A new series for pre-school kids inspired by the characters of cartoonist Francesco Tuillo Altan: Arriva la Pimpa (Pimpa Arrives), a mix of live-action and animation.

New episodes of Glu Glu, a variety show.

This didn't sound like a whole lot at the press conference, and the scrappy Italian press contingent wasn't about to let RAI toot its horn without controversy. The session degenerated (as most Italian political discussions do) into dense and incomprehensible polemic about what was new programming or not. Perhaps RAI executive Emmanuel Schvili might have pointed to other works in progress:

Monster Mash, an animated film co-production with DIC
Corto Maltese, a television series co-production with French companies Ellipse and Canal +
"Venice Above," a 26 x 26' series with Swiss producer EBU
The Spaghetti Family with Italy's Animation Band
Mammouth, a feature, also with Animation Band

By American standards, this might not be considered much, but by Italian standards, it's a regular Renaissance. Italian animation companies have been steadily growing over the last few years, in large part thanks to RAI.

More Cartoons Than You Can Watch
The festival is organized so that some sixty-five cartoons in the competition are screened in four days, and others not making the cut are in the "showcase" sixty-nine of them available for viewing on demand. Independent television shorts were a major topic of discussion and had their own series of screenings.

I Married a Strange Person. Courtesy of Bill Plympton.

The judging of the festival is arranged in a unique way: there is a jury of adults and a jury of children, assuring that each of the screenings had a full complement from both adults and children.

Finally, there were also a number of feature screenings, including:

• the world premiere ofThe Miracle Maker
• a screening of Doug's 1st Movie
• Bill Plympton's I Married a Strange Person The Rugrats Movie
• Babar, King of the Elephants, from French company Elipsanime
• Michel Ocelot's French production of an African myth, Kirikou and the Sorceress
• Lucky and Zorba, by Enzo D'Alò

If you came to watch animation, you were in luck. Many in the profession found themselves cursing their rigorous schedule of meetings and conference activities. What they wanted was to see the cartoons! "We don't have enough time as producers to see what is being made," lamented Dominic Boischot, President of French-based Les Films de la Perrine, describing his motive for coming to the conference.

Bob and Margaret. Courtesy of and © Comedy Central.

The Conference: Sitcom Bubble, Scandalous Barry, and Co-Production Love
One of the conference sessions, and one of its awards, was dedicated to adult animated series. On the strength of its writing, the Nelvana series Bob and Margaret won a Silver Pulcinella (puch-ee-nella named for a popular figure in Comedia del Arte from Naples) for best series for adults. There was also a great deal of admiration for The PJs seen here for the first time in Europe. Grand maestro of Italian animation Bruno Bozzetto has joined his former protégé Giuseppe Laganà at Animation Band to develop an Italian answer to The Simpsons called The Spaghetti Family.

British animator Barry Purves got a lot of press over the "scandalous" homoerotic overtones of his Achilles, in which heroes of the Trojan War saunter about in the buff. Purves had a dedicated session in the workshops, and showed two another films as well, including Next, in which a stop-motion actor goes through all the works of Shakespeare in a matter of minutes.

Another session, dedicated to co-productions, was entitled "Italy and France Love Each Other." Large portions of the French and Italian contingent were seen watching cartoons in the main tent at the time.

« first‹ previous123next ›last »