Grimaldi Forum in Monaco served as the glamorous headquarters for Imagina. © 2001-2003 Monaco Mediax. 98000 Monaco. All rights reserved.

Monaco, February 2-5
Traveling from the frozen North of England to the sunnier (if not much warmer) setting of Monte Carlo for this year’s Imagina event, I was stuck yet again by the vast difference in style between the various important animation/visual effects events.

I had just attended Animex, the annual student animation festival/conference held at the unglamorous University of Middlesborough (in a blizzard), and the sunshine and glitz of Monaco seemed very appealing! Animex is run on a comparative shoestring, but still manages to attract some of the best speakers from the major studios every year — mainly because of the wonderful atmosphere and the appreciation of the students and fellow speakers in the audience.

I have always enjoyed Imagina, not least because I have made so many good friends here over the past eight years, but this year I was initially stuck by a certain soullessness that inevitably accompanies the glamour.

The perennial challenge of combining a trade show with a festival AND a conference always leaves some of the participants less than entirely satisfied, and this year, surprisingly, I found the normally polished Imagina Awards the least successful aspect.

The Johnnie Walker Fish commercial won in two categories, Best Direction and Best Commercial. Courtesy of Spectre and Imagina.

Awards and Category Confusion
The Imagina Awards are highly regarded and the capacity audience eagerly anticipated the Awards ceremony itself as the highlight of the event. The sparkling and glitzy presentation kept things moving along nicely and the audience responded enthusiastically for the most part.

The problem, for the second consecutive year, seemed to be the rather flexible awards categories — which led the jury to select the same films in many different categories. While I was happy to applaud the multiple-award winner Annie and Boo by Johannes Weiland (Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg) as a worthy choice, it seemed unfair that one film should claim so many prizes and leave others with nothing. A similar case was the brilliant Johnnie Walker Fish commercial, directed by Daniel Kleinman and post - produced by Framestore-CFC. It deservedly won in two categories (Best Direction and Best Commercial), but was also nominated in several others — edging out other worthy candidates.