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.

A Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation

By Dan Sarto.

No other festival I’m aware of consistently generates as much controversy as does the Ottawa Festival. People may scratch their heads at the judging decisions in Annecy (insert favorite French joke here), but in Ottawa, beer-fueled grumbling and incessant whining are as much a part of the annual festivities as head-scratching competition screening introductions and the cavalcade of toothless panhandlers lining Rue Rideau.

Despite the umbrage some people take with the selection process, the competition this year at Ottawa by and large was relatively solid.  It has taken years, but I’ve finally learned the difference between films I don’t like and those I consider just plain “bad.”  I’m still amazed at how often my thoughts on films differ wildly from those of friends and colleagues whose opinions I otherwise respect. For every screening I leave thinking “That was a pretty strong program,” I hear someone exiting the theatre lobby muttering under their breath about the “unbelievably shitty films” they’d just seen.  Such is festival life. Indeed, such is life.

Tasty, fatty, sticky sweet char siu, or BBQ roast pork. I can't describe how perfect this moment was nor how fantastic it tasted.

By Dan Sarto

18 hours in planes, 8 hours in airports, 2 hours in shuttles, all in the quest for a chance to meet some of Asia’s brightest computer graphic technologists and to once again eat roast pork overlooking the majestic Hong Kong harbor.  A worthy goal, I must say.  My trip from Los Angeles was excruciatingly long and uncomfortable.  My bag of honey roasted peanuts had to go through x-ray twice.  For 15 panicked seconds I thought I lost my wedding ring.  The kid sitting next to me on the flight from Japan knocked his tea all over my lap. The hour I spent in Hong Kong customs was made slightly more bearable by the entertaining antics of a big huge German man who screamed at the top of his lungs for 30 straight minutes, swearing non-stop at the phalanx of pint-sized policemen who tried in vain to calm him down.  They finally handcuffed him and tried to sit him down quietly on a bench, but he would have none of that, continuing to yell four-letter invectives at everyone in range.  I’m not sure if he was drunk or just off his meds but his rage enveloped the entire hall.  I fully expected him to start swatting around cops like some mythical beast from a Harryhausen film; he was so much bigger than the assembled authorities and so completely crazed. Guess he didn’t like the food on United either.

I finally made it to the hotel at 2 am, only to find that I had no room reservation and the hotel was full.  Sweet.  Channeling my inner Adam from Mythbusters, I told the young man behind the desk “I reject your reality and substitute my own. Indeed you do have a room in this hotel for me so why don’t you call whom you need to call, confer a bit, type something into your computer and then hand me my key.”   Needless to say, “a bit” became 30 minutes but he did eventually hand me a key and off I went to sleep.

Bringing Hollywood to Germany

Cloudy, sometimes rainy. Stuttgart, the capital of the German federal state of Baden Wüerrttemberg is once again for the next four days the global center of animation. The 14. International Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Digital Media opened its gates to the huge crowds of professionals, students, journalists and all enthusiasts, who are interested in the latest technologies, brilliant developments and in meeting and talking to the leading women and men behind the magic of animation.

Wooding's first visit to MIFA was a worthwhile blur of activity.

This was my first time at MIFA (Marche International du film d'animation) and I could not have been more pleasantly surprised by the experience. Taking in the splendor of Lake Annecy's turquoise waters while meeting friends for cocktails in an ancient village immersed in a steady flow of creative energy was invigorating.

Having spent the majority of my career selling cartoons to broadcasters around the world, I normally attend the standard international markets like MIPCOM Jr., MIPCOM, Kidscreen and MIPTV. On occasion, I work into the travel schedule a trip to Toy Fair, Comic-Con and Licensing show. Although often set in great locations such as Cannes and NYC (I promise you I do not get much sympathy from my significant other), these markets can be pretty. My schedule is typically jam-packed with meetings every half-hour from the moment I land to the moment I get into the taxi to head back to the airport. And can they make a week seem like a lifetime.

The Princess and the Frog to play a key role at Red Stick in April.

Back in the pre-digital, pre-xerographic days of Disney animation, the Ink and Paint department was responsible for tracing the animators’ pencil drawings onto acetate cels and filling those transparent images with color. Technological advances rendered hand inking and painting a thing of the past, but the name lived on in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit as the Ink and Paint Club, an after-hours honky-tonk where the ‘toons’ entertained Hollywood bigwigs.

Aimee McCammon of Park Road.

AnimfxNZ 2008 began with a song.

A contingent of Maori gathered to perform a 'powhiri', or New Zealand traditional welcome. The foreign visitors and speakers lined up so the kaumatua could determine if they were friends or foes. Thankfully, there were no enemies among them, and the conference was able to proceed.

I took the train to Annecy full of excitement and great expectations for the 50^th Anniversary of the festival. According to the festival press release, they were expecting 6,700 participants from 66 countries, 1,647 companies crowding into MIFA, 300 journalists and 230 international buyers. For a festival to pull off such a grand event with minimum problems would be a miracle indeed. When people tried to get tickets for events, however, it felt like there were twice as many people in attendance.

The first hint of trouble came when there was no invitation to the opening night ceremony or the party. I was looking forward to seeing the opening night film, The Illusionist, but was told that this year no journalists had been given tickets because they were just too many people and 150 seats had been relegated to non-industry VIPs (which translates to money people). Journalists were told that there was no problem: our names had been placed on a request list and we should just keep checking back with the press office to get our passes. To make it even worse, two hours before the ceremony we were finally told that there was no possibility for us to get tickets. I finally managed to get a ticket from my friend and fellow journalist Olivier Cotte, who had gotten two tickets from someone who actually didn't want to see the film. Both Olivier and I wasted a good part of Monday afternoon looking for tickets instead of seeing films.

Half-Blood Prince's fire sim isn't the the only talk of the town at SIGGRAPH.

The exhibition opened today and, as expected, the show is small but quaint -- similar to San Antonio a few years back. Nothing wrong with that: it's manageable and in keeping with the New Orleans flavor. While the number of exhibitors is smaller than usual, it's a nice mix. You can traverse the floor in about half-an-hour. And there are plenty of students flocking the job fair, which is where most of the action is -- and rightly so, considering the job market. In fact, a few of the large studios such as Lucasfilm and Sony Pictures Imageworks, opted to have a presence solely at the job fair.