Seoul, Januar 2010

Dear all ASIFA members,

Happy New Year 2010 and Happy 50th Anniversary of ASIFA!

I wish all of board members, chapters, groups as well as individual members the very best year 2010 and New Year bring you health, happiness and prosperities for your animation creativities and activities. It’s a great honor to be a President of ASIFA by majority support of board members.

We hear and see the sufferings by various kinds of disasters all over the world and I’m worrying if any members of ASIFA family also suffer from those difficulties.

Nevertheless, our ASIFA members will continue to exchange our enthusiasm through Animation all over the world. Animation is definitely one of creative arts which precede other genre in media and I’m sure that we will continue to create constant excitements and bring them to humankind.

In 2010, ASIFA celebrates its own 50th anniversary and coincidently the 50th anniversary parallels in my work in animation field too. This means that animation history in Korea also have the same 50th anniversary.

It seems to me that the God gave me a miraculous chance to be a President of ASIFA this year. ASIFA will move ahead with positive changes. However, we should make our own changes, not just waiting for the changes.

I sincerely ask all of you to give me your thoughts and wise advices and join our new changes for ASIFA. I will contribute myself to ASIFA with my experiences from an animator, producer, director, professor and even CEO of company.

I made slogans myself and will promise you them during my service as:
1. Procedure for processing
2. Transparency of administration
3. Harmony between members
4. Consideration for others

We are artists with enthusiasm but also we are artists with wisdom.

Best regards,

Nelson SHIN
President of ASIFA
2010-01-27

“Understand cultural differences”

Dear Friends,

ASIFA is an international association which aims to promote the exchanging and understanding of cultural differences, as well as to pursue lasting world peace through the development of animation art culture.

Although it is easy to say “to understand cultural differences”, there in fact exists very important differences between various countries, that even the way we use common sense is sometimes completely turned the other way around. Under such situations, I believe it is most essential for us to respect and to forgive each other in order to attain mutual understanding.

Since ASIFA has been developed under the leadership of European and North American countries, and because I am Japanese, perhaps many of you may find it difficult to understand my way of thinking and administration. However, I am glad that we all have the same future goal, so I think only our methodology to reach the goal is a little bit different.

As a filmmaker, I established the Hiroshima Festival, and I have been serving as the festival director since its first edition in 1985. From my experience, as well as learning from our history, I am confident to say that animation art is one of the most effective media to understand different cultures, beyond language communication — because, animation art consists of each and every artistic philosophy created by human beings. It is a profound happiness for us to discover and understand new things through animation art, and it is also a happiness of philosophizing to solve various questions through such art.

Today, I am pleased to recognize that various fields require animation professionals — including filmmakers, producers, distributors, scholars, teachers, journalists, etc. I truly hope that ASIFA Members will exchange with each other frankly for good communication and cooperation to continuously develop our great art form.

Thank you,

Sayoko Kinoshita
President of ASIFA
December 2006

“Animation and Earthquake”

It has been more than three decades that I’ve been a member of ASIFA and quite a few years serving as its Board member. During these years many things inside and outside ASIFA have changed such as:

1 – The Board members and the Presidents are of much younger ages, from the late John Halas to Raoul Servais, Michel Ocelot, Abi Feijo, and Thomas Renoldner (but not me!). 2 – The joining of fifteen hundred to two thousand Hollywood artists to the Asifa family. 3 – The opening of ASIFA Chapters in East Asian countries such as South Korea, China and Mongolia. 4 – The review and rebuilding of the structure of ASIFA in order to match its current modern condition. 5 – The use of new technology for communications and voting 6 – The vanishing of the East European chapters– an earthquake in the animation world.

But the only thing that has NOT changed during this long period is that with the exception of Iran and Cuba, no other countries from Latin and South America, Africa and the Near and Middle East have joined ASIFA.WHY?

Is our globe like a coin with only two sides? North America and Western Europe?!!!

As far as I understand, the reason is not that in the above-named countries there are no animation activities, because quite often you may find animation studios with a long resume of animated film productions that exist in Egypt, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, etc.

Therefore again I come to this question:

WHY?

Why don’t they show up in ASIFA? Why does ASIFA have little or no communications with these nations?

Certainly it is the choice of many of the animators from these nations. But there is another fact too: Had I not become a member of ASIFA and attended the 1971 Annecy festival, I would not have had the privilege of learning about this organization and subsequently introduce ASIFA and its activities to the Iranian Animators.

While I was writing this article and thinking about the WHY questions, the BAM earthquake occurred and this article was left unfinished. The Earthquake brought so much sorrow and heartache to everyone’s life. But despite such a catastrophe I witnessed the immediate and sincere response of 26 nations offering monetary and humanitarian help to those victims and their families who suffered in this horrible disaster.

After observing such admirable solidarity, I asked myself would such international solidarity happen if an earthquake would happen to the animation world? The answer is: NO.

Compare the situation of animation in Eastern Europe before and after 1991. Wasn’t it an earthquake? But we never witnessed any kind of assistance or humanitarian aid to be paid to its victims, obviously, because of the difference between the nature of these two kinds of earthquakes.

This makes the role of ASIFA more important. ASIFA should be strong enough to provide our colleagues around the world if not anything, but at least something. But lack of interest to join ASIFA, hence taking advantage of this universal NGO, returns to the yearly balance of the activities of the ASIFA Board in particular and of ASIFA members in general. It returns to the quality and the quantity of such acts.

And what makes ASIFA continue on without so many of its potential members? Why is it that Egyptian, Turkish, Indonesian, Malaysian, Philippines, Mexican, and Brazilian animators, despite their talented artists, are not yet participating in their own family unity? Is it ASIFA’s inability to attract them? Perhaps their animators are simply unaware of the existence of ASIFA? Or perhaps some other reasons that we are not aware of?

CONCLUSION

DOES ANIMATION NEED AN EARTHQUAKE TO BRING ANIMATORS TOGETHER? Who is going to answer this question? Who is going to bring those many nations into their own worldwide family?

You? I? Or who?

If you know an animator from those nations, do not delay. Invite him/her to join the club. Who knows? Perhaps there are many hands waving to touch a hand.

If for any reason you cannot do it, send THE BOARD his/her/their address. The Board as your representative can do something.

Noureddin Zarrinkelk January 6, 2004

“Open the doors !”

Dear Friends,

I wish to thank Abi Feijo for the work he has done as a president of ASIFA, and the ASIFA Board members for their confidence in accepting me as his successor.(…)

OPEN THE DOORS!
I have accepted the position of ASIFA President because there was an urgent need for someone to do so. But more importantly, I want to work more efficiently for ASIFA’s future. My main goals for the future are to facilitate the communication between all ASIFA Groups (and members) worldwide and to encourage their participation in international activities. I would also like to focus on the professional management of our organisation.
(By the way, “president” is quite a strong expression; thinking about the big names who have been ASIFA President before, I feel I don’t deserve such a title. I would prefer something like “coordinator of activities” or “Chairman of the ASIFA Board’….)

With the ASIFA Board elections at Ottawa 2000, ASIFA has reached a significant point in its history. The ‘old ASIFA Board’, comprised of high-profile animation artists from all over the world, has evolved into something new. The percentage of animation artists has decreased. The activities of most new Board members lie in other fields related to animation: journalists, film theorists, festival directors, producers, writers and leaders of local ASIFA Groups, to name a few.
But I think we can take advantage of this new situation, because such a composition of people can reflect more facets of animation. But I also think that more fundamental changes are needed if we want to duplicate the success of the past 40 years.

In the following part I make a proposal to improve ASIFA’s statutes. It represents my personal opinion, but I have leaded a lot of intensive discussions with many ASIFA members worldwide to come to this point. (One should also mention that ASIFA Italia made a similar proposal approximately 10 years ago.)

ASIFA’s organisational structure:
ASIFA’s potency is dependent upon the strength of local ASIFA chapters. The majority of our members are recruited by a relatively small group of professionally organized local chapters. However, only a part of our local groups are represented on the ASIFA Board. We have 35 local groups and offices and more individual members from countries without ASIFA groups, but just 10 ASIFA Board members (from 8 different countries).

The lack of communication between the ASIFA Board and ASIFA Groups (those who have no representative), and the relatively low participation of local ASIFA Chapters in the international activities of our organisation are partially caused by their exclusion from the ASIFA Board. Many groups have developed a strong identity locally and don’t seem to feel that they are part of an international organisation. This is unfortunate because if ASIFA is to have any relevance, it needs active input and collaboration from the local chapters.

My vision of the future is of an “ASIFA Parliament”, where all ASIFA Groups are heartily invited to send one representative. This parliament should make all necessary decisions. Because of advancements in communication technology, discussion and voting can be organized mainly through e-mail. Naturally I do not expect that if the ASIFA Board opens the doors to all groups in this new parliament, this will produce instant results, but it would serve as a starting point for improving the participation and collaboration between ALL ASIFA chapters while ensuring that they each are entitled to certain rights and obligations.

The most obvious criticism of such a concept would be that such a big group would not be able to do the organisational work efficiently. And the criticism is accurate. Therefore I propose a small “Executive Committee”, with certain task-orientated positions. The members of this group could be members of the parliament, but also specialists from outside.

Of course there are a lot of questions connected with this proposal, which have to be discussed in detail. The ASIFA Board will have to discuss this issue, a more detailed proposal will get published on the ASIFA homepage (together with a discussion forum) and the ASIFA Group leaders will receive material, so they can initiate discussions on a regional level. In case a majority of our members reacts positively, ASIFA would need to hold an Extraordinary General Assembly about this topic.
I hope this article can be a first step towards a broader discussion. I am ready to read and answer any comments to be sent to my e-mail address <renoldner@asifa.net>.

ASIFA’s media
One of the most important answers to the often-asked questions: Why should I join ASIFA? and What do I get for my international fee?” are ASIFA’s media: the printed magazine ASIFA News” and the homepage http://asifa.net. The benefit for each ASIFA member is that these are places to both gather and distribute information. Both media welcome your articles, opinions, critics, hints, and also graphics, animations, etc.
The ASIFA homepage also offers free web space for ASIFA members and ASIFA Groups. (We are very proud to announce the opening of the very successful ASIFA Israel Website at http://asifa.net/israel )
The “news”-section on the homepage is updated monthly and welcomes news and messages from the entire world.

I envision many more projects (exhibitions, on-line screenings, video and art sales) on asifa.net, but to be more fruitful, we depend – again – on the participation of our ASIFA Groups and members. (People who wish to participate in any way can write to our ASIFA News Editor (robinson@asifa.net) or ASIFA.NET (webmaster@asifa.net).
The doors are open already!

Festival Cooperation
ASIFA is closely connected with the history of some of the most important animation festivals in the world (Annecy, Zagreb, Ottawa, Hiroshima, Cinanima…).
Recently, the ASIFA Board has opened the doors to other qualified festivals by approving a new “Festival Information System”. The new system replaces the old “patronage system”, which was limited to the traditional ASIFA Festivals. The idea behind the new initiative is to define quality standards at festivals. On one hand, this should protect the high quality festivals’ against the flood of low-quality festivals popping out of ground and, on the other hand, defend the basic interests of the filmmakers. (More at the [FESTIVAL ZONE] at ‘Festival Information System’)

As an independent worldwide animation organisation, ASIFA can also play the role of a mediator between festivals and filmmakers. For instance, when filmmakers experience any problems with certain animation festivals, ASIFA can speak in the name of the artist with the festival, and if needed, can publish any criticism in our media.
The Festival Information System’ is relatively young and it will need more working time to be fully implemented. However, over time it will be a great benefit to the animation community. In the future we might also consider publishing a printed Animation Festival Guide.
Another benefit for ASIFA members are reduced pass prices (or even free tickets) at the “ASIFA Partner Festivals”. Currently, Zagreb, Hiroshima, Cinanima and Ottawa all offer discounts to ASIFA members.

There are many more activities, ranging from the acclaimed International children workshop project (ASIFA Workshop Group”) to various unsung initiatives carried out by many individuals worldwide.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION !
I have only mentioned those aspects of ASIFA’s activities that are most important to me. I can imagine that the many colleagues and friends in ASIFA (and outside) might have a different perspective. By offering you my personal opinions and criticisms, I hope I can initiate a discussion that will lead to a broader discourse about ASIFA’s identity, mission, and future.

ASIFAs strength depends on worldwide participation.
Join ASIFA, and tell your friends they should join too.

You are ASIFA.

Thomas Renoldner, March 2002

Dear Friends,

It is a great honour form me to be the new ASIFA President and a great challenge to continue the work of honourable presidents such as Michel Ocelot, Raoul Servais, John Halas, Francoise Jaubert, John Hubley and Norman McLaren.

For the first time we have a very small board, only 11 members but also for the first time all board members are connected through e-mail. This increases a great deal all the communications and means a considerable increase in the amount of work.

We have spent the first few months organizing ourselves according to the possibilities of these new technologies, in order not to be overloaded with tons of work that would make our volunteer job impossible to run. We are also trying to improve an internal organization, creating working groups on specific topics such as festivals, education and publications. We hope this will help us to accomplish our tasks as well as improve the overall role of ASIFA.

ASIFA is the International Association of Animation Film and it is recognised in almost every country where animation is being produced. This global aspect is both our strength and our weakness as it is very difficult to actually organize local activities on an international level. This is the main reason why local chapters were created and today we can count also 30 National or Regional ASIFA Chapters all over the world. The main problem has been that in a time were communications were not as easy as they are today, local chapters started to lose the contact with the international mother organisation. I hope that this new board will be able to establish new relations and increase the future collaborations between all the National and local ASIFA Chapters. I would like to welcome two new ASIFA Chapters in Colorado, U.S.A. and India.

ASIFA relies only on membership fees for its operating budget, and this means we have a very tight budget and the board is not paid for their job. For me, the main reason to carry on with an International Organisation like this one is this philanthropic idea of giving out our little things, of sharing our experiences. If ASIFA can have any importance to you depends a great deal on how much you are willing to give. The more you give the more you will be rewarded. This is the power that we can have together. Please help us in developing ASIFA, and I am sure you will get back more than what you will give.

This issue of ASIFA News has a new look, and represents a new approach to our newsletter. Chris Robinson is now the new chief editor and he needs all the help everyone can supply. I would like to thank Stanislav Ulver for his great job as editor of ASIFA News, he has been in charge of the newsletter for a long time and I hope we will continue to be able to read his great articles.

Aware of the changes in the world of new technologies we have for more than a year hosted a web site (http://asifa.net) that together with ASIFA News are oure face to the world. Quite often people ask what can ASIFA bring to them? Please think about this newsletter and our web site as a way to place your ideas, to promote your work or to protest against the injustices of the animation world. This is the forum for you to let the world know about what you are thinking and doing. Please help us develop our newsletter and web site by sending us your opinions, articles, news, drawings, little animations and reviews. We also invite you to visit the asifa.net web site and contact board members in charge of the areas you would like to be involved.

One of the most interesting things for me, that I most appreciate and where I learned the most were the international projects developed by the ASIFA Workshop Group. Each group managed to make its own little film, on a precise subject and sent it to the AWG. All the films were put together and we received back a package of 10, 20 or even more films from all over the world where we could compare and discuss results and methods of work. In our meetings, discussions and projects I learned a lot and today I am most thankful to ASIFA for all of its generosity and friendship.

Another heritage we have is the ASIFA Archives. I must thank Kurt Weiler for taking care of them for such a long time and I want to thank Bruno Edera for taking over this responsibility and the commitment to treat it in a way that the materials cen clearly be useful for all ASIFA members. Please consider donating animation films, videos and books to the archive.

I hope you will (…) encourage your animation friends to become part of this world association.

Abi Feijo

ASIFA President

Michel Ocelot (ASIFA president, 1994-1999)

Independence – moral power, a price to pay

The fundamental internationalism of ASIFA goes with a total independence. The association was formed by free individuals, with no intervention by governments, super national bodies, commercial enterprises. It remained this way and is free from any tie with politics and commercialism. Its main income derive from the members’ fees. Nobody is payed within ASIFA. Its Board of Directors is elected through universal suffrage by all members. This independence permits ASIFA to have access to the most diverse countries, including the most antagonistic. Its moral authority has opened many doors and eased many difficulties.

The price we pay for this independence is fluctuating finances; One does not become an ASIFA member to make money, but because one likes animation and people who make it, because one is superior to frontiers and barbed wire, and ready to do one’s part. This organization is a unique ground, where people can meet and have things happen. It is up to each one to have ideas and energy, to find some benefit for oneself and for others, for the animation community, to fight when necessary, to call forth what may be missing.

International without fuss

Many international associations began as local organisations which grew first to a national level and then, when their activities and reputations flowed across their national borders, to their legally constituted international identities. ASIFA, however was founded without these developmental steps. It was born in France, but from the very beginning, artists from east and west, from America, Europe and Asia were involved in this first attempt to create a organisation dedicated to the art of the animated film. It was not a kind of academic society with high-brow members but rather a group of enthusiastic animation filmmakers gathering together to create the possibilities for mutual understanding, for sharing experiences and exchanging information, for possible collaboration and for coming up with the formulae which could promote the art of animation around the world.

Raoul Servais