The front gates of Animated Encounters 2002. All photos © Animated Encounters 2002.

For the third year running, Bristol's Watershed Media Centre hosted Animated Encounters, now the main U.K. animation event in the festival calendar. Encounters ran from April 25th to 28th, a Thursday to a Sunday. Thursday saw the launch reception and an "Opening Highlights" taster screening. Friday was Industry Day, with several panels oriented toward animation students, after which Matt Groening made the evening go off with a bang. There were more industry events on Saturday, but the weekend was mostly given to the serious business of watching cartoons. Excluding the opening highlights, the Groening presentation and two children's shows, there were eleven programmes between 60 and 90 minutes each, enough for the most avid toon fiend.

Placed beside Bristol's docks, and a few minutes' walk from the town centre, the Watershed is a pleasant venue. The main indoor cafe is sunny and spacious, and throughout proceedings there were large groups of attendees seated round the tables talking nineteen to the dozen. Everyone seemed cheerful and enthusiastic, and impressed by the range of events and films. Most of the screenings were sold out well in advance, though standbys were sometimes available. At the start and end of an event, things got congested as people moved between cinemas and the café area, but no-one seemed to mind. The cinemas themselves were cool and comfortable, and everyone had a clear view of the screen. Print quality varied for the vintage screenings, but the new films looked fine.

Matt Groening (right) presents his "Desert Island Flicks" with interviewer/stand up comedian Phil Jupitus. The enthusiastic audience happily greeted Groening's choices.

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The hot ticket, unsurprisingly, was Friday's "Desert Island Flicks," over two hours of animation chosen and presented by Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Not only was the cinema packed, but hundreds more people crammed into the nearby IMAX to watch a live broadcast of the event. Happily, Groening was as enthusiastic as the audience. His picks included several Hollywood favourites and a lesser-known Chuck Jones film, the madcap chase Fair and Worm-er (1946). Groening recalled Chuck's famous description of TV cartoons as "illustrated radio." Did the late maestro find anything to like in The Simpsons? Groening could only hope so. His two British picks both hailed from '98: Jolly Roger, the piratical Oscar nominee by Mark Baker, and Baby-Cue, a deeply strange stop-motion doll saga by Hazel Grian. By a genuine happy accident, Baker and Grian were both in the audience. Groening's last choice, the Yogi spoof Boo Boo Runs Wild by John Kricfalusi, brought the house down.