Barry Purves with his puppets at Anima MundiPhoto by William Moritz

Competition Screenings
The competition screenings included some 60 films from 20 countries, with an enormous variety ranging from Dave Borthwick's harrowing hour-long The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb to the hilarious two-minute Dutch cartoon Safe Sex--The Manual, from Igor Kovalyov's dark surrealist vision Bird in the Window to lyrical abstractions such as Clive Walley's Divertimento No. 3, Aleksandra Korejwo's Carmen Habanera and Amy Alexander's beautiful computer-graphic Unbroken Pieces. Prizes, including a $1,000 first place, were awarded entirely on the basis of audience vote--a ballot came with each admission ticket. All of the competition programs were screened seven times, at least once in the afternoon, once in the evening, once on a weekday, once on a weekend. This meant that one could see everything leisurely, a few things each day, and still enjoy all the other delights of the festival and Rio. The grand prize, not unexpectedly, went to A Close Shave, but second place was awarded by the audience to Michaela Pavlatova's Repete, a much more experimental work. Third place went to John Dilworth's 7-minute cartoon The Dirdy Birdy, which successfully recaptures and updates the Tex Avery/Warner Bros. formula. The best children's film award went to a magnificent half-hour Iranian film, Kuh-e Javaher (The Jeweled Mountain), which rivaled the golden-age Czech puppet films in its elaborate detail and truly cinematic storytelling. The Busby Berkeley "Blue Sky" musical cockroach number from Joe's Apartment also received many votes, even though it appeared on an informational computer-graphics program rather than in competition.

The Jeweled Mountain by Abdollah Alimorad. Courtesy of Anima Mundi.	Limbo by Bériou. Courtesy of Anima Mundi.

The most touching event of the festival was a screening of a fine Brazilian film, The Eight-Pointed Star by the elderly Fernando Diniz, who spent many years in a mental institution, and whose drawings and clay animations were documented on film by the Friends of the Museum of Images of the Unconscious. Diniz's artwork is truly imaginative and interesting in its own right, and the time-lapse footage of him painting is fascinating. The film had just won an award at another festival, and he received the trophy at Rio in the presence of his long-time doctor, now an ancient woman in a wheel-chair, and a wildly enthusiastic audience.

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