Only pitch sessions where held outside of the main lobby. Courtesy of Cartoon.

New Releases
Participants could also see six new feature animations made in Europe. The most fascinating was the Swedish Hundehotellet (Dog Days) by veteran director Per Åhlin, which was released this March in Sweden. The 65-minute film tells of Sture the dog who aims to go to Paris but ends up in a hotel near the heath of Dartmoor.

The story is an intelligent pastiche of traditional British detective stories, with a smart script, which is full of imagination. The story runs slowly, perhaps too slowly for audiences of this millennium, but is hilariously funny. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2. This science-fiction action story is based on the U.S. comic book and is also known as a computer game. The story is straight from the most common cliches of the genre: A man, who is a real bundle of muscles, finds a jewel that gives him supernatural powers and greed for killing and conquering the world. He kills the family of a young —surprise, surprise -- big breasted and lightly dressed woman who finally kills him.

The film does not even try to give any kind of psychological background or depth to the characters or their actions. Perhaps the idea is to keep the action so high that the spectator does not have time to think about the story or characters. Well, this simply doesn't work.

In the past a successful animated feature might turn into a family of products, like toys, games, etc. Now the order is being reversed. A successful product or game will become a film using the slight dramaturgy of a computer game for example for an entire plot. But which film will we see in the cinemas around the corner -- Dog Days or Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2? The answer is so clear it's not even worth guessing.

This year’s event drew approximately 350 people. Courtesy of Cartoon.

Entering Theatres
Distribution is still one of the major problems for European feature animation. There are in their countries of origin successful animated films, but they do not travel across borders.

An experienced European film producer told me in Potsdam about his new, well made feature animation made for family audiences. When he screened it to the major distributors no one was interested. ’No cinema would take anything other than Disney,’ they said. However, the producer didn't give up. He contacted the multiplex cinema owners directly and screened the film for them. Their response was completely different. The cinema owners said that it was exactly the kind of family film they needed for their theaters, but could never get. Now the film
will open with a major campaign.

To get more visibility for animation in Europe, Cartoon, the organizer of Cartoon Movie, will launch the Cartoon Movie Awards at the third Potsdam meeting next year. Specialized cinema journalists will propose candidates for the merited Animated Film, Producer and Distributor of the year in the area of European animated features. A fourth prize will reward any particularly effective initiative that has attracted wide audience interest.

Heikki Jokinen is a freelance critic and journalist based in Helsinki, Finland. He specializes in comics, short films and animation. He is chairman of the Finnish Art Critics' Association and the former president of ASIFA Nordic, the ASIFA regional body for the five Nordic and three Baltic countries.