Life happens in Ottawa. Original artwork courtesy of Chris Lanier (apologies to the Ottawa skyline).

It seems impossible that “real life” could happen at a festival. Sure, connections can be made and business cards swapped, and lives thereby sent on different trajectories — but these are all purchases against the future, not what’s happening right now, in front of you. The bulk of the physical activity at a festival is so thoroughly passive, it can almost seem like sleep: there you are, seated in the dark, silently taking in someone else’s version of the outside world. Real life’s gotta be elsewhere.

But a few times at past Ottawa festivals, real life caught up with me. Nothing happened that a camera could catch: I was still there, seated in the dark, mouth zipped and eyes dumbly screwed open. Despite this, there was (at times) a powerful feeling that that art does not stand outside of life: it is life. And the stuff that was argued over at dinner or over drinks wasn’t just stuff to argue over at dinner or over drinks: we were really talking about life.

Audiences displayed great enthusiasm during the festival that almost didn’t take place. Unless otherwise indicated, all photos by Tom Evans.

(There is also the sense, as an animator, that the flickering dark is like the only real place where you can come into palpable contact with your history; animation history is history in the dark.)

I was invited to attend the Ottawa 2003 International Student Animation Festival (SAFO 03 for short) as curator of a screening of Internet animation. My perspective, then, is hopelessly compromised, on top of being fallible for run-of-the-mill reasons of personal ineptitude, psychological obtuseness, and so on. Despite this, I hope what follows will give a general sense of SAFO 03, and a couple glimpses of “real life” — some caught in the dark of the screening room at the National Archives of Canada, others caught in equally improbable venues.

Artistic director Chris Robinson, looking saintly after he and Kelly Neall saved SAFO from extinction. Photographed and altered by Oscar Grillo.

SAFO or Not SAFO
The 2003 Student Animation Festival is the last student festival that will appear independently at Ottawa for the foreseeable future. That it took place at all is a testament to the dedication of the festival directors and staff. A few months before the festival opened, one of the festival’s major sponsors, Telefilm, announced that it was going to cut its funding completely, having decided its funding mandate applied only to feature film production. Thanks to a letter-writing campaign instigated by managing director Kelly Neal and artistic director Chris Robinson, Telefilm was flooded with sufficient protest that they reversed their decision. On hearing that the festival had sold out all its advance tickets, Telefilm even sent a conciliatory letter to the festival, saying it was glad it’d been brought around.

Looking toward the future — the future of diminished funding that seems to lie ahead for most arts organizations in these financially pinched times — the festival directors have decided to concentrate on the maintenance of the “main” Ottawa festival, which has in the past few years alternated with the student festival on a bi-annual basis. Now the International Animation Festival will take place yearly, with student competitions folded in.