Music video showcased at animation festival
Veronica Quach | Centretown News
A sold-out ByTowne Cinema screened local animator David Cooper’s music video alongside other films at the Ottawa International Animation Festival last night.
His video was showcased alongside other films for the commissioned animated competition, including promotional work, music videos and adult television animation.
“This festival carries a lot of weight with animation industry people,” he says. “It can only help to have a film in competition here.”
The festival chose 99 films to compete out of 2,185 entries this year.
Full story from Centretown News: Music video showcased at animation festival
Ottawa festival winners announced
Mike Valiquette | CanadianAnimationResources.ca
The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) comes to an end with the highly anticipated closing ceremonies held this evening at the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau. Organizers announced the winners of the official competition during the ceremonies.
This year’s event, held October 14-18, was a tremendous success with packed screenings, sold out workshops, high profile networking events such as the Television Animation Conference and the Recruiting Fair. The Festival is a major international film event that attracts 1500 industry pass holders from across Canada and around the world with a total attendance of over 25,000. Although the final numbers are not officially in, there are strong indications that this year’s Festival reached the highest attendance to date.
The 2009 international jury for Short Program, Student and Commissioned Films include: Amid Amidi (USA), Jim Blashfield (USA) and Suzan Pitt (USA). The international jury for Feature Film Competition include: Thomas Meyer-Hermann (Germany), Christa Moesker (Netherlands) and Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre (Canada).
The Festival has a special jury made up of local kids to select the Best Short Animation Made for Children and the Best Television Animation Made for Children. This year’s kids jury included: Tallie Doyle, Tegwyn Hughes, Jamie McCormick, Felipe Bemfica, Isabelle Birchall, Aditya Mohan, Paris Mullin, Quinn Murphy and Eric Ding.
Full story: Ottawa festival winners announced
Animation fest wraps up 33rd year
TRACEY TONG | METRO OTTAWA
Mary and Max, directed by Australia’s Adam Elliot, took home the grand prize for best animated feature at the Ottawa International Animation Festival last night.
Kaasündinud Kohustused (Inherent Obligations) by Rao Heidmets of Estonia took home the grand prize for best independent short animation.
The 33rd annual festival featured 93 short films and seven features in competition and 58 in the international showcase, attracting a record 27,000 people, said festival spokeswoman Lindsay Wellwood. The festival had three local entries, including Nick Cross and Dave Cooper, who did a video for Danko Jones called King of Magazines, and Canterbury High School student Benjamin Woodyard.
Source: Metro Ottawa online: Animation fest wraps up 33rd year
Here’s what you’ll see at the animation festival
Peter Simpson, The Ottawa Citizen
More than 150 animated films — from as short as 10 seconds in length to this year’s record crop of feature-length entries — will be screened between today and Sunday evening. Ninety-nine of those films will be in official competition, and 58 others will be showcased outside the competition.
It’s all turning into the biggest year to date in the 33-year history of the Ottawa International Animation Festival, which can say without hyperbole that it attracts the best of the world’s animation, and some of its biggest hitters as guest speakers.
This year’s speakers include Henry Selick, director of Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, who will talk about his 2009 hit Coraline. Story supervisor Ronnie del Carmen will talk about the making of another big animated hit this year, Pixar’s Up!, and David Silverman will talk about directing The Simpsons Movie and 22 episodes of The Simpsons on TV.
Full preview available on Peter’s The Big Beat blog: Here’s what you’ll see at the animation festival
Animation Festival expects large crowds
Veronica Quach, Centretown News
The festival features the competition of animated films, including short films, PSAs, commercials and feature films. Approximately 100 films are selected from 1,000 entries from all over the world each year, says Kelly Neall, managing director of the festival. It also allows animation professionals and fans to get together and network.
More students groups are expected to boost attendance, says Neall. Groups from all over North America have time to organize and are expected to come out, she says. When the festival was held in September, schools did not have time to prepare, she says.
More than 1,500 people have signed up for passes this year and the festival expects to break the attendance record from last year, says Neall. People attend because the festival is one of the largest animation festivals in the world, she says.
Full story at centretownnewsonline.ca: Animation Festival expects large crowds
Animation buffet: Fest draws big industry names, enthusiasts
TRACEY TONG | METRO OTTAWA
From the new Wallace and Gromit movie to a new film by The Cat Came Back creator Cordell Barker and appearances by The Simpsons Movie director David Silverman, Up’s Ronnie del Carmen and Coraline director Henry Selick, the Ottawa International Animation Festival has “some pretty heavy stars in animation” here this year, said artistic director Chris Robinson.
The 33rd annual festival, which kicked off Wednesday and runs through Sunday, has “taken over downtown” with screenings at the Bytown, the Arts Court, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the National Gallery of Canada and the Empire Theatre, said Robinson.
With so many film choices – 99 in competition and 40 in the international showcase – and lectures, workshops and networking opportunities for those in the industry, Ottawans have a lot to choose from.
Read the full preview on Metro Ottawa online: Animation buffet
Chinese films selected for competition at Canadian animation festival
chinaview.cn
Three short films from the Chinese mainland were selected for competition at the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) which opened here on Wednesday.
“We are very exited to have Lei Lei, a Chinese animator here with three films in competition,” the OIAF’s managing director Kelly Neall told Xinhua in an interview at the opening ceremony in downtown Ottawa.
The three Chinese entries — “Magic Cube and Ping-Pong,” “Pears or Aliens” and “The Universe Cotton” — are all from Lei Lei, a 23-year-old up-and-coming multimedia animator, who graduated from Tsinghua University in 2007.
Full story: Chinese films selected for competition at Canadian animation festival
The 2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival
Migneault | Apt.613 blog
This week the Ottawa International Animation Festival will celebrate its 33rd year. No that wasn’t a typo. The Animation Festival has been around for more than three decades. In that time it has cemented itself as one of the premier animation festivals on the planet [We here at Apt. 613 cannot comment on what goes on in other solar systems]. Animators from around the world can point out Ottawa on a map because they know that the festival has always been on the cutting edge for their field. In short, the Ottawa International Animation Festival is the place to be if you want to know what exciting directions all forms of animation are headed in the next few years. We should be proud that animators look up to this event to check the collective pulse of their industry. There is no better way to show that pride than to check out some of the best films the festival has to offer.
This year the Animation Festival will run from Wednesday Oct. 14 to Sunday Oct. 18. Over the course of those five days 93 short films and seven feature films will be screened for competition. These films were hand picked from 2,185 different entries over the course of the past year. There will be an additional 58 films (out of competition) that are meant to showcase Canadian talent. The festival also hosts many different workshops and keynote speeches by industry leaders. Spaces for these events are limited for the general public, however, because they are really meant for animation insiders.
Read the full post on Apt. 613: The 2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival
9 films at the Ottawa International Animation Festival
Julie Matlin | NFB.ca Blog
The Ottawa International Animation Festival is right around the corner (Oct. 14 – 18), and this year we’ve got 9 films screening, 3 of which are in official competition.
» View trailers for the 9 NFB screenings: 9 films at the Ottawa International Animation Festival
NFB shines with nine films at the Ottawa International Animation Festival
As one of the world’s leading creators of auteur animation, the National Film Board of Canada has close ties to the world-renowned Ottawa International Animation Festival. A long-time partner of the OIAF, the NFB will present nine new shorts at the event’s 33rd edition (October 14-18, 2009), three of them in competition. The line-up displays a variety of inventive techniques and powerful themes, continuing the NFB tradition of innovation and excellence in animation art. On top of the festival’s official selection of new productions, the OIAF has curated a special Rarities Program of seldom seen NFB classics to celebrate its 70th. anniversary. The NFB will also present the Public Prize.Among other themes, NFB films selected for this year’s OIAF probe lost and regained love (Oscar winner Chris Landreth’s The Spine) and the perverse human drive toward chaos (Oscar nominee Cordell Barker’s Runaway). With classics such as Neighbours (1952) and stunning recent films such as Madame Tutli-Putli (2008), the NFB has shown that animation shorts pack considerable expressive power into their brief running times. NFB films, deploying techniques ranging from traditional hand-made animation to adventurous digital innovation, provoke strong emotions and thoughtful discussion with their eye-opening, witty and sometimes very funny explorations of life on earth.
OFFICIAL COMPETITION (NARRATIVE CATEGORY)
Cordell Barker’s Runaway, the Winnipeg-based filmmaker’s highly anticipated third collaboration with the NFB, is a provocative, hilarious follow-up to his zany Oscar-nominated The Cat Came Back (1988) and Strange Invaders (2001). In Runaway, Barker takes a hard look at reality and asks sardonically: What would happen if the world were a driverless train thundering recklessly over bumpy tracks? Produced by Michael Scott and Derek Mazur for the NFB, the film’s wild ride careens to music by Benoît Charest, whose score for The Triplets of Belleville contributed to that film’s frantic rhythm.
Runaway rolls into Ottawa after stops at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Petit Rail d’Or for Best Short, and the Annecy International Animation Festival, which granted the film a Special Jury Prize. The film’s elaborate website, complete with making-of features, is at nfb.ca/runaway.
In Bruce Alcock’s bittersweet Vive la Rose, an ancient chanson performed by the late Newfoundland musician Émile Benoit is brought to life with melancholic passion. A woman dies in the film and a simple man devastated by loss sings to her in a last farewell. Co-produced by Tina Ouellette (Global Mechanic) and Annette Clarke and Michael Fukushima (NFB), Alcock’s first NFB collaboration is a spectacular animation filmed on location, with available light, in Newfoundland. Fishhooks, shells, driftwood, and rocks lend the mixed-media short an unusual texture. The film uses a unique visual triptych design to amplify the song’s emotions while honouring land, sea, and the harsh lives of local fishermen. To watch the trailer, visit nfb.ca/vivelarose.
In Phillip Eddolls’ Git Gob, produced by the NFB’s Michael Fukushima and associate produced by Maral Mohammadian within the Hothouse 5 program for emerging animators, two creatures ponder the meaning of a hole. The fuzzy, brightly coloured humanoids have different points of view. Their debate leads to an idea that changes the world. This is a story of practical magic, whimsy with a cosmic conclusion.
IN THE CANADIAN SHOWCASE
Chris Landreth’s The Spine, the director’s eagerly awaited follow-up to his groundbreaking, Oscar-winning Ryan (2004), amazed spectators at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and was named Best of the Festival at Melbourne’s animation event. Like Ryan, Landreth’s depiction of a fallen NFB animator, The Spine raises the bar on the ability of digital animation to probe deeply into human emotions, merging realism with surrealism in the director’s trademark “psychorealist” style. A National Film Board of Canada production in Association with Copperheart Animation and C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, the film is a strangely beautiful and highly original look at a man and a woman trapped in a spiral of mutual destruction after 26 years of marriage. The NFB’s Marcy Page produced this poignant, bravely honest story with Copperheart’s Steve Hoban and Mark Smith. The production also benefited from the creative participation of Autodesk Canada CO. and Seneca College School of Communication Arts. The Spine website at nfb.ca/thespine includes Chris Landreth’s entertaining blog.
Like the competing film Git Gob, Brandon Blommaert’s Batmilk and Neely Goniodsky’s Pearl are shorts from the NFB’s Hothouse 5 series, both produced by Michael Fukushima and associate produced by Maral Mohammadian.
Batmilk is a comically macabre film about an oafish ghoul who faces ruin when his soft exposed brain is unexpectedly killed. A bizarre form of predatory behaviour feeds the ghoul with new life. Entirely different in mood and animation style, Pearl is a tender film about longing and memory in the aged. A lonely old lady sits in an empty room, knitting. As her thoughts wander, her dreams take the shape of fanciful knitted creatures and objects that cocoon her in a pattern of wonder and comfort.
Cédric Louis and Claude Barras’ Land of the Heads swoops into Ottawa with dark, dense, and funny images reminiscent of Tim Burton’s expressionist animation. Parodying classic horror films, the film is a ghoulishly funny children’s story about a vampire forced to go out every night to separate kids from their heads. Why? His vain, domineering wife wants to replace her wrinkled head with a young and pretty one. Land of the Heads was coproduced by Michael Fukushima (NFB) and Claude Barras (Hélium Films).
Commissioned by the NFB for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Foundation, Howie Shia’s Peggy Baker Four Phrases is a brief animated documentary that blends spare live-action with swirling animation to depict Canadian dance legend Peggy Baker’s view of the intersection between her art and life. Produced by Michael Fukushima (NFB), the film was created to celebrate Baker at the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award gala.
In Inés Sedan’s accomplished first film, The Man who Slept, a young woman gazes lovingly at her husband, who sleeps day and night. But the slumbering body is only a memory, one that becomes increasingly oppressive. This vibrantly textured animated film is a work about resilience. It takes us on a journey through darkness toward a new awakening. The Man who Slept was coproduced by Ron Dyens and Aurélia Prévieu (Sacrebleu Productions, France), Marcel Jean and Galilé Marion-Gauvin (L’Unité centrale), and Marc Bertrand (NFB).
SPECIAL PROGRAM OF RARE NFB FILMS
Presented by the NFB and curated by the OIAF, a Rarities Program of twelve intriguing, but seldom seen animated shorts from deep within the Film Board’s archives will celebrate its 70th anniversary of producing acclaimed films. OIAF audiences will have the opportunity to see Guy Glover’s Lining the Blues (1939) Jim McKay’s Bid it Up Sucker (1944), George Dunning’s Cadet Rouselle (1947), Colin Low’s The Romance of Transportation in Canada (1952), Gerald Potterton’s My Financial Career (1962), Eliot Noyes’ Alphabet (1966), Yvon Mallette’s Boomsville (1968), George Geertsen’s Klondike Gold (1980), Donald McWilliams’ Aloud/Bagatelle (1983), John Weldon’s The Lump (1991), Anita Lebeau’s Louise (2003), and Paul Morstad’s Walking Catfish Blues (2004).
About the NFB
Canada’s public film producer and distributor, the National Film Board of Canada creates social-issue documentaries, auteur animation, alternative drama and digital content that provide the world with a unique Canadian perspective. In collaboration with its international partners and co-producers, the NFB is expanding the vocabulary of 21st-century cinema and breaking new ground in form and content, through community filmmaking projects, cross-platform media, interactive cinema, stereoscopic animation – and more. Since the NFB’s founding in 1939, it has created over 13,000 productions and won over 5,000 awards, including 12 Oscars and more than 90 Genies. In 2009, the works of NFB animation pioneer Norman McLaren were added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Registry. The NFB’s new website features over 1,000 productions online – visit NFB.ca and start watching.
