The Scene At Stuttgart

files/pictures/picture-35.jpgThe Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film was celebrated March 16-21, marking its 20th year in existence. The biannual festival presented a wide ranging programme, giving prizes worth 142,000 German marks (70,000 euros or US dollars) and enjoying a growth of 25% in the number of spectators. With approximately 42,000 spectators and some 500 films in the programme, Stuttgart calls itself, "The second largest animated film event world wide," a definition which might well be true. A new competition category this year was for feature animations. The other three competition categories are: short films, children´s films and school films. The largest prize, worth 40,000 German marks (20,000 euros or US dollars) to be directed toward making a new film, was given to Daniel Nocke, for his dialog-based puppet animation DIE TRÖSTERKRISE (COMFORTER´S CRISES). The Audience Prize of 25,000 German marks went to Stefan Eling's beer drinking film TONY´S PLAYSTATION. The two 15,000 German mark prizes for the International Competition went to Andrej Ushakov for his THE SOCKS OF THE BIG CITY and Jochen Kuhn for his NEULICH 1 (RECENTLY 1). Portugal's Jose Miguel Ribeiro received a 20,000 mark prize for his clay animation A SUSPEITA (THE SUSPECT). The 2,000 mark prize for the Funniest Film went to Konstantin Bronzit for his AT THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. Danish director Jannik Hastrup took the 10,000 mark prize for the Best Feature Film with his intelligent HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN AND THE LONG SHADOW. Siri Melchior took the Student Film Prize of 5,000 marks with her PASSPORT. Norwegian Pjotr Sapegin received the Children´s Film Prize of 10,000 marks with his folk tale SALTKVERNER (SALT MILL).