Canadian Animator Potterton To Receive Lifetime Achievement Award

Three-time Academy Award- nominee Gerald Potterton will be awarded the Pulcinella Lifetime Achievement Award 2008 from the 12th Annual Cartoons on the Bay International Festival of Television Animation next month in Salerno, Italy.

The award, presented each year to "a prestigious personality of the world of cinema and television animation," will be given to Potterton during the awards ceremony on April 12.

Previous recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award include Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto, Walt Disney's nephew, Roy Edward Disney, and American cartoon artists Hanna-Barbera.

Few Canadian film careers have been as colorful as that of British-born writer, director, producer and animator Gerald Potterton.

In a career spanning 50 years, he has worked on dozens of live action and animated films, including the classic British animated feature ANIMAL FARM and the Beatles' YELLOW SUBMARINE.

He left the National Film Board to start up Potterton Productions, the largest film production house in Canada at the time, but he is best known as the director of the cult classic, Columbia Pictures release HEAVY METAL, which broke box office records for an animated feature when it was released in 1981 and continues to attract a dedicated audience whenever it is shown.

He directed the great American silent film comedian Buster Keaton in a National Film Board live-action short, THE RAILRODDER, and, amongst many other accolades for that film, he was awarded a Buster for "film excellence in the Buster Keaton tradition" in 2002 at the annual Buster Keaton Celebration in Iola, Kansas.

In 1998, Potterton was selected as one of the "Ten Men Who Rocked the Animation World" at the first World Animation Celebration in Pasadena, California.

His prolific career has been honored with retrospectives at North American film festivals from Ottawa to Seattle.