Le Moine et le Poisson (The Monk and the Fish), winner of the Cartoon D'Or in 1995, directed by Michael Dudok de Wit, a Dutch filmmaker who lives and works in the UK. Produced at Folimages in France, 1995.

CARTOON runs other major programs, including training schemes and the studio grouping scheme. Under this latter scheme, European companies are encouraged to come together in joint ventures for which the successful applicants receive subsidies with which to attend markets, produce promotional material and administer co-productions. Last, but certainly not least, CARTOON runs the Cartoon D'Or (The Golden Cartoon), a prize worth 35,000 ECUs which is awarded yearly at the Forum to the best European animated film, an amount which the filmmaker must commit towards a new project. This year the Cartoon D'Or was awarded to Tyron Montgomery for his outstanding first film, Quest.

Promoting European Animation
CARTOON's mandate is to create a European industrial base for animation. Its policies are openly projectionist and designed to provide a ready supply of indigenous product for European television screens and to promote European animation within the competitive international television market. For "international" read American, although CARTOON's policies are not so much anti-American as pro-European--there is a difference. CARTOON has been very successful. Their Appraisal 1988-1995, published at the close of MEDIA I, reports on the facts and figures: an increase of 50% over 5 years of European series being broadcast on European television, an increase in annual production to 700 hours from 60 in 1986, the beginning of long format series production, something that was inconceivable in 1988, and so on.

Fortunately for CARTOON the business environment has also changed and the amount of available resources has kept pace with the increased number of projects looking for funding, although whether this is a direct effect of CARTOON's actions is moot. It could just be a global recognition of the potential value of children's programming, without which all of CARTOON's most strenuous efforts would not have yielded the same spectacular results. But the counter-argument could run something like this: local broadcasters have a choice of acquiring or commissioning product for their schedules. It's cheaper to acquire, but it's potentially lucrative to invest in product where the back end earns money from several revenue streams. It's unlikely that local broadcasters would have an opportunity to invest in foreign (American) projects where the sale of equity begins and ends in the foreign domestic market. But if a local broadcaster is offered local projects which are of a high enough standard to compete internationally for revenues from sales, video, merchandising, etc., then that local broadcaster is more likely to want to invest in those local projects.

The big money comes from merchandising, a fact which every parent will instantly appreciate. But it's a fact that of any 10 programs being scheduled at any one time in the UK, less than half will be British and only one of them will achieve any merchandise success at all. In the video retail stores 68% of sales are Disney titles and the rest of the shelf space is purchased by the companies with the biggest marketing spends. British titles may find their way into a grubby little space on the bottom shelf behind the pillar.