Danish director Anders Morgenthaler's Princess generated a great deal of controversy and conversation. Effectively integrating live-action with animation, the film makes a very powerful plea against pornography. Courtesy of Trust Film Sales.

I spent a lovely afternoon out and about Brussels with Estonian animator Priit Parn, and over a leisurely lunch I learned that he is working on a new film. That is sure to be wonderful news for all of his fans and admirers. (He stopped working when his wife died a couple years ago.) Priit introduced a program of his films, and, the next day, there was a screening of Hardi Volmer's 2005 documentary, Parnography, which gives an in depth look into Parn's work and personal life.

Doug Calder, director of Flushed Away, and a long time Aardman Animation team member gave an inside look at the making of the film to a packed house and talked very candidly about the well publicized split between Aardman and DreamWorks.

A real treat at the Festival for me was the opportunity to view several animation treasures. It was enjoyable to watch a pristine print of Miyazaki's 1986 classic, Castle in the Sky, with an audience of young filmgoers who found it as absorbing and enchanting as I did when I first saw it 20 years ago.

While American children were watching the pop culture icon Scooby-Doo, generations of Europeans grew up on the adventures of La Petite Taupe (The Little Mole), I had never had the pleasure of discovering this delightful Czech animated series until I sat in a theatre full of two to seven year olds who found the adventures of the little mole and his friends, the mouse, the owl and the snail as captivating as their parents had a generation before them. The entire audience, young and old alike, was completely silent except for peals of laughter at the appropriate times.

Animator Zdenek Miller created the first of the 50 episodes in 1956, pairing bright beautiful images with delightful music. Whether the Little Mole is discovering the joys of the carnival, pots of paints, or the adventure of driving an auto, we are taken to a magical land populated by Taupek (as he is known in his original country) and his friends.

Free Jimmy definitely falls into the "Not for Children" category as four stoners try to save a circus elephant. © Storm Studio.

Another cinematic wonderland was the screening of the entire National Film Board of Canada's digitally restored body of Norman McLaren's work, along with Don McWilliams' excellent documentary, Creative Process: Norman McLaren. Several people told me that they had come to the festival specifically to see all 10 separate episodes.

SIGGGRAPH's Computer Animation Festival made its first appearance at ANIMA this year with a two-hour program featuring computer-generated work created for cinema, TV, videogames and scientific simulation. Even though I am not usually thrilled by computer animation, the program was so varied that I could not help but be impressed.

With the recent announcement that DreamWorks will film Tintin, the iconic Belgian hero of 23 books and two previous live-action and three animated films, he will soon be as well known to American young people as he is in Europe. As intriguing as Tintin's adventures are, the real life story of his creator George Remi, better known as Hergé, is even more curious.

In his 2004 documentary, Tintin and I, director Anders Hogsbro Ostergaard utilizes footage from a 1971 interview with Hergé that he uncovered while browsing through the archives of the Foundation Hergé in Brussels. The audiotape of this interview has remained intact, and on it, Hergé reveals his torments as a creator, his obsessive dream of pureness and the demons in his past. Ostergaard illustrates Herge's confessions with digitized and reprocessed images taken from films and other interviews, along with photos and drawings, to give us a glimpse of this extremely fragile person and magnificent creator. Two of the animated adventures, Tintin and the Lake of Sharks and Tintin and the Sun Temple were also screened.

Children are initiated into the magic world of cinema at a very early age. One very lovely festival tradition is the annual children and parents party. One of the festival bars was turned into a workshop area with activities for all ages, ranging from face painting for the very youngest, to various drawing and craft projects. The children ranged in age from two to 12 years old, and they and their parents were treated to food and drink. The event ended with a screening of Flushed Away in the main theatre.