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CELEBRATING TEN YEARS OF ANIMATION AND LOOKING FORWARD TO THE NEXT TEN!

     Fete De L’Anim     Tourcoing, Lille, and Roubaix France     20-23 March 2014

This year Fete De L’Anim celebrated ten years of bringing animation to Tourcoing and the surrounding towns. The event not only had a fine selection of films,  it was an important meeting place for animation professionals and students from top European animation schools to exchange knowledge and ideas.

Kristof Serrand, Supervising Animator at Dream Works was this year’s guest of honor.  His presentation “Trade Secrets:  How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy” was excellent.  As one of the key players working on the trilogy and someone who has successfully made the transition from 2D to 3D, Kristof is well qualified to take the packed audience behind the scenes and show us a lot about the conception and making of the films.  Besides being an extremely talented person he is also very charming.  Unfortunately I missed the first two days of L’Anim so I could not attend his first Master Class.

Translator Benoit Fermin, Kristof Serrand and Nancy

The Fete also featured five other master classes by well-known names in the animation world:  Franck Dion, Suzie Templeton, Rosto, Andreas Hykade, and Chris Landreth.  British animator Suzie screened her three films Stanley, Dog, and the Academy Award winning Peter and the Wolf.  I am particularly fond of Dog which was her2001 graduation project from the Royal College of Art. The story about a young boy who is grieving for his dead mother, won the BAFTA award for short animation in 2002.  She talked about her love of puppet animation and showed the audience the wolf and grandfather puppets from her Oscar winning film.
Suzie Templeton with her Grandfather puppet from Peter and the Wolf

I had just spent time with Franck Dion at Anima Brussels where he displayed a room full of his amazing illustrations.  During his master class Franck screened his 2004 L’Inventaire Fantome (Phantom Inventory), Monsieur Cok (Mister Cok), 2008 and his latest film Edmond etait un Ane (Edmond Was A Donkey) which he made in 2012 with the NFB.  This memorable film won the Canadian animator numerous well deserved awards worldwide.  The 3D animation is not only beautiful to watch, but the story of Edmond’s struggle to overcome the social pressures of conformity to just be himself is one that everyone can relate to.  Franck told the audience that he had been an actor and set designer and ended his chat by giving the audience a look at the official Annecy 2014 poster which he designed.
Olivier Catherine and Franck Dion

I have been a big fan of German animator Andreas Hykade’s work since I first saw his 2000 film Ring of Fire.  It turns out that this intense sexually charged film was born out of a true incident involving him, his best friend, and his best friend’s  girl.  My personal favorite film by Andreas is The Runt (2006) which he told us is also partially autobiographical.  The animator’s father and uncle raised rabbits for market just like the father and uncle in The Runt.  I have watched this film many times and it always brings back memories of my childhood growing up on a farm.
Olivier and Andreas Hykade

His 2009 Love and Theft won numerous awards.  The fast paced drawings contain many familiar faces such as Ryan Larkin, Betty Boop, and Hitler  as well as many others all  morphing into each other at an ever increasing pace until they reach an intense peak and then slowly takes the viewer back down again.  The music composed by Heiko Maile heightens the entire roller coaster effect and I think that it is one of the most perfect parings of animation and music that I have ever seen.

The final master class that I saw brought Chris Landreth to the stage.  I have seen Ryan, which won the Academy Award in 2004, The Spine which Chris made in 2009, and the hilarious Subconscious Password  which won the Annecy Grand Prix last year but I can’t remember ever seeing The End and Bingo, his first two films, before.

Nancy abd Chris Landreth at the Imaginarium

Chris made The End in 1995 while working at Alias/Wavefront (now Autodesk) to test out new facial animation software that the company was developing.  The End turned into a 1995 Oscar nominated film and was the beginning of what is now a very illustrious animation career.

In 1998 Chris made Bingo while he was working with a group of people to create the animation software package called Maya.  He told the audience that “I did this film in an attempt to dispel my lifelong fear of clowns.  It didn’t work!”  The film may not have exorcised his fear of clowns but Bingo did win the 1998 Canadian Genie Award for the Best Animated Short Film.

Unfortunately I missed the Master Class given by the multi-talented Rosto from the Netherlands.  His films and music videos have won numerous awards.  Lonely Bones which is the second of a tetralogy of short films Rosto plans to make featuring the band Thee Wreckers who he performs with won the 2013 Grand Prix at Ottawa this year.  Luckily I have seen all of his films that he screened and have heard him speak several times but I always discover new things every time I watch his films.

Most of the master classes were hosted by Olivier Catherin, who is a delightful and very knowledgeable interviewer.  He made the master class chats flow smoothly, asking interesting questions and even more important he gave his guest an opportunity to answer them fully.  He also made each guest feel at ease and gave the audience the feeling that we were being allowed to ease drop on a conversation between two friends.  Olivier is also one of Les 3 Ours production studio, where he has been responsible for producing such award winning short animations as Mademoiselle Kiki of Montparnasse and Betty’s Blues.

Kristof Serrand’s Master Classes were hosted by Marcel Villoing, retired deputy director at the renowned French school Gobelins’ Paris branch.  Festival director Julie Charnay took time out from her other festival duties to take to the stage with Suzie Templeton.

Equally as important as the master classes are the presentations of student films from a number of European animation schools.  This year schools from five regions were represented:  France, Germany and German speaking Switzerland, Eastern Europe, Benelux, and the United Kingdom.  For the students who came to the festival from all over Europe to participate in the special events the school presentations were not their main focus.  The Master Class presentations, the Marathon, Graphic Battle sessions and the opportunity to meet with producers and  studio representatives  to find out about future career opportunities kept them very busy.

From the 19th to the 21st of March five teams of students from European animation schools along with their professors participated in the Marathon de L’Anim.  Each team was given the same starting image which was created by Franck Dion this year.  Using this image as their starting and ending points they then had 3 days to create ten seconds of animation.  At the end of the marathon, festival staff edited the films together and the result of the student’s hard work was screened on closing night.  You can see the entire piece at:  www.fete-anim.com/en/programme/marathon-de-lanim.html

Franck Dion with the Marathon participants at the closing ceremony

Talent Connections gave students an opportunity to “speed date” with producers and studios located in Northern France and Flanders.  Representatives from eleven different studios met briefly with each student individually to answer questions, offer career advice, and talk about the recruitment opportunities and process with their studio.

Last year I enjoyed watching the Graphic Battle session and it was so popular that it was expanded to two sessions this year.  One day was devoted to the 2D competition, and 3D was on the next day.  Pairs of contestants were given twenty minutes to create a character with nothing but a graphic tablet and their imagination and talent.  The votes of the audience and the jury determined the finalists who once again faced off in pairs to determine the winners of each session.  The second place winners in both categories received Storyboard Pro soft wear donated by Toon Boom.  The top winners selected by the juries of both categories were awarded Animate Pro as well as Storyboard Pro from Toon Boom.  The 3D winner will also be invited to be a member of the Grafik Battle 2015 jury.  This year’s 2D jury members were comics author Virginie Vidal and artistic director Luciano Lepinay, and animation directors Carlos de Carval and Tanguy de Kermel selected the 3D winners.

The Focus on Visual Design programs presented an opportunity for studios and individual artists to give the audience a close up look at their histories and how they arrived at where they are today.  They also showed off their newest music videos, commercials, and short films.

I especially enjoyed the very informative presentation by the award winning German design studio, Polynoid.  It was begun in 2007 by a group of students at Ludwigsburg Film Academy in Baden-Wurttemberg as a platform to make their own films and visual experiments and as their success grew they finally moved to Berlin.  As their relaxed presentation showed they have retained their original free independent spirit but now have the resources of a full production studio.  Examples of 3D work on commercials usually don’t excite me but the innovative work that they showed us for such clients as Nike, Invinite, and MTV was definitely impressive.

The festival does not have the usual film competitions but focuses on giving students opportunities to interact with professionals and also makes a point of reaching out to the community with screenings of current animated features.  This year the festival offered screenings and activities not only in Tourcoing but to the surrounding communities of Lille and Roubaix.  15,000 people attended the four day festival.

At Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing the theatre was packed with an excited young audience and their parents where they could see six popular Dream Works films.  When How to Train Your Dragon was shown the audience got an added treat when Kristof Serrand popped over from the screening room next door where he was giving his master class to introduce the film.

In the nearby towns of Roubaix and Lille, theatres showed some of the latest independent animation features including Ernest and Celestine and Bill Plympton’s latest feature film Cheatin’.

The Imaginarium in Tourcoing is a hands on children’s museum that is open year round.  During the festival it becomes even more animated when volunteers from various animation studios set up interactive areas where young film makers can try their hand at creating storyboards, making flip books, and work in 3D Motion Capture, as well as exploring numerous other film related activities throughout the two floors.

Exploring animation at the Imaginarium

This year the festival arranged short screenings in the Imaginarium with a program geared to three year olds and an entire stop motion screening for 5 year olds.  For the older set, eight years and up, their program showed a variety of techniques.  My favorite shorts screening was made up of 9 films spanning the history of animation from 1877’s Vues Pour Praxinoscope and Emile Cohl’s 1908 Fantasmagorie to the film Gaz De France: Le Crochet Chez Les Coqs made in 1938.

On Saturday night the festival provided drivers to take guests to Lille for the Electro-Animated Party.  From 11 PM until 4 AM the massive old post office came alive with music provided by four different DJ’s throughout the night for dancing.  Berlin duo Tikul and Jendrek known as Pussykrew created a constantly changing visual installation which brought the gray concrete walls of the building to life with colors and images.

I congratulate Festival Director Julie Charnay and her entire staff for another very successful festival.  I really appreciate everything that guest co-ordinator Cyril Mouthier did to make our visit run so smoothly and send a very special thank you to the tireless drivers who were always there to make sure that all of the guests got to and from everywhere that we wanted to go.  Excellent translations, via headphones, were provided by Benoit Firmin and Marie Aurelie.  I met Benoit briefly last year but I really enjoyed getting to know him over several delicious meals we shared at the Festival café set up especially for the guests, staff, and volunteers.  I am already looking forward to the 2015 edition of the event which I am sure will hold many new treats.

Franck Dion and Nancy

Throughout the year Julie and her staff at Rencontres Audiovisuelles continue to bring short films, animation, and workshops to the Northern reaches of the Calais area as well as producing the short film festival in Lille in October.  You can read more about Fete de L’Anim and all of the other events the Rencontres Audiovisuelles put on at www.fete-anim.com as well as reading more about Fete De L’Anim.