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Annecy & Zagreb 2002 Preview

by Heikki Jokinen (Finland)

Festival harvest season is here Heikki Jokinen

The high season for animation festivals is here! The global main event for animation, Annecy Festival will be held in the beginning of June in France, and another appreciated veteran festival in the end of June in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. The annual Annecy festival gathers thousands of animation professionals and lovers every year in this alpine city not far away from Geneva in Switzerland. The figures given by the festival from last year are impressive: "1070 films received, 193 films in competition, 421 films screened in 8 theatres, 125 000 spectators, 5 800 professionals, 400 journalists, 53 countries represented, 140 buyers and investors." At the same time with the festival helds Mifa, business market for animation industry. The main competition of Annecy festival is the one for independent short films. This time it will include 52 films, whic all are very new. Many filmmakers still keep Annecy entry date in January as a some kind of dead-line for their production, hoping to get their films screened there for the first time. Other festivals and distrubutors are there, anyhow. There are several interesting, already released films on the competition. Portugese Abi Feijo has made a sand animation Clandestino, an intensive story about a stowaway who tries to get out from a ship on a christmas eve. Story is small, but universal and well told British input is again strong. Paul Bush is well known British animator, who is now presenting Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, technically challencing pixilation. It is interpretation of the R. L. Stevenson's novel, but very special kind. Everything in the film is moving and changing all the time, as a reflection of human mind. Or at least this is how we understand the dephts of human mind in the post-Freud era, man is not always the same and there is more inside us than meets the eye. Dog and headless horseman Suzie Templeton is young British animator, and Dog is her diploma film from the animation school. This five minutes film is extremely touching family drama of a young boy's wish to know how his mother died. When trying to guard the boys feelings father succeeds to give him even greater pain. Technically this puppet animation combines exellent skill with well done, even overnaturalistic characters. The little big nation of animation Estonia is again in Annecy competition with two films of young directors. Ülo Pikkov's cell animation Peata ratsanik (Headless Horseman) [photo left side] paints a mysterious landscape filled with cowboys, houses and cows. The film keeps it's head above the water because it's absurd world is logical inside. Spectator do not wonder anything, everything is natural. The feature animation competition presents five films from very various countries: Republic of Korea, Argentina, Japan, Italy and Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a tiny country of 440 000 inhabitans, but manages to produce a major feature film, Tristan and Isolde. It is traditional animation in American style with adventures, knights, romance, songs and very sweet colours. But it is definitely professionally made. Italian director Enzo D'Alo, who directed beautiful Blue train some years ago is in competition with his new film Momo alla conquista del tempo (Momo's fight against time). The Korean film is Mari Iyagi (My Beautiful Girl, Mari) by Sung-Gang Lee. The retrospectives of Annecy will concentrate for laughter. Festival aims to screen the funniest animations ever made. And then to Zagreb… Zagreb festival is biannual, and the competition includes much more films that have already been seen in the ever rotating wheel of festivals. It also shows all film categories in the same competition, whereas Annecy separates independent productions from TV-series and commissioned films. Both have, however, separate student competition. The festival tells this year's statistic: "978 films have been submitted for this year Zagreb Festival. Among entries from 47 different countries the Selection Committee has chosen 85 titles from 27 countries for 5 programmes of the Official Competition. 55 student works will compete in the Student Competition." All films mentioned above except Paul Bush's film are also in Zagreb's main competition. It presents also many other very intresting films. Michel Dudok de Wit's Father and Daughter is one of the most prize collecting films in last two years, and is in competition again. But Dudok de Wit is also in competition with four commercials for a US telephone company. These are produced by the California based Acme Filmworks, a company that is specialised in high quality animation advertisment. It's producer Ron Diamond uses a lot of top quality animators around the world for his commercials. Polish animation is in Zagreb competition with Strojenie instrumentów (Tuning instruments) by Jerzy Kucia [photo left side] and Zbrodnia i kara (Crime and Punishment) by Pjotr Dumala. Both are well known animators with very sensitive films, and these two films are no exeption. Kucia has already collected prizes with this film at Tough Eye festival in Turku, Finland and Stuttgart animation festival in Germany. A very special kind of film is Credo by Jonas Raeber from Switzerland. It is innocent looking traditional cell animation with sheeps on the pastures of Alps. Spectators laugh but there is something under the surface. In the end it comes clear, Credo is a anti-clerical statement critising the catholic church. British Phil Mulloy has already collected many prestigious prizes with his new film The Invasion, e.g. Special prize from Cinanima festival in Espinho, Grand Prix from Tampere short film festival and one of the main prizes from Stuttgart animation festival. The international selection committee gave also an award for the best selection of student films submitted to the festival. It went for Seoul Animation Center. There will be four Korean student films among the 53 films in the student competition. The only countries that exeeds this number are United Kingdom with eight films and France with ashtonising 13 films in student competiton. Retrospectives in Zagreb will include among others Paul Driessen, Swedish pioneer animator Victor Bergdahl, Norwegian animation and selection of Japanese animation history. This year is Zagreb's 30th anniversary, which might explain the focus on historical programme. www.annecy.org www.animafest.hr

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