Oscar Grillo, David Silverman, Bruno Bozzetto and a couple of other guys trying to get into the picture.

The Report Card on Schools
"Have you seen our son's latest project?" These words, which strike dread in the hearts of American animators, are universally shared. The good news is that some of the product from the Italian schools is actually amusing. The bad news is that you must sit through them all to see these few.

An entire afternoon dedicated to film schools, hosted by illustrator and director Mario Addis, gave a pretty good idea of the state of Italian animation schools. Addis teaches with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Animation Department, which has its facilities in Turin. This intensive three-year program consistently turns out excellent animators whose films win prizes at festivals around the world. Wives Supermarket, a graduation film that won a special jury prize at Castelli Animati, is a case in point.

Two other schools demonstrated the beginnings of professional competence. The Istituto Eurpeo de Design (both Milan and Rome) showed off some projects that were admirable at a technical level, and one of their projects, The Audio Guide, which uses a visit to a museum as a vehicle for introspection, deservedly was chosen the best Italian animated short this year. Scula Internazionale di Comics in Florence, where director Massimo Montigianni (Rat Man) has been at work for a year, showed an Egyptian-themed Alba di Kepry, which combined 3D and 2D work and showed some knowledge of professional methodology.

The inner monologue of a doctor called on a hopeless night mission and his jealous doubts pervade Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor. Courtesy of I Castelli Animati.

After that, the results were spotty. The Scuola Italiana di Comix of Napoli is proud of their contact with the production house Gruppo Alcuni, and produces bits for their television programs. Other Italian schools presenting were the the Scuola del Fumetto of Palermo, the Istituto D'Arte of Urbino and a couple of ambitious high schools such as the Istituto Statale d'arte in Pomezia. "The schools are mostly formed by autodidacts who teach their own methodology," Addis sighed afterward. "Up to now, there are not that many that are capable of teaching the classic methodology of animation, including script, storyboard and layout."

Fortunately the afternoon included presentations by Larry Bafia of the Vancouver Film School and John Parry of the Bristol Film School. Larry presented a fascinating program of special effects done by students in Vancouver, while John showed a series of shorts that displayed a high level of professionalism along with the inimitable British sense of humor.

What is clear is that the schools of animation in Italy need a shake-up. Programs that aspire to be professional need to bring working professionals and methods into all of the schools, and deepen the schools' contacts with the world at large. Visiting professors from other countries (particularly England and France) need to be brought in, and English, the working language of European multinational productions, must be part of the program. Additionally, student exchanges should be arranged, and video libraries adequately funded.

Addis looks forward to the day when Italy will again produce animated features on a regular basis. "Right now, 95% of our students who graduate leave the country and work abroad," he sighs.

Oh Yeah, and They Showed Some Movies Too...
The International Competition was dominated by some clear winners from the circuit this year -- Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor by Koji Yamamura, which took the Gran Premio, and Madame Tutli-Putli, which took the Special Jury Prize. Yamamura's film, snubbed at Annecy, has been cleaning up everywhere else. The same may be said for the technical achievement represented by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbovski's atmospheric Canadian stop-motion film about a woman's paranoid journey aboard a freakish train.

Good comedies were also on display. A comedy in which various petty criminal enterprises give new meaning to the term "running gag," Marathon by Estonian Jasper Jancis won best European film. Special favorites of this writer were from Canada and England. Sleeping Betty is a really amusing Canadian sendup in which a prince who looks suspiciously like Charles comes to the rescue of a sleeping princess in a court that seems drawn by Tenniel. Author Claude Clotier creates a series of delightful gags out of this very simple premise. Another successful comedy was Horn OK Please, a stop-motion of a day in the life of a very poor taxi driver in Mumbai (Bombay), animated by Vibhav Kumaresh and Joel Simon. The syrupy wraparound story is more than compensated for by a series of passengers who are laugh-out-loud funny.