark Horse Comics, and a growing number of VFX shops. But was city of Portland ready to become an international animation metropolis?

Portland has a well-established reputation as an artistic town. It is also a beautiful city, known as the City of Roses for over 100 years. Those in the literary world know Powell's Books to be the largest independent new & used bookstore in the world. Walking the streets, it seemed clear to me that this town has not just a great respect for books and storytelling, but great typography too. High calibre storefronts and signage abound (and what a concept - shop with no sales tax!). This is a smart city.

As a newcomer to Portland, it didn't take long to warm up to the city. Friendly? It seemed at every turn, you would be greeted with a smile. We were surrounded by diverse and historic architecture, and the official festival venues themselves were exceptional. The Portland Art Museum, the multi-stage Portland Center for the Performing Arts (the PCPA) and the Pearl District are all jewels, all walkable, and all appear to have room to grow.

A few notes worth repeating. This was an inaugural festival, one with an entire week of programming. Putting together a festival from scratch is a mammoth task, and organizer Irene Kotlarz deserves a commanding ovation. We were told the festival took over two years to produce, and the amount of effort invested was clearly evident in the details.

In the festival programme, Irene points out that while this event was largely sponsored by Cartoon Network, it was also going to be a logo-free festival where diverse artists and art forms take the centre stage. This is key, and helps to foster a healthy and independent spirit for the event. Equally important and worth remembering - there were no entry fees for artists to submit work to the festival.

Geographically speaking, Portland is perfectly and ecologically positioned. Placed due north of Hollywood and Silicon Valley and not far south from Vancouver, BC, it seems to make sense hosting an international animation festival here. For three decades, Canada has hosted the Ottawa International Animation Festival with an outstanding program of its own. With Platform, Portland gives America an equal opportunity.

Does the world need to see another Platform animation festival? Based on what I saw, I think it does, and I think it is perfectly at home in Portland. Want to see the festival repeat the program in the future? Send the organizers an email and tell them how much you'd appreciate their return. Doing so, you just might help Portland secure a name for itself as the bold new international capital of animation on the Pacific.

Recommended reading: check out over a dozen animation landmarks in the city of Portland in this Aaron Mesh article from the Willamette Week Online.

Labels: festivals, Platform, Portland

Animation director Henry Selick gave a special presentation during the Platform International Animation Festival last week. After an extended reel including his (mostly stop-motion) work for MTV, the shorts Slow Bob and the Lower Dimensions from Liquid TV and the entirely CG Moongirl; and the features The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone, the audience was given a sneak peek into the evolution of the character design for the protagonist in his new directorial effort.

Coraline is based on the award-winning young adult novel of the same name by fantasy author Neil Gaiman. The original cover and illustrations were provided by Gaiman's frequent collaborator Dave McKean (their next collaboration for children is a picture book called Crazy Hair). McKean is known for his incorporation of photo collage in his artwork, but is also a deft illustrator. Although both writer and artist have worked with others, for many, you name one and the other name follows.

Unfortunately, no audio or video recording devices were allowed during the presentation, but I can tell you that I was delighted to see that:

1) The style does not look anything like McKean's. As huge a fan as I am of his work, it seems almost lazy to just go with his style because it's expected of anything associated with Gaiman's work. The medium is different and it's worth coming at the design from a different angle.

2) The new character design, similar to what you see above, really fits the character and the tone of the story. The audience was treated to a short animatic, and Coraline's look and movements make me very hopeful for this adaptation. The talented designers at Laika had me budgeting already for the book featuring conceptual art of the film.

Coraline is slated for theatrical release in late 2008.

Labels: features, festivals, Henry Selick, Laika, Platform, Portland, stop-motion

Our pals at the Fantasia film festival have unleashed this year's lineup, and as always, animation fans are well served—but they have to do a little more work to get their fix.

Features seem a little diminished, but not so much as last year. The fest starts and ends strong—Tekkon Kinkreet is the opening film, and the Korean Yobi the Five-Tailed Fox is the last animated screening, on the second-to-last day of the festival—but those are the only two features on 35mm film. The odd-looking stopmo film We Are the Strange is in high-definition video, but the other features (the Flash-animated Minushi, Naruto the Movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow and Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society) are all projected, standard-definition video. Previous Fantasia fests prove that watching projected video can still be enjoyable, but spending four days at the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema watching nothing but 35mm reminds you of the kind of difference the medium makes.

There are also two short feature documentaries that are about animation, and they're screening together. Animania is about Canadian anime fandom, which appears to focus on how the current generation of teen fans relate to anime. I've seen and heard so many reports on teen fandom I'd be inclined to give it a pass, but last year—back when the movie's focus was less on the teens—I was interviewed extensively for Animania, and I was asked some very interesting questions. I'm hoping they applied the same kind of thoughtfulness to their adolescent subjects. (And no, I'm not in the actual Animania movie, but apparently I'll appear in the DVD extras.) The other documentary is the French Ghibli et le mystère Miyazaki (Ghibli and the Mystery of Miyazaki), which needs little explaining but which is definitely a must-see, especially with interviewees like Isao Takahata, Moebius and Takashi Murakami.

Fantasia's real source of pleasure for animation fans comes from the animated shorts, but that's also its real source of pain. For years I've been preaching that animation shouldn't be ghettoized, that it should be treated like "regular" film. The problem is that Fantasia gives me just what I ask for, scattering its animated shorts among omnibus films (Ten Nights of Dreams) and over a dozen collections of shorts, only two of which are animation-specific (a best-of compilation from last year's Ottawa fest, plus the latest edition of The Outer Limits of Animation, which inexplicably includes the two-year-old, almost overexposed, not-terribly-out-there In the Rough). Miraculously, it's possible to see all of the animated shorts with only one schedule conflict: The one screening of The Outer Limits of Animation is at the same time as Watch Out! Beyond the Genres of Korean Short Films, which includes the 34-minute The Hell (Two Kinds of Life).

And really, that's the most amazing thing about Fantasia this year. They've added a third cinema to their venues, but in three weeks of screenings there appear to be fewer repeats than ever before. It's a testament to the passion of their crew that they're still going so strong.

Labels: anime, Fantasia festival, festivals, Flash animation, Ghost in the Shell, Hayao Miyazaki, Montreal, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, stop-motion, Studio Ghibli, Tekkon Kinkreet

Animation bloggers got their due at the Attack of the Blog panel. Don Sarto of AWN moderated a discussion of five bloggers including Ward Jenkins of Wardomatic, Aaron Simpson of Cold Hard Flash. The discussion ranged from why all students and working animators should have their own blog, monetizing a blog and blogging as a full time-endeavour, how the animation discussion has been transformed due to the blogging explosion.

After the panel, I headed over to the waiting area near the Portland Center for the Performing Arts where a busload of attendees were driven to Suavie Island for the Platform Festival Picnic.

(left to right: animator Musa Brooker, Amid Amidi of Cartoon Brew, stop-motion animators Seamus Walsh and Mark Caballero of Screen Novelties and contributors to Celebrity Deathmatch and Robot Chicken)

Labels: festivals, Platform, Portland

It's rare that we run more than one contest at a time, but sometimes we're just bursting with giveaway goodness. We're giving two winners a two full passes each for next week's Platform International Animation Festival, and another two winners are getting a copy The Art of Ratatouille, which features 160 pages of art and text (text? No, really, we get it for the pictures) about the making of Pixar's latest feature. You can enter the Platform contest here and the Art of Ratatouille contest here. The contests close 1t 11:59 p.m. on June 22 and June 29, respectively.

Labels: contest, events, festivals, Pixar, Platform, Portland

Last Friday I sat down to talk with Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, who make up Clyde Henry Productions. They were getting ready to leave for France, where their ambitious stop-motion film Madame Tutli-Putli was selected for the International Critics' Week at the Cannes film festival. We spoke at length about cinematic influences, our previous encounter at the beginning of production, and why comparing them to the Brothers Quay is a bad idea; you can find the podcast here, if you don't already subscribe to the feed. (And why not? The link's in the sidebar to the right.) Also, check out our video podcast, where I present some excerpts from the 2001 animatic of the film. (See, if you subscribed you'd already know about that.)

If you're not currently in France, you won't have much of a chance to see Madame Tutli-Putli in full just as yet. I'd recommend that you head over to the official website and take a look.

Labels: festivals, interviews, Madame Tutli-Putli, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, stop-motion

I've got to find a way to get to San Francisco. From June 2 to September 9, the Asian Art Museum plays host to Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga, an exhibition focusing on the work of the man who revolutionized manga and anime. Anime hipsters take note: without Tezuka's lovable, cute-as-a-button characters, you wouldn't have Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Death Note to swoon over. You can pay the man his due by visiting the exhibit, which will feature over 200 pieces of artwork from the God of Manga, including. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, with presentations, screenings and other events accompanying the exhibit. Can't make it to SF? Then at least check out the podcasts on the man and the manga. (You'll find them under the "Tezuka" link from the entry page.)

A couple of festivals are looking for animation submissions: Romania's aniMOTION European Animation Festival is accepting entries until May 20; the Woodstock Museum Film/Video Festival in New York has an early deadline of May 31.

Don Bluth and Gary Goldman still want to make a feature-length prequel feature based on the Dragon's Lair arcade game. In the right hands, I think I might enjoy the comedic adventures of Dirk the Daring as a young, somewhat hapless knight. I just don't know who "the right hands" would be.

A team of Iranian animators aims to produce two animated works with the theme of "National Unity, Islamic Solidarity" on July 5, with the intent of establishing (or breaking?) the record for the world’s fastest animation. Uh, how is that measured, exactly? I can make animation pretty quickly—it just wouldn't be particularly long. Anyway, the films will be produced between the morning and evening calls to prayer.

Animator Steve Moore has launched Flip, an online magazine entirely created by animators and animation artists. The first issue features an interview with storyboarding guru and all-around nice lady Nancy Beiman.

Labels: anime, events, exhibitions, features, festivals, Osamu Tezuka, Romania

The 34th Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema Student Film Festival a.k.a Concordia University's YES—year end screening—will be held at the very scenic Cinema du Parc arthouse theatre. There won't be an animation exclusive night but plenty of student frame-by-frame films are scattered throughout the week—from May 4th to the 10th.

Most of the screenings include at least 5 animated shorts. The Best of the Fest happenin' on thursday May 10th includes only 2 though. So check out the very intensive program and plan your schedule. Concordia shorts—whether live action or animation—are generally very refreshing. Attend a few screenings and you just might catch some films that will become student fest favorites by the end of the year.

General admission is 5$, 3.50$ for students. Best of the Fest is respectively 7$ and 10$.

Cinema du Parc is located at 3575 ave. du Parc, Montreal.

Labels: events, festivals, Montreal

I'm a big fan of sampling, mash-ups and multidisciplinary work, and of animation and dance. So I'm intrigued by tomorrow's premiere of Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon's Norman. The creators aim to use projections of Norman McLaren's work combined with live classic and contemporary dance.

If you're in Ottawa, you can see it on April 26-30 at the National Arts Centre (NAC) during the Québec Scene festival. A personal viewing station will be set up at NAC with McLaren's work during the course of the festival. After that, 4DArt will stage Norman in Toronto, throughout Asia, Montreal, and throughout France.

Labels: events, festivals, National Film Board of Canada, NFB, Norman McLaren, visual music

This Saturday the Boston Cyberarts Festival will be hosting the first Visual Music Marathon, a twelve-hour screening of 64 historic and contemporary animated works that marry sight and sound. The Marathon starts runs from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. at Northeastern University's Raytheon Amphitheater. You can find the complete lineup, as well as a nine-minute compilation of clips from the marathon, here.

Labels: Boston, events, festivals, visual music

In my view, there are two types of people in the world: those who are in love with Lotte Reiniger's films, and those who haven't seen them yet. If you're unfamiliar with Reiniger's films, the image at left should give you an idea of her style: she was a pioneer of silhouette films, in which the characters and objects were hinged cutout figures manipulated on glass and lit from underneath.

I don't use the word "pioneer" lightly. Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is often labelled as the first feature-length animated film, but Reiniger's 65-minute The Adventures of Prince Achmed was completed in 1926, while Walt was still working on the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts. And creating images based on layered cutouts necessitated a setup quite similar to a multiplane camera. You can see images of Reiniger at work on this excellent German website.

Prince Achmed was incredibly ambitious, especially considering Reiniger had fewer than ten films under her belt at the time; but if you have the good fortune to see it on the big screen, you realize how much she was in command of her art. None of the fantasy, wonder, romance or whimsy of 1,001 Arabian Nights is lost. And, amazingly, she continued to produce enchanting films for another fifty years.

Which brings me to a recent release I just head about, Musik und Zaubereien (Music and Magic), the third in German company absolutMEDIEN's series of DVDs featuring Reiniger's work. (It's region-free, but it's in PAL, so if you don't have a multi-format DVD player, you can at least watch it on your computer screen.) You won't find The Adventures of Prince Achmed there—that's a separate absolutMEDIEN release, with more extras than the American DVD—but you will find two discs of her work spanning from 1930 to 1971, with her pre-WWII films on one disc and post-WWII films (made in England) on the other. The discs also come with a 27-page booklet (in German), including such things as copies of the censorship cards for some of her films.

It's almost twenty years since I first saw a Reiniger film—it might have been one of her National Film Board of Canada shorts—and about fifteen since I saw The Adventures of Prince Achmed on the big screen at the Cinémathèque Québecoise. While other filmmakers have made excellent silhouette films, they seem incomplete compared to Reiniger's. Michel Ocelot's Princes et princesses from 2000, which incorporates his 1987 short Les Quatres voeux, has the humour, Zumbakamera's Bendito Machine has the bizarrely fantastic imagery, but in all this time I've never had the sense of completeness I get with Reiniger's films. If you haven't yet fallen in love with Lotte Reiniger's work, Musik und Zaubereien is as good a place as any to start.

[Thanks, Society for Animation Studies.]

Labels: festivals, Lotte Reiniger

Germany is the host country at the international animation festival Cartoons on the Bay in Salerno, Italy / Seven German programmes announced as official selections for the Pulcinella Award / Berlin-based Cartoon Film named Studio of the Year

Berlin/Salerno, 19 April 2007 – 'Focus on Germany' – Germany is the featured country at Cartoons on the Bay, the international animation festival in Salerno, Italy which gets underway today and continues until Sunday.

The festival released the following statement: "Every year Cartoons on the Bay highlights a particular country that has shown significant growth and development in the field of animation. For this year's edition Germany was selected because of its long artistic, technological and industrial traditions. This special 'Focus on Germany' will devote particular attention to independent German producers, public institutions and other top players in German animation by means of presentations of their activities, perspectives and strategies as well as round tables discussing the potential of institutional agreements, funding and co-production possibilities. So far over 15 German production companies have registered."

'Cartoons on the Bay – il Festival Internazionale dell'Animazione Televisiva' is Italy's most distinguished international animation festival and one of the most important in the world. This year's will mark the eleventh edition of the festival. The gala will present animated television programme and film premieres and include workshops, a conference, various informational events and round table discussions. One of the festival's mainstays is the Pulcinella Awards, distinctions granted solely to international animated television shows. This year 280 programmes were submitted from 36 countries. Of these, seven German works were chosen in one of eight categories of the Pulcinella Award's official selection. "School of Vampires”, a production of Berlin's Hahn Film, received a Pulcinella Award nomination in the category TV Series for Children. In the Studio of the Year category, which was announced in advance, Berlin-based Cartoon Film and Italy's Maga Animation Studio took home Pulcinella Awards, joining previous winners, among them studios such as Aardman and Pixar.

Labels: events, festivals, Germany, Italy

I've let a small pile of items gather over the last few weeks, because I haven't had the time (or, with my recent cold, the stamina) to mention them. Here they are, in no particular order.

Last March we devoted the In Progress section of the magazine to Today, a short based on a poem by poet laureate Billy Collins and directed by Little Fluffy Clouds co-founders Jerry van de Beek and Betsy de Fries. It was announced recently that Today will join 19 other promotional films (Today was commissioned by the Sundance Channel) in competition at the Annecy festival in June. Congratulations, Jerry and Betsy!

The Norwich International Animation Festival changed its name to Aurora a few weeks ago. Can't argue with that, but their reasoning is questionable. "The change of the name is the annual festival's latest move towards a truly multidisciplinary program, and represents the opinion that 'animation' itself has become a restrictive tag, which rarely does justice to the myriad artistic activity that it encompasses," reads the press release. "It follows, then, that an 'animation festival' is no longer capable of staying abreast of this enormous artistic diversity—so in order to more freely reflect the way the programmers think animation is heading, we're dropping the label." Huh? The debate as to what is and isn't animation has been going on for a long time, and animation festivals—not to mention books, academic programs and even mainstream coverage—have evolved to suit. What's the big deal? Seems to me that if they really wanted to "[challenge] the traditional boundaries of animation," they'd present the nifty installations and live performances they're trumpeting under the old name, then defend their presence. It's not much of a challenge if you punk out and change your name.

If you've been hungering for new Ghibli material and you can't wait until the Sci-Fi Channel's North American rights to Earthsea lapse in 2009, you can always pick up the Japanese DVD of Tales of Earthsea (Gedo Senki) in June, which will come with English subtitles; or you can get the Iblard Time OAV, a collaboration between Ghibli and surrealist artist Naohisa Inoue, which is due for a July 4 release on both DVD and Blu-ray disc (both come with a soundtrack CD).

Next Saturday ASIFA-Hollywood will be hosting the one-day Stop-Motion Expo at Woodbury University in Burbank. Guests include Will Vinton, Screen Novelties' Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh and Robot Chicken's Tennessee Reid Norton. $25 for the panel discussions, $35 for the seminars or $50 for the whole thing. ASIFA-Hollywood members get a $10-$15 discount.

Labels: anime, ASIFA, festivals, stop-motion, Studio Ghibli

Sprockets, the Toronto International Film Festival for Children, celebrates its tenth anniversary from April 13-22. Although the features programme this year is more strongly rooted in live-action film than animation, animation fans should take note of these titles*:

The Reef: Saturday, April 21, 11:00 AM, Canada Square Cinema 2. Directors: Howard E. Baker, John Fox, and Lee Kyeong-Ho. Starring Evan Rachel Wood, John Rhys-Davies, and Rob Schneider. After Pi, an ordinary little fish from Boston, is orphaned when his parents are snared by a fisherman’s net, he travels to an exotic reef to live with his Aunt Pearl. As he tries to orient himself in this new world, Pi meets the fish of his dreams, the beautiful and kind Cordelia, but things do not go swimmingly. Troy, the meanest shark in the ocean, is not only tormenting everyone in the reef community, but also has his eye on Cordelia.

Brave Story: Saturday, April 14, 10:30 AM, Isabel Bader Theater and Sunday, April 22, 2:40 PM, Canada Square Cinema 2. Director: Koichi Chigera. While exploring an old building, energetic eleven-year-old Wataru catches a glimpse of a strange doorway floating atop a spiral staircase. It vanishes in an instant, but Wataru is certain of – yet perplexed by – this vision. Having heard the new kid at school, Ashikawa, refer to a mystical realm where wishes come true, Wataru is anxious to learn more.

Azur and Asmar: Sunday, April 15, 2:00 PM, Isabel Bader Theater. Director: Michel Ocelot. Azur, the son of a nobleman, is raised by a nurse alongside her son Asmar. Both boys adore the nurse’s whimsical tales of the beautiful Djinn Fairy who, captive within the black mountain, awaits a loving prince. Growing and living together as brothers, Azur and Asmar share the dream of one day marrying the mystical nymph – but this dream becomes a cause of sibling rivalry. Eventually, their habitual scuffles and one-upmanship create a rift that appears irreparable.

-Michel Ocelot is set to direct Bjork's latest music video, and watching A&A will show you exactly why. It's hypnotic and beautiful. Moreover, it's one of the few films currently available in North America -- especially animated ones -- that touches on the complicated relationship between France and North Africa.

The afore-mentioned films are all features, but I would be remiss not to mention The Little Short-Sighted Snake, an eleven-minute animated film from Estonia directed by Aina Jarvine and Meelis Arulepp. It's featured as part of the "Animated Animal Tales" block, but I predict it will outshine the others on offer. LSSN's neo-retro designs, broad colour palette, snappy music, and closing sequence make it irresistible.

Have a fun festival, everyone!

*Full disclosure: Madeline Ashby is a Sprockets volunteer. She received no compensation for this blog post, and had nothing to do with the any Sprockets programming decisions.

Labels: festivals, Sprockets, Toronto, Toronto International Film Festival

I've been pretty busy these past few months, and as a result there have been a number of things I've watched or read that I've wanted to write about but haven't for lack of time. So here are a few quick mentions of some things I didn't want to fall through the cracks.

Animation Block Party Mix Tape, Volumes One & Two
When someone says "block party," "mix tape" and "Brooklyn" to me, I think of early hip hop. These collections of shorts from the Animation Block Party animation festival (which hits the streets this year from July 27 to 30) follow the same kind of aesthetic: roughly hewn, sometimes falling short of the mark, but with so much energy you'll be acutely aware of just how overly slick and over-thought other festivals' fare can be. A few arbitrarily chosen favourites: Fin Film's Easy, a look at a strange and slightly disturbing love affair that at times invokes Little Red Riding Hood imagery, with characters mostly rendered as sleek silhouettes; Cunning Stunts, where Jeff Scher colourfully rotoscopes explicit porn footage and sets it to jaunty music (check out his homemade rotoscope stand in the DVD extras); and Andy and Carolyn London's (pseudo-?) autobiographical The Back Brace, a collage film in which the angsty Jewish narrator talks about his unfortunate adolescent experiences with scoliosis.

BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo Vol. 1: Bo-nafide Protector
Believe it or not, the title is actually the name of the main character (Bo-BoBo, for short), a man with a golden-coloured afro, tiger stripes on his arms, and retractable nose hairs that he uses to defend 31st-century Earth from the minions of an evil emperor who has decreed that everyone should be bald.

The best part is, the description alone doesn't even hint at how bizarre this show truly is. However, you have to have the proper mindset for it. BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo is one of those manga adaptations that isn't all that animated, and often has someone posing while saying something ludicrous, which someone else then reacts to with a different, startled pose. Think of it as taking the low-key presentation of Cromartie High School and ratcheting it down a notch.

A note: BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo is, in the tradition of Samurai Pizza Cats, dubbed with only some regard for the original story details. No problem there, but the subtitles are actually just a transcript of the dub—which means those of us who want to get all the Japanese gags will have to, like, learn the language or something.

Mechademia Vol. 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga
A while back I commented that the book Cinema Anime had lofty goals (scholarly analysis of anime) that were undermined by its execution (too much emphasis on being academic, rather than making new ideas accessible, and not enough familiarity with what's outside of the anime sandbox). The first volume of Mechademia—an annual series of themed critical essays relating to anime and manga—largely avoids this problem, and is a pleasure to read.

As with its subject matter, Mechademia's variety is key to its success. There are twenty contributions in this issue, and they vary enough in tone, length and style that if something bothers you in one essay, the next one will make up for it. Mechademia's explorations bounce between fan culture, Japanese culture, manga history and film studies, providing a rich, textured view of the anime and manga world.

That's not to say there aren't problems. I've long had a problem with anime fans' ignorance of the rest of the animation world (though this is less of a problem now than, say, 20 years ago), and an aspect of this pops up in Ueno Toshiya's essay on the intersections between animation, live-action, and dreams in the aesthetics of Mamoru Oshii's films. Toshiya's jumping-off point is the experience of viewing the storyboards to the second Patlabor movie, but just before he makes his observations on how Oshii's storyboards might reflect his view of the world around him, he confesses that he hasn't seen many storyboards. I had to read the essay (an interesting one, I hasten to add) a second time just to get past the fact that someone would make these comments without first looking at other storyboards to determine what, if anything, is unique about Oshii's.

But this, like the handful of annoyances found throughout the book, is fairly minor; with one exception, none of these problems went so far as to completely derail my enjoyment of an essay. Mechademia's first outing makes for a stimulating look at anime through the lens of culture, and culture through the lens of anime. I can't wait for the next volume.

Labels: anime, festivals, reviews

Ah, springtime. When a young fan's fancy turns to thoughts of... anime!

Polygon Pictures' Kenji Ishimaru was at this year's Tokyo International Anime Fair, and he provides us with almost two dozen photos of who and what were happening.

Labels: anime, events, festivals, Tokyo International Anime Fair

NEW YORK – April 2, 2007 – Calling all animators! Nicktoons Network, Nickelodeon's 24-hour animation network, in partnership with Frederator Studios, the festival's production house, are seeking entries for the fourth annual Nicktoons Network Animation Festival. Animators from around the world can submit their work to the first and only multiplatform animation festival from Sunday, April 1st through Friday, June 1st. Entry forms can be downloaded on www.nicktoonsnetwork.com.

"This is the Animation Festival's fourth year, and we're certain it'll be the best one yet," said Keith Dawkins, Vice President and General Manager, Nicktoons Network. "We're excited to work with Frederator once again and are looking forward to receiving submissions from around the globe for a festival created for animators and lovers of animation alike."

"The film festival has allowed us to help independent animators reach a larger audience, which is very important to us," said Fred Seibert, Festival Executive Director and President, Frederator Studios. "We are also pleased to award prizes to indies to help them continue their work and realize their unique visions."

The Nicktoons Network Animation Festival, co-produced by Radar Cartoons, is on the hunt for a selection of original short films created in any style of animation that do not exceed 10 minutes in length. Submitted shorts will be chosen by a pre-selection jury and will be showcased on-air and online on Nicktoons Network with five half-hour episodes kicking off Sunday, August 26 through Thursday, August 30, in addition to a "Best Of" episode on Friday, August 31. A grand jury will select a $10,000 grand prize winner from the top ten films chosen by the pre-selection jury.

Labels: events, festivals, Nickelodeon, Nicktoons

Singaporean students fascinated by the delightful two-dimensional animation cartoons of SpongeBob SquarePants, The Simpsons and The Rugrats now have the opportunity to master the Emmy Award-winning technology behind these celebrated cartoon series and showcase their creative works for international voting and judging as part of a digital animation competition.

Toon Boom Animation Festival 2007 – first in Singapore
Singapore will be the first country to host the inaugural Toon Boom Animation Festival, which kicks off on 2 April 2007 (www.toonboomcom/singaporeFestival).

Co-organised by Toon Boom Animation Inc (Canada), Canadian High Commission and Media Development Authority of Singapore, with the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) as a Technology Partner, the Inaugural Toon Boom Animation Festival aims to encourage Singaporean students to express their creativity and talent through creating animation content using Toon Boom software, which has been used extensively by industry professionals to create popular animation series such as Spongebob Squarepants and the Simpsons.

Upon the success of the Singapore edition, the Festival will travel to the other parts of the world, starting with Brazil later this year.

Ms Joan Vogelesang, President and Chief Executive Officer, Toon Boom Animation Inc., said: "Recognising the wealth of creative potential Singapore has to offer and their intent to become a Digital Animation Hub, we are proud to launch our first-ever Toon Boom animation competition in Singapore and dedicate it to all its students. We thank the Canadian High Commission, the Institute of Technical Education and the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA), for their tremendous support and look forward to creative entries of students."

Dr Christopher Chia, Chief Executive of MDA said: "We are pleased that Toon Boom has chosen Singapore as the first country to hold this digital animation competition. By providing Singaporeans with the opportunity to learn how to use media for work, learning and play, the Festival is one way to help raise the capabilities of our students and equip them with the skill sets relevant to the booming IDM (Interactive & Digital Media) industry.

"This competition is another milestone that reflects the close collaborations between Singapore and Canada. It follows the Audio Visual Treaty on co-production signed in October 1998 between the Prime Ministers of Canada and Singapore, and the MOU between the National Film Board of Canada and the MDA signed last year on November 29 during the Asia Media Festival."

"Canada is recognized internationally as a leader in new media and animation technologies. Our unique strength coupled with Singapore’s vision in becoming a world leading digital media capital give us great synergy to work together as partners," said His Excellency Alan Virtue, High Commissioner of Canada to Singapore. "We are extremely delighted to be a co-organiser of this competition and I hope it will inspire creative expressions in new media from young Singaporeans. I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to ITE and Toon Boom on the occasion of the Official Opening of their joint Centre of Excellence and I hope this will be the grooming ground for Singapore’s next generation of world-class animation artists."

Through the Festival, Singaporean students will have the opportunity to create and showcase their works to an international audience and have their works judged by a global panel of expert judges, so they can gauge for themselves where they stand internationally.

Free workshops will be conducted by ITE to train students who are not familiar with the Toon Boom software. Said Mr Bruce Poh, Director & CEO, ITE: "Through the ITE-Toon Boom collaboration which was forged last year, ITE lecturers were equipped with the skills in using the Toon Boom software solutions. They will now impart their knowledge in Toon Boom technology to participants to prepare them for the competition."

What’s In It for Winners
The top team to emerge from this competition will be rewarded with a one-month industry internship to top production studios, such as Nelvana Studios, located in Canada. The full details and Terms & Conditions of the Festival are listed at Annex A.

Official Opening of ITE-Toon Boom Centre of Excellence in New Media
In conjunction with the Launch of the Festival, ITE and Toon Boom Animation Inc (Canada) will also officially open its joint Centre of Excellence in New Media at ITE College Central. The Centre, which facilitates the execution of industry project development works by ITE staff using the Toon Boom software, is part of the two-year Memorandum of Understanding which ITE and Toon Boom Animation Inc (Canada) inked on 19 June 2006.

Labels: events, festivals, Singapore

Norwalk, CT, April 1, 2007: Fans of anime and manga may now look forward to a brand new annual festival celebrating the very best of Japanese popular culture launching later this year in New York City. Reed Exhibitions, the organizer of New York Comic Con, has today announced the creation of the New York Anime Festival (NYAF) which will take place December 7-9, 2007 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in midtown Manhattan. "New York finally has an anime event of its own!" proclaims John McGeary, Show Manager for NYAF. Show planners note that the new event will be an extravaganza featuring the latest in anime, manga, Japanese cinema, music, and games, and the best of anime-influenced comics, animation, and film from around the world.

Show staff also note that by being in New York City, NYAF will allow exhibitors to interact with one of the largest anime fan bases in the country and at the same time garner tremendous exposure by being in the media capital of the world.

"We are using our experience at New York Comic Con as our springboard," McGeary states. "We will continue to have strong anime programming at NYCC, but at the same time, we want to serve the anime community directly by giving them their own show. Anime has taken the nation by storm, and the professional and fan community in New York is looking for more. We want to give them as much as possible." By bringing professionals together with fans, convention organizers seek to create a productive and energized atmosphere that is modeled on NYCC. The professional element at NYAF will include book buyers, video retailers, libraries, booksellers, and other assorted industry professionals.

The festival will span the complete breadth of anime pop culture including exclusive and extensive screenings, a gala cosplay masquerade, and sessions with the biggest names in anime from Japan, Asia, and America. The event will also explore the Japanese cultural experience with a showcase of both traditional and cutting-edge Japanese cuisine, apparel, and lifestyles. Of course, NYAF will also feature the latest in manga, toys, costumes, video games, trading card games, DVDs, music, and much more on the show floor.

Festival organizers are anticipating that the early December date will be a major attraction to fans and other festival attendees as it is an exciting time to be in New York and see the city in the full splendor of the holiday season. McGeary states, "Our festival is a celebration of the anime art form, and so it seems only appropriate that we would have the show at a time when New York is abuzz with traditional holiday celebrations."

The website for NYAF is now live and tickets are available at http://www.nyanimefestival.com/. Fans are also encouraged to sign up for a monthly newsletter by visiting the website.

The New York Anime Festival will be sponsored by ADV Films, Anime Insider Magazine, Anime Network, Anime News Network, AnimeNEXT, Diamond Book Distributors, ICv2, Newtype USA Magazine, Playthings Magazine, TOKYOPOP, and VIZ Media.

Labels: anime, events, festivals, New York

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) today announced its worldwide call for entries for the 2007 Festival taking place September 19 to 23 in Canada’s capital.

Animators are invited to submit their recent work in six major categories including Independent Short films, Feature films, New Media, Commissioned films, Student films and Films made for children.

The OIAF 07 entry deadline is June 1, 2007 and preview DVDs must be received by June 15. Entry forms are available on the Festival’s website at www.animationfestival.ca.

Further information about this year’s Festival, as well as online entry forms, are available on the OIAF website at www.animationfestival.ca. Questions about submitting a film? Inquiries may be sent to entries [at] animationfestival.ca or by telephone at 613-232-8769.

Labels: call for entries, festivals, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival

Sunday is your last chance to see Carte Blanche à Cartoon Club, a selection of European shorts suitable for all ages, with a heavy emphasis on Italian and German animation, compiled by Sabrina Zanetti, artistic director of Cartoon Club, the International Festival of Animated Cinema and Comics in Rimini. The programme is a part of the Festival international de films pour enfants de Montreal (FIFEM).

Selections include works from Bruno Bozzetto and an episode of La Linea by Osvaldo Cavandoli (sadly, Cartoon Brew reported that he died last week).

Labels: festivals, FIFEM, Germany, Italy, Montreal, shorts

There is lots of programming today at the Festival of Films on Art (FIFA). There's something for everybody.

If you missed the documentary Il Etait Un Fois... Walt Disney when it aired late last year with English subtitles, it will be showing again today and Sunday in French at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where the exhibit of the same name has just started its North American run. The program begins at 2:00 p.m. (4:30 on Sunday) and is preceded by a documentary (with some animated sequences) on Kinder Surprise, a guilty pleasure of mine. (Note that today and tomorrow are also your last two chances to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the museum).

If you're all Disneyed out, at 4:30 p.m. there is a screening of Parnography, a documentary about Estonian animator Pritt Parn and his contemparies. It repeats later in the week.

The documentary airs with Drawing Lessons and Histoires Mysterieuses d'Aujourd'hui, a collection of six Japanese tales of horror and does not have the typical hallmarks of mainstream Japanese animation. Both sound utterly fascinating.

Labels: anime, Disney, documentaries, Estonia, events, exhibitions, features, festivals, FIFA, International Festival of Films on Art, Montreal, shorts

Film entries are due March 15th for the Platform International Animation Festival, debuting June 25-30, 2007 in Portland, Oregon.

The no entry fee competition with cash prizes is open to films under 40 minutes (no minimum running time). Directors in competition will be provided with accommodation, meal allowances and Festival passes. Award categories cover commercial and independent work, student animation and films for new platforms, including cell phones and the internet, plus installations for indoor and outdoor spaces.

A brand new major US animation event, this festival will be a platform for artists, innovation, debate and discussion, featuring premieres, retrospectives, exclusive screenings, guest speakers, exhibitions, workshops with leading artists, parties and networking. Platform also breaks boundaries into other art forms: comics, illustration, character and toy design, motion graphics, gallery art and live action cinema.

For complete details visit www.platformfestival.com.

Labels: festivals

The 2007 Taiwan International Animation Festival is calling for entries!
The 5th edition of the Taiwan International Animation Festival (TIAF) will be held in Taipei from September 28th to October 07th 2007.

The TIAF is an emerging global event and has successfully built its worldwide reputation, gaining momentum year by year, and more and more entrants have come from all over the world over the past four years, reaching a new high of close to 600 from over 30 countries in 2006.

The TIAF showcases the best animation both from Taiwan and the world. Drawing a varied audience, the festival screens recent Taiwanese animation works in its national competition section, while feature-length animation and shorts from around the world comprise the International Showcase. In addition, the TIAF presents a combination of panels and seminars, exhibitions and numerous special events such as free outdoor screenings, aiming to promote international exchanges, advocate creativity, enhance better understanding of animation and encourage dialogue between professionals, filmmakers and the audience.

The host of the TIAF, the Taipei-based Chinese Taipei Film Archive (CTFA), is a non-profit foundation and the sole film preservation organization in Taiwan and has been a member of Federation Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF) since 1995. The CTFA first held the Taiwan International Animation Festival (TIAF) in 2002, the only large-scale festival dedicated to animation in Taiwan. To boost incentives for animators everywhere, the TIAF welcomes animation of all kinds of formats and techniques.

The deadline for 2007 TIAF entry is May 31st 2007. Please pass this message to those who are also interested in sending works to 2007 TIAF.

Please visit our Web site at http://tiaf.ctfa.org.tw/2007/english.htm to download the entry form. The contact information is as follows:

Mr. Dennis Zhu
International Coordinator, TIAF
Tel: +886-2-23924243*57
Fax: +886-2-23926359

Labels: festivals

The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., is pleased to announce our upcoming NMWA 20th Anniversary Festival of Film and Media Arts on September 25-30, 2007. The deadline for international submissions is June 8, 2007.

For more information about the museum, please visit our website at www.nmwa.org or send us an e-mail at filmfestival [at] nmwa [dot] org.

Labels: festivals

Who says animating doesn't require physical fortitude? This year's SIGGRAPH features something new—the first international Fjorg! competition, in which sixteen teams of three animators each will have to put together a minimum of fifteen seconds of animation over 32 straight hours, using only the materials provided. Most intriguing are the planned but unspecified "distractions" that they must overcome.

If you're brave enough to give this a shot, you've got until May 1 to get a team together and submit a demo reel. More details are available on the SIGGRAPH 2007 site.

Labels: events, festivals, SIGGRAPH

Milan, 14-23 September 2007

CALL FOR ENTRIES. The twelfth edition of Milano Film Festival is officially open. The competition collects and selects short and feature films from all over the world and is open to films of any genre, running time, language and format, provided that they have been produced after January 1st 2006. The selected directors will be invited to Milan (information and rules on the web site www.milanofilmfestival.it). The submission deadline is May 31st, 2007.

OUT-OF-COMPETITION SEASON: STATE (T)ERROR. The call for entries for the State (T)error season is open to works of any language, format and length, produced even before January 1st, 2006. The submission deadline is May 31st, 2007. Stories depicting crimes, injustice and massacres, committed under the banner of democracy, freedom, security or religion. Terrorism as a strategy of so-called democratic governments. A deliberate, organized, thoroughly planned terrorism consisting in warfare actions, ban on dissent and slanted news coverage. These are the main characteristics of this out-of-competitin season, that the festival presents in 2007 for the third year in a row.

THE ARTISTIC PROGRAMME The film project will be further enhanced, as a result of a year of commitment in the search for and distribution of films from all over the world.

Special consideration will be paid to filmmakers depicting unknown stories and cultures, to independent productions that are usually ignored by commercial circuits. In particular, the aim is to focus on those countries that manage to produce films despite their economic, political and social difficulties. Furthermore, larger participation of feature films will be encouraged.

A FESTIVAL FOR THE CITY. The artistic project is complemented by activities aiming to favour the participation of the festival in the life of the city and to interact with all the citizens - not only of film buffs. Peculiar urban installations will transform public space - the real venue for collective events. Beside the Teatro Strehler, new prestigious spaces will be involved.

A WIDE-RANGING EVENT. Once again the festival will feature a large number of side events, as a further proof of its ability in gathering art, celebration, culture and public participation: retrospectives, seminars, out-of-competition screenings, non-stop events, workshops, meetings, concerts, exhibitions and activities for students, children and elders. From early in the morning to late at night, hundreds of events within the event will contribute to create a festival that is not an occasion limited to film buffs and members of the film industry, but a place where cinema merges with other contemporary forms of expression and becomes part of a lively and universal language.

A CULTURAL PROJECT. Milano Film Festival is an all-round project able to highlight and include in its programme the most characteristic features of the city. Thanks to collaborations established year after year with the most important cultural operators the festival gives to its public - citizens and visitors - a special opportunity to discover Milan's less known historical and cultural places.

THE HOLIDAYS PROJECT. First conceived four years ago, the project has been developed to offer alternative accommodation during the festival, as a solution to the lack of low-cost facilities in a city that is expensive and often inhospitable. The project also offers a cultural alternative: a temporary hostel, set up in unusual spaces and designed as a real house, becomes a workshop, a place to gather and interact. The house offers accommodation at a fair price, and it includes a common area, a screening room, an exhibition room. Furthermore, guests will enjoy price discounts around the city. A real and different chance to experience the real atmosphere of the festival.

THE PRESENT, BETWEEN ENTHUSIASM AND OBSTACLES. Milano Film Festival is an event that grows, changes and helps things change. It has become established as the true home of independent and innovative cinema, it gathers international guests and citizens and has won the approval of the audience and of film critics. In the lead up to its twelfth edition, with the enthusiasm and the receptiveness of a great event, with the satisfaction of carrying out an innovative project, the event still suffers from economic uncertainty. Because of the lack of public funds, Milano Film Festival is still fighting for its survival. Supported by the passion of its collaborators and by the ability to cope with a city where culture is under-represented, the organisation still continues, looks for the participation of public institutions, relies on the help of a multitude of volunteers and hopes in the generous sensitivity of private companies. And in a miracle that Milan will be able to perform once again.

Labels: festivals

15-ANIMATION SHOWCASE. 83m.

Venue: Friday, February 23rd, 8 pm, Longbranch Coffeehouse. Free

Venue: Monday, February 26th, 5 pm, Student Center Auditorium. $3

“The Meatrix II: Revolting.” Dir Louis Fox. USA. 2006. 4m.

“The Meatrix II: Revolting” is the sequel to the award-winning smash hit “The Meatrix.” The film, a humorous spoof on The Matrix takes a look at the gap between our illusions about where food comes from and the reality of industrial meat and dairy production.

“Little Strong.” Dir Kuo-Ting Kao. USA. 2006. 7m.

A band of cockroaches fight for their right to exist.

“The Touch.” Dir Vanessa Woods. 2006. USA. 3m.

“The Touch” is a meditation on Anne Sexton’s poem of the same name. The film examines melodies within spoken, written and visual language and how they can interact. Because the subject of the poem deals specifically with the idea of touch, the film sustains a highly tactile, textural quality.

“Mirage.” Dir Youngwoong Jang. USA. 2006. 8m.

“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.”

“Look for Me.” Dir Laura Heit. UK. 2005. 4m.

What would you do if you woke up one day and you discovered you were invisible?

“Phantom Canyon.” Dir Stacey Steers. USA. 2006. 10m.

A young woman encounters enormous insects and an alluring man with bat wings in this surreal recollection of a pivotal journey. This animated film was made by photographing over 4000 handmade collages and features the figures from Eadweard Muybridge's human motion studies.

“Idea Development.” Dir Dane Webster. USA. 2006. 4m.

This story follows a writer’s journey through the creative process.

“Dinner Table.” Dir Song E. Kim. USA. 2006. 3m.

A couple takes a surreal turn as they share a meal.

“Anger Stone.” Dir Dave Ryan. USA. 2006. 6m.

Images hidden in your head shape who you are.

“Atomic Banana.” Dir Erik Kling. USA. 2006. 5m.

Intellectually enhanced chimp versus cruel genius in a battle for the ultimate prize...Bananas!

“Linear Progression.” Dir Kat Kosmala. USA. 2006. 4m.

Strange creatures! Beautiful animation! Grass! What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Such conundrums and charm abound in “Linear Progression.”

“The Dollhouse.” Dir Tara Beyhm. USA. 2006. 10m.

This is a story about a young girl who becomes obsessed with a dollhouse after her classmate receives it as a gift. It is a story that celebrates the handcrafted versus the store bought and the bond that forms between a daughter and her father as a result.

“The Ghost of Sam Peckinpah.” Dir Jason Brewer. USA. 2006. 15m.

A young, gritty cowboy named Jack Yeager stirs up the town of Deep Sands, Utah, and wakes the ghost of legendary filmmaker Sam Peckinpah. Together they march into the heart of Hollywood on a mission to put the capital “W” back in Western.

For more information, you can visit the webiste, www.bigmuddyfilm.com

Labels: festivals

The 2007 dates for the Chicago International Children's Film Festival are October 18-October 28, 2007. This is our 24th annual event.

Short Description:
The Chicago International Children's Film Festival (CICFF) is the largest festival of films for children in North America featuring over 200 animated and live action films from 40 countries, programming the best on children's media for over 30 years. The Festival welcomes over 25,000 Chicago area children, adults, and educators to the screenings, and over 140 filmmakers, media professionals & celebrities attend the Festival to lead interactive workshops with kids.

Call for Entries Description:
The 24th annual Chicago International Children's Film Festival (CICFF), Oct. 18-Oct. 28, 2007 Deadline: early-May 1 & late-May 31. The CICFF is the largest competitive fest of films & videos for children in North America, programming over 200 films & videos from 40 countries targeted for children ages 3-16. The CICFF is the only Academy-qualifying children’s film festival in the world. Entries must have copyright date of 2005, 2006 or 2007. CICFF presents films in contexts that encourage dialog between filmmakers, children, parents & educators. Goal is the sustenance & nurture of positive images for children and youth.

Founded: 1984. Categories: adult-produced live action, animation, feature, short, TV, documentary & child-produced (3-14). Awards: Best of Fest Prize, Montgomery Jury Prize for Upcoming Adult & Child Director, Liv Ullmann Peace Prize & Rights of the Child Prize, in addition to 1st, 2nd & Certificates in all submission categories from Adult and Children's Juries. Formats: 35mm, 16mm, Beta SP. Preview on VHS (PAL or NTSC) or DVD. Entry Fee: $40-early/$60-late Short (Less than 60 mins.); $80-early/$100-late Feature (60 mins. or more); no fee for child-produced films (age 6-14); Contact: Festival Programmer, CICFF, 1517 West Fullerton Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614 USA; (773) 281-9075; fax: 773-281-9075; kidsfest [at] facets [dot] org; www.cicff.org

Entry Contact: Deidre Searcy, Festival Programmer - deidre [at] facets [dot] org, 1-773-281-9075

Deadline for Entries: May 1, 2007 (Early), May 31, 2007 (Final Deadline)

Contact info:
Chicago International Children's Film Festival
Facets Multi-Media, Inc.
1517 West Fullerton Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614 USA
Tel: 773-281-9075
Fax: 773-929-0266
E-mail: kidsfest [at] facets [dot] org
Website: www.cicff.or

Labels: festivals

Angelenos will also be able to feel the Oscar-short love; as in New York, all ten nominated shorts will be screened at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on February 20 at 7:30 p.m. Unlike New York, this screening will feature onstage discussions with the nominated filmmakers (the ones that can make it, at any rate) and admission is free. To reserve your free tickets, call (310) 247-3000 or visit the Oscars website.

Labels: events, festivals, Oscars, shorts

New Yorkers will have two chances to see all ten of this year’s Oscar-nominated films in the Animated and Live Action Short Film categories.

The Oscar PR department has announced in a press release that their annual Shorts! program will be presented on Saturday, February 17, at 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. at the Academy Theater in New York City.

The screenings will be hosted by Robert Osborne, Hollywood Reporter columnist, host of Turner Classic Movies and official biographer of the Academy Awards. The 2006 Animated Short Film and Live Action Short Film nominees are:

Short Film (Animated)
The Danish Poet, Torill Kove, director
Lifted, Gary Rydstrom, director
The Little Matchgirl, Roger Allers, director; Don Hahn, producer
Maestro, Geza M. Toth, director
No Time for Nuts, Chris Renaud and Michael Thurmeier, directors

Short Film (Live Action)
Binta and the Great Idea, Javier Fesser, director; Luis Manso, producer
Eramos Pocos, Borja Cobeaga, director
Helmer & Son, Soren Pilmark, director; Kim Magnusson, executive producer
The Saviour, Peter Templeman, director; Stuart Parkyn, producer
West Bank Story, Ari Sandel, director

Tickets for Shorts! are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students with a valid ID. All seating is unreserved. Tickets may be reserved by calling 1-888-778-7575. Depending on availability, tickets may be purchased the day of the screenings. Doors open at 11:30 a.m. The Academy Theater is located at 111 East 59th Street in New York City.

The Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, February 25, 2007, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center. If you don't yet happen to have tickets to the big event, you will of course be able to catch it live on ABC TV like the rest of us.

Labels: events, festivals, Oscars, shorts

We've got nothing but love for Mamoru Hosoda's feature The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, so I'm quite pleased to say that the film will be making its US premiere at the New York International Childrens's Festival on March 3. The screening is scheduled for 6:30 p.m.

Animation is well represented at the festival. This year's lineup includes U and The Ugly Duckling on Film!, and the shorts cover a broad range, including several programs of NFB shorts, a Dr. Seuss retrospective (including the ever-timely The Lorax) and compilations grouped by age range. Early March looks like a great time to be a kid in New York.

Labels: anime, events, festivals, shorts

3x3 Magazine announces its fourth annual illustration competition and for the first time has added an animation category. Judges include Mario Cavalli, Dave McKean and Run Wrake (United Kingdom); Oscar Grillo (Argentina); and Eric Goldberg (USA). All entries must be postmarked by March 2, 2007. Full details, entry fees and entry forms are available at http://3x3mag.com/pdf/CFE_2006.pdf.

Labels: festivals

The Animation Show is a short film festival organized by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt that celebrates groundbreaking independent animation. The Animation Show two-DVD set is a treasure box for every fan of the medium. The shorts on these discs will hit you from the left and steal your heart while you are laughing. Independent-animation fans will recognize many of the recent festival favourites found here, but this is for anyone with an interest in animation and short-form filmmaking. If you get this mini-box set, you will be treated to over two hours of beautiful storytelling, surreal and absurd concepts that somehow make sense, insanely original characters and design, twisted technical accomplishments and, last but not least, a refreshing, animated perspective on the rituals of everyday life. In addition to the shorts, there is an hour's worth of featurettes including commentaries, deleted scenes, making-ofs, animatics, art galleries and more.

Read the review

Labels: anime, festivals, reviews

NYC's Animation Block Party launched for worldwide submissions on January 8, 2007. There will be almost $30,000 worth of prizes up for grabs at the July 28-30 summer festival. Prizes will include winning filmmaker copies of Adobe After Effects, Boinx I-Stop Motion, Toon Boom Studio, Autodesk’s Sketchbook, designer bags from Crumpler, subscriptions from Animation Magazine and big student production grants. All genres are welcome to submit. There are ten award categories, including original design, computer animation, narrative short, under minute movie, personal documentary and more. ABP is also offering an opportunity to fund animators Public Service Announcement films for the entire festival season. Last summer, over 1000 fans attended the Brooklyn based film festival, which screened just under 60 animated films.

For more information on ABP 2007 go to http://www.animationblock.com/

Labels: festivals

Last week, the Sundance Film Festival announced that selected shorts would be available for purchase at Apple's iTunes store this year. According to their official podcast (from January 12, 2007) Sundance was the first film festival to stream films online, and they continue to break new ground with this announcement. Short films, and animated short films in particular are perfectly suited to this type of digital delivery. Distribution has always been difficult in this arena, and here's hoping we see more festivals follow suit.

You'll be able to view shorts for free starting January 18, 2007 at festival.sundance.org/2007/ and they should remain online through June 2007. Nearly half the shorts in this years program will appear on iTunes starting next Monday, January 22, 2007 www.itunes.com/sundance and while it hasn't been announced which animated shorts we'll get to see online or on iTunes, The Animation Spotlight program features these 8 films, 3 of which also happen to be Oscar nominees*, ehr, correction, make that Oscar contenders (who didn't actually make the Academy Awards shortlist):

Updated January 18:

Destiny Manifesto by Martha Colburn, U.S.A., 2006
Dreams and Desires—Family Ties by Joanna Quinn, United Kingdom, 2006 *
Duct Tape and Cover by Yong-Jin (Gene) Park, U.S.A., 2005
Everything Will Be OK by Don Hertzfeldt, U.S.A., 2006 *
Golden Age by Aaron Augenblick, U.S.A., 2006
One Rat Short by Alex Weil, U.S.A., 2006 *
Paulina Hollers by Brent Green, U.S.A., 2006
Phantom Canyon by Stacey Steers, U.S.A., 2006

In addition, these four films are part of the Shorts/Shorts with Features Program:

How She Slept At Night by Lilli Carre, U.S.A., 2006 (Shorts with Features)
In Passing by Christopher Thomas Allen & Robert Rainbow, United Kingdom, 2006 (Shorts with Features)
The Tragic Story of Nling by Jeffrey St. Jules, Canada, 2006 (Shorts Program)
t.o.m. by Tom Brown & Daniel Gray, United Kingdom, 2006 (Shorts with Features)

Labels: festivals, iTunes, shorts, Sundance