The ninth Stuttgart Animation Festival took place from April 3 through April 8, 1998. I flew in on Swissair, and I thought the festival had begun early since the videos on passenger safety were all computer animations, with svelte passengers who could really bend double and curl up to get the life vests from under the seats. Stuttgart is a fine old city, with elegant palaces and gardens that were home to the princes of the Swabian state of Baden-Wurtemburg, and imposing modern skyscrapers from its more recent hosting of major industry, like the Mercedes-Benz company. It rests on the Neckar river which flows from Heidelberg in the north to the Danube and the Black Forest in the south, one of Germany's finest vineyard stretches. Stuttgart also boasts a superb Art Museum that seemed to have two good examples of everything, as well as a wonderful temporary exhibit of more than 100 photos and objects by Man Ray.

The main screening room, the Old Riding Hall, in the Maritim Hotel, was the center of Stuttgart festival activity. Photo by and © Bill Moritz.

A Well-Oiled Machine
The festival centered around the huge Maritim Hotel, where many of the festival participants stayed. The main screening room, the Old Riding Hall, was in this hotel, as was the festival information center. A portable tent just outside provided drinks, light snacks, and a convenient meeting or resting place for the festival goers. The second main screening area was a concert hall less than a block away which also contained a bar and restaurant, as well as exhibition rooms (with a display of Yoji Kuri's artworks), a special animation book shop, and a computer area where people could browse the Absolut Panushka animation web site. Three other screening places were a few blocks farther away in the lively downtown business district. Plus, a few special events, including demonstration workshops with the jury members (I overheard one festival-goer say that the highlight of the festival for her was being able to touch Barry Purves' puppets...) and an exposition of Ladislas Starevitch puppets and designs, took place at the more distant Film Academy in Ludwigsburg, which was easily accessible by subway (as was everything else...). The festival was well-publicized not only in local media, but also in Germany's major news-magazine Spiegel. Some of the screenings were attended by at least 40,000 people.

The Yoji Kuri exhibit was a rare treat. Photo by and © Bill Moritz.

The Programs and Events
The programs offered at the festival were rich and diverse. In addition to the regular competition screenings, a special Young Animation competition gave a $20,000 prize to one of the student films from 39 different schools worldwide. Another competition screening, "Tricks for Kids," provided an international selection of films for children every afternoon. A "Best of Animation" series concentrated on the 20 years from Norstein's 1975 Heron And The Crane to David Anderson's 1994 In The Time Of Angels. A series of feature animations included Raoul Servais' Taxandria, Pierre Hebert's The Human Plant, and Svankmajer's Conspirators Of Pleasure. Other programs screened films by the jury members; a survey of Japanese art animation as well as an anime retrospective; programs of commercials, MTV videos, special effects and computer graphics; retrospectives for Yoji Kuri, Magnus Carlsson, Marjut Rimminen, Jiri Brdecka and Marv Newland; and midnight shows of classic American cartoons, from Disney's Alice in the `20s through Betty Boop and George Pal's Jasper, Tashlin and Avery, to UPA's Mr. Magoo. If you'd already seen these, you could go to the usual midnight parties...