Brussels logo by Johan DeMoor.

The sixteenth edition of the Brussels Cartoon and Animated Film Festival, organized by Folioscope, was held from February 4-16, during the Mardi Gras school holiday.

Apart from a retrospective held at the Museum of Cinema, this year's event was limited to one movie theater (Passage 44). The organizers, essentially, had not been able to reach a satisfactory agreement with the Botanique (a publicly-subsidized cultural center) that had served as the venue for specialized programs for previous editions.

Festivalgoers nevertheless didn't suffer because of this, because the team of Philippe Moins and Doris Cleven managed the schedule so as to maintain the event's reputation for strength and diversity. The public acknowledged this by filling the house for both evening and afternoon screenings (these were especially oriented toward young people, who always enjoy the festive ambiance, thanks to the presence of theater troupes, brass bands, clowns and live broadcasts for children by Belgium television).

The programming for young people and for an informed public, shorts and features, auteur films, making of films, and series all found their place next to talks given by representatives of several animation studios (Disney, Clayart, Acme, Hibbert Ralph, Ex-Machina), producers of children's videos (Ubisoft), and special effects (Industrial Light and Magic, Softimage, Medialab, McGuffligne) . . . .

A Close Shave by Nick Park.

Feature Films
Unlike other international festivals that have strict definitions of what animation is, Brussels uses a much broader definition, which otherwise might seem secondary; for example, it includes live-action films where computer animation clearly plays a part in the creation of special effects. This explains the presence among the Belgian premieres of Jonathan Frakes' Star Trek: First Contact, whose visual conception seems more successful than it's somewhat scattered script.

Also on the menu was Institute Benjamita, a live-action feature which allowed us to get a deeper knowledge of Stephen and Timothy Quay's universe, for which the festival had paid attention to in the past. These British brothers have made a difficult work, strange but fascinating, much like David Lynch's early films, on human relationships, hierarchies and Kafkaesque mysteries of a boarding school for the less bizarre.

Overall, one of the outstanding aspects of the 1997 edition was the significant proportion of features which, "as a rule," are of the type more suitable to the theater's size. But to judge by the titles (previews and revivals), which are being distributed in Belgian, the market remains determined by the stubborn prejudice that tends to reduce animation to a diversion for kids.

For instance, Pinocchio,tender psychological version of Collodi's novel, directed by Steve Barron, benefited from a remarkable integration of the puppet into a world of real actors. On the other hand, the animation of some of the secondary figurines seemed more rudimentary.