The Annecy + band at the Saturday picnic.

By Nancy Phelps

The 2011 Annecy International Animation Festival was so full of films, business, friends, special events, and parties this year that it was impossible to do and see everything.   The first screening at the festival on Monday morning was The Big Sleep, a tribute to animators who passed away since last year’s festival, which was a very appropriate way to begin a week of films.

It was a treat to see work by renowned Japanese director Satoshi Kon (1963-2010) on the big screen, even under such sad circumstances.  His unique style of directing and the complex psychology of his characters were evident in such classics as the 2006 Paprika, Millennium Actress (2001), and Tokyo Grandfather (2003).

The passing of Gael Brisou (1971-2010) was a great loss for Folimage Studio.  His gift for color was exemplified in his 2005 film Sucre with its extremely sensual, dreamlike qualities.  His gift for working with color added a special luster to the backgrounds of such films as Jacques Remy Girard’s Raining Cats and Dogs and Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s current success Une vie de chat (The life of a Cat,) as well as numerous short films.

By Nancy Phelps

In Ukrainian, KROK means “step”, but to animators, KROK means watching animation, making music, dancing and meeting friends, both old and new.  For me KROK is summer camp for animators and the best ten days of my life every year.

The festival is unique.  Each year an international group of animators boards a multi-decked river cruiser and spends 10 days sailing together.  Every other year, the festival location alternates between the Ukraine, which programs professional films (third film and later), and Russia where the films are student works. This year we sailed down the Dnepr River and across the Black Sea on the ship Princesa Dnepr from Kiev to Odessa in the Ukraine.

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.

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. 

Rob Cook.

Press reports have attendance at about 10,000, which is extremely low, of course. But, as I previously noted, it's resulted in a very appropriate quaintness. You can tell that the people who have come here are very passionate. While one exhibitor lamented the lack of scientific research on display and the commercialization of the event (no need to wait for SIGGRAPH to publish your tech paper), Rob Cook (the recipient of the Steven A. Coons Award) gave what Chris Landreth described as a "spiritual, practical and visionary" speech about "why there still needs to be SIGGRAPH."

Annecy is a place to meet interesting people like jury member Andreas Hykade (left).

Partytime at Annecy! Do you know which party is going on today? Are you invited? How do you sneak into a party? And why should you do that?

When I first went to Annecy, I was totally concentrating on watching as many films as possible. I thought that´s the proper way of behaving while being away on a big event like Annecy. Then I discovered the possibility to talk to the people, who actually were responsible for some of the magic I experienced while watching their movies. You could meet them after the screenings, standing patiently in the foyer of the Festival Center called Bonlieu. If you were lucky they would answer some of your questions and draw you some very nice sketches. Then it went back to the next program.

It's a two hour train ride from Montreal, Canada's cosmopolitan capital to Ottawa, the national capital. Forget the stock images of the Parliament buildings, the Mounties, or the concrete barriers in front of the block long US embassy.

I first met the organizers of the KLIK Animation Festival at the Annecy Animation Festival a couple of years ago and they assured me that their festival is fun, fun, fun.  When they invited me to Amsterdam to be on the Short Films and Political Animation jury, I jumped at the opportunity and it did turn out to be some serious fun.  KLIK set out to show lots of fantastic animation and organize a great party four years ago.  This year they received 1100 submissions from 63 different countries.  From this field, 235 films were selected for over 30 programs, much more than anyone could possibly hope to see!

By Brenda Wooding

US networks like CN, Nick and Disney have been producing creator driven shows for years.  Anywhere you find up and coming creative talent showcasing their work, you will find a development executive from these networks on the hunt for the next Spongebob, Adventure Time, or Phineas & Ferb. Once found, the talent, along with their idea is unleashed upon the development team and funneled into their well oiled development and production pipelines. The goal is to keep the creative talent close to the heart while making a commercially viable (and hopefully successful) show.  With few exceptions, it is a fairly new approach abroad.  At the Annecy International Animated Film Festival this year, it was apparent that this method is starting to catch on abroad and regional channels from US studios like CN and Disney have been leading the charge.

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.