The winner of the Crystal for TV series was Shaun the Sheep, the creation of Christopher Sadler and Aardman Animations. © 2006 Aardman Animation.

Kahn Kluay, though it won no awards, is an amazing survival tale. Director Kompin Kemgumnird, after stints at CalArts, Disney Feature Animation and Blue Sky, went to work on this feature about an elephant who becomes swept up in the 16th century struggle for Thai independence. The fact that most of the people working on the feature were Thai is a credit to the patience of Kemgumnird, who had to train much of the crew himself, particularly on CG techniques. "Many of our people thought they were ready," he laughed, "but it was far more complicated than they thought." This single feature may herald the birth of serious animation in Thailand.

Another film that took many by surprise and won the Special Distinction award is The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. See the sidebar for the irritating questions I asked of its author, Mamoru Hosoda. Here's just a little hint for you as to this film's unexpected power: it made me cry during a flashback montage, a narrative structure I usually despise.

For the rest of the story on features at Annecy, read the upcoming article by my colleague, Philippe Moins.

Hey Phillipe, how come you get to cover the features? No, don't answer that. It might just be because you were one of the driving forces behind the special screenings from the Benelux countries this year.

Another film that took many by surprise and won the Special Distinction award is The Girl Who Leapt Through Time by Mamoru Hosoda.

TV Categories
Annecy has four television awards, but does not divide them among genres or age groups. This allows for more flexibility among the prizes, but leaves programs for infants such as Y Porque? competing against a Japanese action horror piece such as Ayakashi or SpongeBob up against Dynamite Guys. While other festivals are careful to avoid these generic overlaps, it must be said in defense of the Annecy judges that the lack of categorizations leaves more room for the judges to award what they find best, without necessarily awarding a category because one must. Audience awards at Annecy are also highly prized, because the audience is of such a high caliber.

Charlie and Lola, also a pluri-award winner at Cartoons on the Bay, won a Special award here at Annecy. With two episodes in the screenings, they demonstrated once again the creativity and cleverness of Kitty Taylor and the Tiger Aspect team. They have broken the mold of children's programming with attentive writing, collage-style graphic animation and great direction of the child voice actors.

The winner of the Crystal for TV series was Shaun the Sheep, the creation of Christopher Sadler and Aardman Animations. Sadler, a key animator and character designer for Aardman now leads a team in the creation of this seven-minute series. The premise of hyper-imaginative sheep taking over when the farmer's back is turned is like a Gary Larson cartoon come to life. Like all Aardman products, the writing, voices and character animation are all outstanding. It is a pleasure to see Aardman winning, because it was the only major studio to continue submitting its work to the feature films competition.

Annecy Plus 3 hostess Nancy Phelps toasts the evening, surrounded by Pierce Davidson, Jamie Badminton and Darcy Pendergast. Isabel Bouttens, (under umbrella) did have a film in competition, Absence, but joined her comrades in the rain.

In the Rain, the Out of Competition
Friday night is the evening of Annecy Plus, the sort of Salon de Refuseè for the festival. Founded by Bill Plympton three years ago, it has now become a semi-official event. Now run by Nancy and Nik Phelps, it's really an excuse for watching more cartoons while drinking.

This year the novelty was watching cartoons while drinking and getting rained on. A good bottle of Bordeaux wine, a raincoat and an umbrella go a long way to keep hardy souls to the task. We were rewarded with Professor Pebbles, a devilish clay animation, which makes you ask the irritating question, "why didn't that make the competition?"

"So much depends on what you consider is quality," waxed Bromberg, who generously showed up at the screening to set himself up for just such a pummeling. People can see the same animation, "and say it was the best time of their life, or it was shit, boring, dull. Animation is like a diamond, you cannot understand it just by looking at one facet..."

There is an old French saying: "the road is better than the inn." A festival's real and overwhelming function is the contact with artists and their work, all of which is quite outside the logic of winning and losing.