By Nancy Phelps

Devoted solely to student work, the festival is the brainchild of well known animator, illustrator, and renaissance man Rastko Ćirić in conjunction with Vuk Maksimovic, master wood carver and furniture maker, who is the representative of the Fortress for this project.  It also received support from the Serbian Ministry of Culture.

Animation students in formation in front of giant figure from their new animated feature (photo: Bill Dennis)

By Nancy Phelps

Arriving in Changchun, China for The International Animation, Comics, and Games Forum was a very abrupt switch from my previous weeks in Kosovo and Serbia.   Any thoughts of long, leisurely meals with friends and watching good animation went out of my head when I was handed my schedule.

When I last visited the Jilin Industrial Park 2 years ago it was still under construction.  The multilevel media school was completed but I had no idea that that the final project would be so massive.   On this visit all of the tall building were completed and seemed to be full of activity and the grounds were fully landscaped.

By Ellen Besen

I really thought this next piece was going to be about festival programming but fresh from CTN Expo- which wrapped on Sun Nov 18, I feel compelled to shift focus to a more pressing topic: overall spirit. By this I don’t mean so much the mood of the attendees but more the spirit in which the event was conceived and carried out by the organizers. This last factor has a defining impact on every aspect of the event including the attendees’ mood and programming as well, which is precisely why it is the more pressing issue.

This kind of spirit can be an elusive subject- one that doesn’t really show itself directly.  Instead you kind of have to look at an event sideways, to use your detective skills and also keep in mind what other choices could have been made to suss out the organizers intentions.

First row (L-R) Jerry Beck, Katsuhiro Otomo and Irene Kotlarz. Back row, the CalArts student curators.

By Sean Buckelew and Jess Iglehart

When we traveled to the 2012 Annecy International Animation Festival to present a two-part CalArts Retrospective curated through the class taught by our professor Irene Kotlarz, we expected to bring films back to screen in America, but never did we dream that we would eventually be hosting the legendary animator Katsuhiro Otomo at the new Los Angeles incarnation of the PLATFORM International Animation Festival taking place at REDCAT. 

The Kosovo/Serbian border

By Nancy Phelps

When I last left you I was on a bus from Pristina, Kosovo headed to Belgrade, Serbia where I was planning to meet my old friend Rastko Ciric and attend the first edition of the Festival of European Student Animation that he had organized.  It was supposed to be a six hour trip.   I knew that Serbia did not recognize Kosovo as a country and people travelling on a Kosovo passport could not cross this border but I had been assured that I would not have a problem since I was travelling on a United States passport.

Nancy at the Cafe Chat

By Nancy Phelps

I had never thought of Peja, Kosovo as an ideal holiday spot but when I was invited to be on the International Jury of Anibar International Festival, the 22nd through the 27th of August, 2012, I discovered how wrong I was.  Peja is a lovely small town of 60,000 people surrounded by a beautiful mountain range known as the Balkan Alps with a lovely stream running through the center of town.  You can take a small motorized train up into the mountains from the town square.

A Heritage Museum is situated in an urban house dating from the 18th century that contains examples of regional clothing, beautifully crafted jewellery, musical instruments, and every day household items from the past.  The town also hosts a large open air market twice a week as well as the oldest mosque in Kosovo and a monastery located in the mountains is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

By Nancy Phelps

This year was a very special 30^th Anniversary for the Trickfilm Festival of Animated Film in Stuttgart, Germany.  My week began Monday evening, the night before the official festival opening, when I attended the opening reception for an exhibition of works by former students of Professor Albrecht Ades, founder of the prestigious Film Academy Baden-Wurttemberg in the nearby town of Ludwigsburg.  He is credited with ushering in a new era of modern German animation which was highly influenced by Czech works and laid the foundation for today’s thriving entertainment industry in the Baden- Wurttemberg region.

The large outdoor screen

From 1980 to 1991 some 30 films were produced in his class and the Professor’s strong motivating influence on his students is reflected in the works of some of the now famous animators who studied under him.  Looking at the graphic works in the exhibit, some by Thomas Meyer-Hermann, Andreas Hykade, Sabine Huber and Gil Alkabetz, I could see that they have taken their teacher’s motto “We must kill Mickey Mouse” to heart.

For the 2012 opening night ceremony, the festival staff chose a new format.  Instead of the usual round of introductions and speeches followed by a screening, the first competition program was interspersed among the introductory speeches.  The festival received a special birthday present when Malte Dringenberg, head of Mercedes-Benz Classic Press Office, who announced to the audience that Mercedes-Benz has become a very active festival sponsor.  (Stuttgart is the home of Mercedes-Benz.) Another high point of the evening was  the awarding of special Life Time Achievement Trixie Statutes to Professor Albrect  Ades and Gabriele Rothemeyer.  Ades founded the Trickfilm Festival and served as its first artistic director from 1982 to 2003.  Ms. Rothemeyer followed him in the position from 2003 to 2005, and succeeding her is Ulrich Wegenast, the present director.

Paperman Producer Kristina Reed and Director John Kahrs.

By Haley Hughes

Premiering at The Los Angeles Film Festival last Sunday June 17^th, Disney’s Paperman, directed by John Kahrs and produced by Kristina Reed, is a very sweet short  film that embodies Disney’s optimism and romanticism.

My cat Dexter, doing his impression of the look the waiter at the Imperial Palace gave Max Howard after he'd inquired as to the whereabouts of the capuccino he'd ordered 15 minutes previously.

By Dan Sarto

As the week winds down and I find myself craving a simple green salad, I figured I'd share more images from my time at the festival.  Formal write-ups will have to wait until early next week I'm afraid, when I've recovered from the jet lag, the lack of sleep and the searing memory of a student film in competition depicting a man being sodomized by an umbrella.

My cat Steven, doing his impression of the look the waiter gave me at lunch Monday when I told him the salad dressing had too much Dijon mustard.

By Dan Sarto

Since I’m finding time so scarce this week, I have not yet finished any of my formal write-ups.  So for now, I'm posting some initial images from the first couple days of the festival.  I apologize in advance if I don’t name everyone, or if I messup a name.  My memory has been dulled by too much cheese.