Estonian animator Priit Parn and his wife Olga Marchenko with the Lifetime Achievement Award that Parn received at the opening night ceremony. Unless noted, photos courtesy of Nancy Denney-Phelps.

Far and away the best parts of the festival for me were the special programs. "Anima Docs" alone was well worth the entire trip to the festival. Curated by Erik van Durnen and Gerben Schermer for the International Documentary Film Festival 2007 in Amsterdam, the five programs give us a chance to decide for ourselves if the animated documentary is fiction posing as reality or not.

Winsor McCay's 1916 Sinking of the Lusitania is an obvious propaganda piece designed to stir up anti-German sentiments during WW I. At the other end of the spectrum, in Springtime in Sant Ponc (2007), Swiss animators Eugenia Mumenthaler and David Epiney recorded the results of a drawing workshop for mentally handicapped people. It gives a glimpse into their thoughts and fears via animation.

Even though I have seen John Canemaker's beautifully animated The Moon and the Son many times, it never fails to completely enthrall me. Dennis Tupicoff's gut-wrenching film His Mother's Voice moved the entire audience. This Australian film uses the voice-over of a mother whose son was shot, with visuals created by Dennis. He told me that he had originally heard the woman talking in a radio interview, which had such an emotional impact on him that he had to animate her story.

"Out of Africa" brought to the screen animation from the entire African continent. The special "Africa Kids" program was for children of all ages. The 35 films in the four screenings covered diverse topics, from political and social issues to folk legends, in styles including puppet animation, cut and drawn animation and 2D computer animation. The screenings gave me a window into a vast, diverse continent that I regret to say I do not know enough about.

Clare Kitson, renowned animation researcher, author and former curator at Britain's National Film Theatre, was the recipient of this year's Outstanding Achievement in Animation Theory award. She was part of the "Meet the Authors" sessions, and it was fascinating to hear her speak about the time she spent in Russia talking with Yuri Norstein for her award-winning book Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales. The book not only looks at a film that is considered to be one of the greatest animated films ever made, but also delves deeply into the personal references that Norstein infused into the film. To further her understanding of Eastern-bloc animation, she learned Russian, which enabled her to talk to Norstein without the aid of an interpreter. As curator of the British National Film Theatre, Clare opened the eyes and minds of British audiences to animation from around the world, especially Russian and Eastern European works that had been unknown until then in Western Europe. The "World Classics" program presented by Clare included such great films as Chuck Jones' immortal What's Opera Doc? and Raoul Servais' Harpya. For those who had heard her speak the day before about Yuri Norstein and his wonderful film Tale of Tales but hadn't had the opportunity to see the film, she included it in her program.

Priit Parn was awarded the Zagreb Animafest Lifetime Achievement Award. There were three screenings of Priit's impressive body of work, as well as Parnography, Hardi Volmer's brilliant 2005 documentary about Priit and his work. I once again saw classic films that I love, such as Karl and Marilyn and Night of the Carrots. We also got to view several commercials that he made. His wife Olga Marchenko joined him on stage to talk about their first collaboration, the 2007 film I Feel a Lifelong Bullet in the Back of my Head, which is part of an Estonian poetry/animation project. They went on to discuss their new film Life without Gabriella Ferri, which they were going to finish editing once they arrived back in Estonia. As a special surprise we were also treated to Raphaell Gianelli Meriano's new short documentary Night Without the Pope, which shows Priit and Olga at home on the occasion of his 60th birthday. You get a private glimpse into how these two creative people work, as they draw together, while singing a duet, on a glass window at their home overlooking the Baltic Sea.

As part of the "Women in Animation" screenings, Joanna Quinn presented two programs of films that have had a significant influence on her career. An Animafest "Historical Overview" screened women's films, traveling in time from the 1933 French film Night on Bald Mountain by Claire Parker and Alexander Alexeioff, to Jean Gratz's 1992 Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase. Croatian women animators were also spotlighted in a special screening, and a special presentation of Lotte Reiniger's Adventures of Prince Achmed was accompanied by a live piano score as part of this salute.

A pair of "Best of Polish Animation" programs focused on films created between 1997 and 2007, and panel discussions covered such topics as "The Animated Documentary: Fiction or Reality," "Film in Africa" and "Women in Animated Film."

The opening night screening was a cross section of films that arrived too late to be juried for competition, but that Artistic Director Kreshimir Zimonic and the Animafest team deemed worthy of viewing. It is a shame that such wonderful films as Koji Yamamura's Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor, Suzie Templeton's Academy Award-winning Peter and the Wolf and Michaela Pavlatova's Carnival of Animals could not be in competition, but it was nice to see them again on the big screen.