The Saint Inspector. © bolexbrothers.

The winners of some categories seemed problematic to me. Silke Parzich's Spring is a delightful film, but closely related to object animation pioneered by the Quay brothers and others (and hence, not all that innovative). Other competition films showed much more unique, adventurous techniques and ideas, such as Clive Walley's combination of live-action, animation and disembodied brush strokes of paint in Light Of Uncertainty, which fittingly evoked Heisenberg's "Uncertainty principle," and ultimately did it some justice. Aleksandra Korejwo's Carmen Torero, with its sinuous animation (using a feather) of tinted salt was quite fresh. Most problematic for me was "funniest film." I'm no fan of sick and twisted, and Bill Plympton seems very much of that school. I find his gags mostly tasteless, vulgar, and (even worse) predictable and repetitive. To me, the funniest film was Igor Kovalyov's Bird In The Window (another 1966 veteran), which may show that I'm sick and twisted, but Igor manages to make fresh social criticism at the same time he engenders real belly-laughs. I also preferred the quirky humor of Sylvain Chomet's Old Lady And The Pigeons,another subtle combination of fresh social satire with outrageous spoof. Mike Booth's puppet animation The Saint Inspector (from England's bolexbrothers) also combined truly quirky images with biting satire into very funny scenes. In addition Mark Gustafson's droll "puppet" animation Bride Of Resistor (from Will Vinton) broke new territory in social whimsy. It was a very rich festival for humor --The Great Migration and Devil Went Down To Georgia were plenty funny, as well -- so it was disappointing to see such a formula product win the prize. But I guess that's a small grumble against what was overall a splendid animation festival.

Save up to visit Stuttgart X in April 2000.

Visit the Stuttgart web site in Animation World Network's Animation village.

William Moritz teaches film and animation history at the California Institute of the Arts.