The Oscar winner for best short animated film, "The Old Man And The
Sea," has won the coveted grand prize at the International Festival
of Animated Film at Annecy. In a lively ceremony held on Saturday,
June 10, 2000, the awards were handed out by the festival's artistic
director, Serge Bromberg. The short and feature film jury, comprised
of Meral Erez (Turkey), Aida Ndiaye (Senegal), Georges Schwizgebel
(Switzerland), John Lasseter (U.S.A.) and Jimmy T. Murakami
(Ireland), bestowed the top honor to the adaptation of Ernest
Hemmingway's novella. The paint-on-glass Imax short also won the
audience prize. This year's jury decided not to award a prize for
feature films. The television jury awarded the Fox Family hit series
"Angela Anaconda" with the grand prix for best TV programme for the
"Ice Breakers" episode. This year's TV jury included Eve Baron
(France), Alfio Bastiancich (Italy) and Phil Roman (U.S.A.). The
student jury made up of Natalya Loukinykh (Russia), Bruce Bickford
(U.S.A.) and Jiri Kubicek (Czech Republic) gave the top honors to
"The Moment" by Thomas Voigt. Honorary president of the festival, Roy
Disney presented the UNICEF award to the anti-drug short "Run Of The
Mill" from Denmark. Disney led into the award with a wonderful speech
on his experience at this year's Annecy festival and UNICEF's
worthwhile work, which has been supported by the Walt Disney Company
for several decades. The festival also recognized the famed Richard
Williams with the humorous Rabbit award for his career as an animator
and animation instructor. Accompanied by Bromberg on the piano,
Williams graced the attendees by playing "When You Wish Upon A Star"
on his trumpet. The evening capped off the festival, which featured
many surprises, like a special preview of "Chicken Run" and the world
premiere of Pixar's new short, "For The Birds." The complete list of
winners is listed in AWN's
href="http://www.awn.com/headlines/index.phtml?newsitem_no=2797">Headline
News.
A review of Annecy 2000 will be published in the upcoming issue of
Animation World Magazine, together with an interview with the
festival's artistic director, Serge Bromberg. Annecy 2001 is
scheduled for June 4-9, 2001.
