Ok enough. To the point: November was the 1^st anniversary of the Pimp column. I was gonna try and form some thoughts about the selection process in Ottawa so that we could have it in print and move on to more important tasks like examining why the live-action artists are such fashionable arses... BUT then the world went nuts (more so)... there was that whole Gulliani thing then the Bush thing then the stolen lumber truck baseball contraction then Mario's sore hip then Patrick Roy pulled out then my doctor called and said my cholesterol was high then this girl called and said something about Daddy grade 10 mother was a cheerleader loose sperm then there was the Italian crisis as I walked by the forum ruins and wondered why Italian animation SUCKS then my brother called, he rarely calls, then Richard said the SD reader fired him which is like Gretzky being cut then I went to a GBV concert and couldn't hear for 2 days then I listened to Far East Suite continuously for one week and hell the next thing ya know it was xmas and I had shopping to do, decorations to hang, cookies to bake then came the new year and my annual enema. Soooooooooooooo (whew!) finally... in the month of love and suicide, when I suffer from neither, I found a moment to articulate a few thoughts about festivals and specifically competition film selection for those of you who care. If that's not you, might I suggest this dandy nostalgic piece by one Richard Meltzer.

Every year people bitch about the film selection; that's part of the game. I LOVE it when a 'rejected' entrant sends angry emails demanding to know what moron obviously missed the point of their film. I like that energy. You spend SO MUCH time with this child. You believed in it enough to make it. You SHOULD be passionate about it. What irks me is the ignorance of the process. "How could this film get in and not mine!?" "Everyone at my school thinks it's THE best film ever." "How can Cybersix get in and not Father and Daughter?" Stuff like that.

It's hard to get your film into Ottawa. There are 6 competition programmes generally running no longer than 80 minutes each. That's 480 minutes of film. We receive more than 1300 entries. Fewer than 100 are accepted. Annecy, as a comparison, receives the same number of entries, but offers at least twice the competition space. As such me, my momma, her sister, her sister's cousin's uncle's neighbour's friend's brother's daughter's stepfather's ex-wife's dog with a blocked bladder has a decent chance of being screened.

Tick-tocking aside, folks forget about the categorization of entries. Entries are judged within their categories (eg. kid's film, TV series, independent film, graduate film, commercial, etc...), so when you see Cybersix or Celebrity Deathmatch in competition and not the latest Plympton or Quay epic, it is NOT because the committee felt that Cybersix is a better film. Some ask, especially the folks from the old part of the world, why categories? Why not just judge everything on the same level? Well...films are not produced in the same conditions or with the same intentions (ya ok...I know that's a rather problematic argument in the end too -- Why accept 'crappy' TV animation? Is it fair to have Iranian animators competing against NFB toonsters? -- But a line must be drawn -- get it? Heh heh heh).

Until this year a committee of International animation professionals selected competition films for the Ottawa fest. From the beginning of my tyrannical reign I contemplated slicing the committee. We (hell...I) finally decided to do it in 2000. There were a variety of reasons: 1) It costs us almost $10,000 (CDN) to bring four people to Ottawa in the summer to deliberate and then back again in the fall for the festival. 2) selection by committee sucks. Invariably, because it's such a small community, the same faces begin showing up on different committees and juries (just take a look at Cinanima 2001 as a great example). 3) While peer assessment is a nice dream invariably these animators don't have the opportunity to attend festivals to keep up with contemporary animation. So what happens when people aren't keeping up with the new stuff? They tend to make comfortable and familiar decisions. We all do that...but if you're not watering the nuggin...you're taste buds are gonna stagnate. Hence...(and I say this as a first hand witness) committees often pick films because of WHO made them or WHAT prizes they won rather than the actual quality of the work. 4) Furthermore, there is rarely any detailed debate. More often than not, a simple 'democratic' vote ends all discussion: "next film, please." The result: animation festivals start to look the same.