U.S. animator Joan Gratz screened a selection of her films during a tribute to her work.

“Yes,” Bordo agreed and went on to say that with shrinking production budgets often times, national studios around the globe are sending out the animation portion of their films to countries like India to be completed. So while the commercial animation sector has been doing this for years, it is now spreading to the government supported studios, which is a major shift and some feel, threat to the system and its overall purpose and viability.

The Big Surprise
While all of these presentations were fantastic casual chats, the highpoint of the week was the presentation of The Pace of Peace, or P.O.P. Upon arriving in Italy, I really hadn’t thought about why a camel was gracing all of the posters for this year’s festival, but I was about to find out. A very proud Luca unveiled this incredibly ambitious project — along with 16 students fresh off a plane specifically for the event.

The festival, in conjunction with the Office for Peace in Jerusalem of the City of Rome, brought eight students from Ranaana in Israel and eight students from Qalqilia in Palestine together for one week in Rome. These 16 students worked together to create the idea for a short film about bringing their very different worlds together and finding peace. In one week the kids did all of the “pre-production” in the form of a script and basic design that was then realized by 13 Italian studios, including The Animation Band, A&M, De Mas, Graphilm, Rainbow, National School of Cinema — Department of Animated Film, Proxima, Stranemani and others, under the artistic supervision of Giulio Gianini and Emanuele Luzzati. Roberto David Papini and Attilio Valenti first conceived the project over one and a half years ago.

The camel I was to learn was actually a supercamel, which carries a young Palestinian and Israeli boy on his back as he flies through the air transforming scenes of war and separation into understanding and tolerance. The film was awarded the Prize for Cinema and the Culture of Dialogue at the International Venice Film Festival this past year.

The festive holiday streets of Genzano di Roma, home of I Castelli Animati. © Heather Kenyon.

More fascinating than the film was Gianluigi De Stefano’s documentary, The Story of P.O.P., which covered the entire process — from the Middle East to Italy and all the animation steps in between. It is remarkable to see how different the lives of these young people are, even though they are so close geographically. The documentary honestly shows the struggle that this film was to make, the trials, the tribulations, the fears and the difficulties and breakthroughs of working together. It shows a group of students who are so very, very different and separated by culture and economic status.

While I think the students did work more closely in Italy than they ever would have, once back home, the actuality of the situation returned. For instance, a journalist asked the students if they kept in touch with one another upon returning and it became apparent that they really couldn’t as communication (the Internet and phone) was so very limited for the Palestinians. For me the film showed a vision of what could be, and the documentary showed how much needs to be done to create a reality of equality and lasting peace.

The effort on the part of the festival staff was Herculean to organize such an ambitious undertaking. At times, the production of this venture threatened to eclipse the amount of work that the festival takes to arrange. Congratulations again go to them, and all of their partners, for undertaking such a project and documenting it so well. This is a remarkable accomplishment for a festival and shows that while this festival is still small and doesn’t gather a large number of international guests, it definitely has a global reach and ambitious plans to strengthen its roll not only within the community, but also within the confines of what an animation festival can or should try to accomplish.