Annecy 2009

I recently experienced one of the biggest events in the animation festival calender: Festival International du Film d'Animation d'Annecy. Or the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. For six gloriously sunny days, I soaked up animation until saturation point, in the form of short films, feature films, industry talks and exhibitions.

Highlights included:

• Meeting some lovely animators and directors at a few networking shindigs, thanks to my lovely and talented friend, Sara. I still need to work on my business card giving technique, though.


• The French pastries, soft cheese and strong, tiny coffees I had in copius amounts. It was nice knowing you, trim waist.


• Sitting in the same pub as Nick Park and Michael Dudok de Wit. I'm a nerd, I know.


• The audiences. I’d heard about the infamous crowds of Annecy, but it’s nothing until you’ve experienced them first hand. Lots of wooping and cheering and throwing paper aeroplanes onto the stage. It was the sort of vibe you get at a gig, not a set of animated short films. Love it.


• The pedalo race and subsequent little paddle I had in Lake Annecy with fellow trainees and the boys from Once Were Farmers.

...all in the brilliant company of my fellow G.A.S.P-ers. Of course, I took lots of photos which you can browse leisurely on my flickr.

Anyway, I thought I should highlight some of the animated shorts and films which really grabbed my attention.

Genius Party Beyond

Woooo mama! Amazing. That's all I need to say. I have gushed about these set of shorts from acclaimed Japanese directors to all and sundry, and I shall gush about it again. This is the second instalment in the Genius Party Beyond series, where a complete open brief for a short film is given to five directors/studios. The result? An exemplary example of how original and beautiful anime can be, outside of the clichés of giant robots (as much as I love me some mecha) and scantily clad magical girls. The last short, Dimension Bomb, is particularly arresting. Take a peep at the official trailer below.




The Chick

A slick and fiery short from Michael Socha, showing the excitement and sexual tension of an illicit liaison. The animation’s messy, brush stroke style and bold, sharp colours lends itself perfectly to the passion of the featured femme fatale. Unfortunately, I have no YouTube link to this, but you can check out the trailer on the official website.

Codswallop

I've admired the Brothers Mcleod’s work for a long time, as i'm quite a fan of their lo-fo doodle approach to character design. Codswallop is a beauty of a short showcasing the inhabitants of the weird world the Mcleod’s have created, all tied together with a nonsensical, Mighty Boosh sense of humour which is right up my street. Here is a trailer for it but you can see the full hilarious version here.



The Tale of Little Puppetboy

Heheeeee. Well, this one might not be to everyone tastes but I loved it and so did the audience I was surrounded with when I saw it. Directed by Johannes Nyholm (the guy behind The Knife’s video for Heartbeat) we see our hero, Puppetboy, trying to woo a lady he’s invited around to his flat. It’s rough and crude but dayum, is it funny. The comedic timing is brilliant. The short is split into four parts, and here’s part 2. There is a little bit of genius in choosing the 1982 made-for-TV film, Ivanhoe, for a date movie.