Sponsored by Rai Radiotelvisione Italiana, Cartoons of the Bay gives attendees an intimate look at Italian animation. All festival images courtesy of Cartoons on the Bay.

It seems strange that, in its eighth edition, Cartoons on the Bay, the wonderful little festival that took place in Positano, Italy, April 21-25, 2004, remains almost unique among animation festivals in its devotion to TV animation. After all, television is not only the biggest market for animation, but it is also where considerable amount of its creative energy is focused.

As a first-time visitor, I found the festival to be a rather cozy affair. Its location and facilities in the former fishing village turned vacation resort south of Naples dictates almost dictates this approach. The screenings and awards ceremonies were held in a modest theater-in-a-tent on the beach set up just for the occasion; the other main venue was the somewhat more spacious conference room of the elegant Covo dei Saraceni Hotel, which also served as festival headquarters.

Festival director Alfio Bastiancich says Cartoons on the Bay was my idea and I was involved with it from the very start. Up until that time, all our animation festivals, such as those in Annecy, Ottawa and Treviso (which I managed from 1985- 95), were devoted to shorts and to auteur films; and there was not, during this period, one that discussed and put into competition industrial production.

So, in 1996, with the help of Rai Radiotelevisione Italiana, the Italian public TV network through its Rai Trade division, and the local government, the first Cartoons on the Bay was held. To this one must add the presence of the broadcasters Rai Fiction unit, a major funder of Italian TV animation; and one must not forget the leading Rai TV personalities who acted as emcees for each evenings entertainment and screenings. Needless to say, it is not surprising that Italian studios large and small make a special point to show up. As such, Cartoons on the Bay provides a unique window into the world of Italian animation.

The festival’s unique and picturesque location south of Naples lends a casual air to the event.

Though Italian cinema has a long and glorious history, animation in Italy has often taken a back seat to other European countries. Several world-class Italian animators, such as Bruno Bozzetti and Giulio Gianini, are of course familiar on the festival circuit, but unfortunately they are little known to the general public outside of Italy. (Bozzetti, incidentally, is a leading producer of TV animation in Italy and it was announced he is developing a new series for the fall season.)

When asked at a press conference if Italy now ranked third in TV animation, a Rai executive had to admit that the honor still belongs to France. In this regard, Bastiancich told me Italy, as well as France and Spain, also lags behind Britain, Because they have the possibility of the American market, they are also more classic and more cinematic, especially with regard to their stop motion work. They are also more experimental, because they have production for commercials, which is very strong in animation there.

This sense of Italian animation striving to overcome was felt in some of the three roundtable discussions that were part of the festivals International Conference on Television Animation, which focused on The Challenge of Innovation. The first roundtable centered on promotional stage shows based on TV shows; this sort of thing, while not unusual in North America and Asia, is still a fairly new concept in Italy. The festivals new UNICEF-Campania Region Prize dedicated to the uses of animation in educational and social contexts, spurred a discussion of various Italian initiatives in this area by educators and producers. This included a project sponsored by the City of Rome involving Israeli and Palestinian teenagers, who are collaborating with professional animators to produce a film promoting peace in the region. Finally, there was a roundtable on animation in videogames.