ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 3.11 - February 1999

A Tribute to Jean-Luc Xiberras

compiled by Annick Teninge and Georges Lacroix

The architect of the highly regarded Annecy International Animated Film Festival, Jean-Luc Xiberras passed away on December 26, 1998. We wanted to pay tribute to him for his immense contribution to animation. Here an international selection of friends, colleagues and animators give their final thoughts on a man whose presence in animation will long linger.

Respectfully,
Annick Teninge, Ron Diamond, Dan Sarto and Heather Kenyon.
Animation World Network

 

 

Jean-Luc Xiberras staring out over the horizon at the Indian Ocean. Courtesy of Alain Séraphine.
To everyone's surprise, it was Pierre who left us. Despite your condition, you went along with Thierry and Anne-Marie to be at the church where Pierre's funeral ceremony took place. You were pallid. Nonetheless we started to work. Undoubtedly it was our way of showing Pierre that we were going to continue the work we had begun with him, despite our limitations, our insufficiencies, for his absence would weigh on us.

You also needed goals in order to win the battle that you were going to engage in the following Monday (the date you would be hospitalized for the transplant). You took charge of several things that Pierre had been handling, in order to pursue the goal we had set for ourselves. The on-line education project became one of your preoccupations then. We prepared the 1998 Crossroads of the Image together. You prepared yourself to take over the presidency of the Institute of the Image of the Indian Ocean. Together we decided on the necessity of having an office in Paris. We didn't know that we would never have the opportunity to discover it together.

Despite distance, we communicated regularly. Several times a week. Sometimes you had moments of doubt, signs of fatigue, but you kept your faith in your own abilities to surmount difficulties.

On the eve of the last day of the 1998 Annecy Festival, you called me to ask that I definitely be available at the MIFA in the Pipangai booth the next afternoon at 5:00 p.m., because you had arranged an important meeting for me. You surprised us all. It was you who appeared for this meeting. A moment of intense emotion. We all believed at that moment that your battle with illness was won. Had you rushed right through your recovery time? No one knew. You were going to live through a trying time of suffering thereafter...

In these difficult moments, you shared a little of your intimacy with me, you who were so reserved as far as your personal life was concerned. I thank you for that token of trust, which gave me the impression of already knowing your family a little, your daughters, your sisters, your brother and Anne-Marie, who would all be there to support you.

Please give my greetings to Pierre. If there are autos where you guys are, please arrange an air-conditioned one for Pierre because he can't stand heat!

Don't worry too much about us anymore.

I thank both of you for having introduced me to a good number of your friends, who have already proven friends of mine as well -- and it's with them that I hope to continue action, adventure, and dreaming a little of building again...

I write this letter to you, inspired by the text from Henri Scott, an Irish canon, which Georges Lacroix read at your memorial ceremony.

Compliments!
Alain Séraphine
Director, Fine Arts School of La Réunion Island

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