With all of the mediocre computer animation that seems to fill festival screens lately it is a real pleasure to see a film created by an animator who practices the fire art of drawing with such skill. With subtle touches of humor Vladimir inserted references to his past films, like the man climbing up the side of a building with a pick ax from Insomnia. One very funny aside was naming the boat for his friend Alexi Budowsky, who could be at Annecy in name only this year.

New York animator PES demonstrated how he makes pasta sauce following his mother's recipe and using common household items such as velvet pin cushion tomatoes, a cube pulled from a Rubik cube as a garlic clove and pick-up sticks for spaghetti. The film is 1 minute and 45 seconds of pure delight and the audience agreed with me, awarding Spaghetti Western the Audience Award crystal. I have watched so much bad Chinese animation lately that it was a pleasant surprise to see The Winter Solstice. This graphically beautiful film takes us into the mind of a man as he relives scenes from his recent past as he lies dying after being shot in the head.

Of course, my hands down favorite film was Ivan Maximov's surreal The Additional Capabilities of the Snout. I have always loved Ivan's quirky films and so Nik and I were very honored when he asked to use Nik's music for his latest film.

Even the short film competition seemed to have longer films with Kasper Jancis' wonderful Crocodile at 16 minutes, Nick Park's most entertaining Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death running 29 minutes and Pritt and Olga Parn's totally delightful Life Without Gabriella Ferri at 43 minutes. I love all three of these films very much but I hope that this is not a trend and that the 3 to 5-minute well told story film will not become a thing of the past.

Five uniquely different programs gave us the opportunity to discover the world of visual harmony and rhythm. The highlight was the two programs devoted to the master Russian ballet choreographer Alexander Shiryaev. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Shiryaev began filming the movements of ballet dancers on an amateur 17.5 camera. He also made drawings of dancers' movements and step sequences which he also annotated. He then traced these drawings onto paper strips, which were projected with an optical device similar to a praxinoscope. He also made papier-mâché puppets, which were wired and could be moved and filmed.

In 1995, documentary filmmaker and historian Viktor Bocharov used restored footage to create A Belated Premiere. The second program, Shiryaev: Animation and Movement, was made up of recently restored films, including much of the puppet animation and the paper films. An exhibition on the 1st floor of the Bonlieu Library presented original items from the Shiryaev archives.

The 10th birthday of SpongeBob SquarePants was also celebrated with an exhibit at the library, along with a display of characters and sets from Selick's Coraline.

The short walk through old town to the Musee Chateau d'Annecy was well worth it to see the Angels and Demons exhibition, a collection of sculptures, design boards, watercolors and collages from the amazing world of animator and visual artist Walerian Borowczyk.

For the Videomappings: Aida, Palestine presentation, Till Roeskens asked people living in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem to sketch a card of things around them. The drawings were videoed while they were being done along with the commentaries that went with them to give a very personal view of day to day life under extremely difficult circumstances.

The Courier Center offered an exhibit of design boards for Miyazaki's latest feature Poyo on the Cliff. At La Turbine you could experience an interactive exhibit for the entire family as a companion piece to the open air screening of Ratatouille on the giant screen. La Turbine also paid tribute to the renowned German DEFA Studio for Animated Film in Dresden with an exhibit of the beautiful puppets created between 1955 and 1990 for their more than 1,500 animated films.