If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can view clips from two films that showed at I Castelli Animati by simply clicking the image.

Nighttime at I Castelli Animati. Courtesy of Katharina Frank.

The sun was just rising over Leonardo da Vinci airport on Wednesday, October 23, when, jet-lagged but happy, I made a long-delayed return to the land of pasta, espresso and Bruno Bozzetto. I was met at the airport by the iridescent Cinzia Orizi, one of a group of young festival workers who've been coming to Genzano for many years and whose enthusiasm and camaraderie reflect the special spirit that infuses I Castelli Animati. We were soon joined by the inimitable Dave Jones of Australia, a Web animator who was serving as one of the judges of the Web Competition, and the irrepressible John R. Dilworth, creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog, ambassador of goodwill, and one of the animators whose work was being featured in this year's festival. With the intrepid Dino Orsolini at the wheel and a Beatles tape in the cassette player (inevitably evoking memories of Sir Paul's fabled appearance at the 2000 festival), we made our way through narrow roads bordered by fields and grape arbors into the green hills south of Rome, to the picturesque town which has been home to I Castelli Animati since its inception in 1996.

The Festival Gets Underway
The festival began that afternoon with a screening of Bozzetto's 1965 epic, West and Soda, an absurdist Western that amply displayed the prolific Italian director's characteristic quirky humor and frequently inspired set pieces. (It also pointed up what would be a pervasive problem for us unfortunate monolinguists [Old joke: What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American] — the film was in Italian with no subtitles or other translation. There were many occasions when a second, or third, or fourth language would have been helpful, but in general the messages managed to get through.)

Left to right (standing): Lily Snowden-Fine, Liz Fairs, Katherina Frank, Jimmy Picker, Alison Snowden, John R. Dilworth, Dave Jones, Normand Roger and Emilie Vergneau. Kneeling is Jon Hofferman and Arthur De Pins (right). Courtesy of David Fine.

Bozzetto, who arrived in human form on Friday and stayed for the remainder of the festival, was one of the animators being honored with retrospective screenings. The others, in addition to Dilworth, were veteran Polish director Jerzy Kucia; New York clay-guy Jimmy Picker, whose new film, The Age of Ignorance — a light-hearted romp through the annals of prehistoric sexual practice — was also in the International Competition; David "Bob" Fine and Alison "Margaret" Snowden, whose sublime work helped provide the incisive and bittersweet humor without which any festival is incomplete; and Canadian composer/arranger Normand Roger, who, one gradually came to realize, has had a hand in many of the most acclaimed animated films of the last twenty-five years, including works by Frédéric Back, Paul Driessen, Caroline Leaf, Raimund Krumme and many others. Fine and Roger also served as jurors for the International Competition.