CR: And you actually are writing about one of those unsung figures right now…

OC: I have several books in preparation including a bilingual monograph about Georges Schwizgebel for next year.

CR: Who will publish the Schwizgebel monograph? Why do you find his work so fascinating?

OC: I suppose it will be the same publisher. I find Schwizgebel's work fascinating for many reasons. First, there is the question of sensibility, I like painting (I've studied painting myself) and Georges' work is deeply involved in it. And I like his relationship to cutting and music.

CR: And what else are you working on?

OC: Well, I've just finished the French translation of the Richard Williams' Animator Survival Kit. I can tell you that I am preparing another encyclopedia, a new one, more complete on animation. This time there will be French and English editions. I also write articles for different magazines. I'm working on my next personal animated film. And I write scripts for comics and animated TV series, but that's another story...

CR: Normally... an interviewer would now ask, "But Olivier, where do you find the time," but now that I've written two books in a year, along with organizing a festival, and writing articles... I know it's a pointless question... we just manage to find time. I think, sometimes, we actually have more time than we imagine.

OC: Yes, we have to manage to have some free time, and that's not always easy. I try, as everybody else, to schedule everything. If I do nothing, I'm bored. If I have many things to do, I can jump from one to the other and I feel comfortable because I'm never hindered by any problem. And, even if I'm not at my desk, I continue to think about all the work in progress all the time; it's like a 'background application.'

Cotte would like to write in-depth about animators working today like George Griffin (above).

CR: And you don’t just write, you also teach. Where, and what, are you teaching?

OC: For the moment, I work at the Gobelins School, famous for the shorts that were shown every day at the 2003 Annecy Festival (and I spent a lot of time on these films).

I teach two different subjects. The first, as you can guess, is a history and aesthetic of animated film. I do a lot of screenings, a melting pot of different styles, and we discuss the film with the students. The main idea is to improve the way they watch films, to give them a desire to open their minds to other kinds of film they don't know.

CR: What kinds of films?

OC: The range of these films goes, during the same session, from the early silent movie to the latest computer graphic work. The other kind of teaching I do is about digital post-production. As I was a computer artist for 13 years, I have worked for 15 features by Polanski, Costa-Gavras etc… and on a lot of different kind of films, I have learned and practiced many different ways of manipulating and blending images, and I link all this work to painting. When I began video was analogical, and, when I stopped, it was a digital film resolution media. And, of course, I've worked a lot in animation and digital. All that background gives me the ability to teach students how to manage digital tools for technical and artistic expression.

CR: With the onslaught of digital technology, do you see animation eventually just merging with live action into some new digital medium? So many Hollywood features, for example, heavily rely upon animation effects these days (Attack of Clones, Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men). Will animation be absorbed? Where do you see what we call traditional or drawn animation in the next 10-20 years?