The Tampere International Short Film Festival awarded its winners on Sunday, March 11, 2001. The prestigious special prize of the jury went to the Brothers Quay for their film IN ABSENTIA (U.K.). The prize for the best animation was given to Helene Moinerie for the film D'UNE CITÉ L'AUTRE (France). The Grand Prix of the festival went to the Finnish documentary HYPPÄÄJÄ by PV Lehtinen. Twenty films out of 69 in the competition were animations, somewhat less than usual. The annual Tampere Film Festival in Finland is one of the major short film festivals in the world and has traditionally always had a strong animation profile. This year it screened 530 films from 42 countries for 24,000 spectators over five days. Typically, the festival also gathers around 150 international guests. The main animation retrospectives presented were on Betty Boop, nostalgic 1970s Finnish children's animation and the works of Len Lye. The digital film festival RESFEST presented a wide programme, including the feature length animation WAVE TWISTERS. Other highlights from the festival were a Focus on Peru and Beat Generation films. As usual, many of the special programmes included a lot of animation as well.



AWN's Heikki Jokinen reviews the Tampere Festival in Finland, a unique short film festival that makes sure animation NEVER gets second-billing.



Want to learn more about the feature WAVE TWISTERS? Then visit AWN's sister site 2-Pop.