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.

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.