Phil Mulloy (left), the subject of a retrospective that included new work, also served as a jury member. Here he catches up with Ulrich Wegenast, artistic director of the Stuggart International Festival of Animated Film.

And that, in addition to a lot of hard work and sheer determination, more or less brings us to November 2005 and the 29th annual Cinanima festival. While in Espinho I sought out one of the selection jury members to ask if they could describe the kind of films the jury was looking for. Cristina Teixeira, a young woman who teaches animation, was available. She parked her young son with family and joined me to discuss the festival’s preselection. “What were you looking for in your selection?” I asked.

“Some young Portuguese animation directors recently asked me,” she replied, “if it’s possible to have charme with the new technology.” Charme in Portuguese would most closely translate into the English work “heart.” “Cinanima,” she continued, “promotes the poetic things.” I asked how she defines poetic. “Texture,” she replied, “the textures, the materials, the colors come together like in a painting to give you that genuine feeling of charme.

Day or night, the ocean lured festival attendees.

The mission of the festival, according to Pedro Perez, who has been a member of the organizing team for the past 18 years, is to “receive the people well,” both the locals and the guests from abroad. Directors of festivals (from as far away as Hiroshima, and Kiev this year), animators and students of animation choose to come to this festival because of its genuinely relaxing, warm and generous atmosphere.

Those coming from abroad are ferried to and from the nearby Oporto airport, housed in the small number of local hotels, and fed at the many inexpensive, family run restaurants. An organized tour of the countryside halfway through the festival, punctuated with a sumptuous spread of local fare at a restaurant in nearby Ovar, gave us the opportunity to get out of the screening rooms and into the sunlight, and to see a bit of the local color.

During the six days of events at the festival there were seven competition screenings, three panoramas, a competition of feature films, and a retrospective (actually presenting the newest work) of Phil Mulloy who was in attendance. For the local population, for whom this festival is clearly an institution, there were fully attended screenings for primary school children through to teenagers; workshops, retrospectives including a presentation of the current work of young Portuguese directors, debates and separate screenings for the aged and the disabled.

The residents of Espinho are proud of their longstanding relationship with animated film. While many outsiders have sought to move the festival to the larger centers of Porto or Lisbon, Antonio Gaio and the residents of Espinho insist on maintaining its presence at home.

Parties and barhops punctuated the evenings and went on late into the night, often into the hours of early morning, as people caught up with friends and news, argued and debated the competitions and the selection, and generally took in the midnight air. In Espinho one leaves behind big city anonymity and loneliness. The local people are friendly and kind, and I found it quite safe to wander the town even late at night the biggest risk, in fact, seeming to be the trains that run right through the town’s center at high speed.

In fact many local people are still awake and wandering along the boardwalk at 2:00 and 3:00 am, gazing at the waves crashing onto the beach and watching the lights of the local fishermen’s boats bob far out at sea. Food and drink are inexpensive and plentiful, the Porto wines a treat, and the many varied and rich desserts a serious hazard to one’s waistline. Our hosts were gracious and generous, and went to every effort to make us feel very welcome.

The night before we departed I, and several other filmmakers, had a unique opportunity to have dinner with a number of young Portuguese directors and animators and we spoke at length about their work, their plans and their struggles.

“Is Antonio Gaio still a deep influence on your work?” I asked. “Very much so,” they replied. “He risked a lot, almost everything really, he was very courageous and strong to show animation during the time of the PIDE, and we still hold the memory of those terrible times. Our own parents were involved in the revolution so it is still alive for us. Also he brought us the films. When we were young, every year we would go to Cinanima, all the schools would come, to see the films. If it wasn’t for Mr. Gaio and Cinanima we wouldn’t have grown up with animation.”

These young directors want their work judged, not as conventional because they celebrate the poetic and the meaningful, but as a celebration of their country’s hard fought struggle for freedom of speech. They, along with the organizers of Cinanima, aren’t looking just for rarified innovation — though freshness of form is important to them — but for artistic works that genuinely celebrate one’s culture and identity; in effect, a marriage of innovation, imagination and poetry.

Sharon Katz is an independent animator who lives and works in Ottawa. Her recently released animated short film, Slide, is now traveling more than she is.