Nancy Denney-Phelps's Recent Posts

In 2008 Nik and I were guests at the 15th International Trickfilm Festival in Stuttgart.  We were invited to give a presentation of music for animation and Nik played on the big outdoor stage before SITA SINGS THE BLUES was screened as well as in the festival cafe.
I would encourage everyone to enter their film in this festival.  Your work will be treated with respect and if you are lucky enough to be able to attend you will be treated to lovely hospitality by a friendly, hard working staff.  You can also refer back to my article posted earlier this year for more details of our visit and some festival photos.

Just as an aside, the Stuttgart Festival staff throw one of the best parties at the Annecy Animation Festival which you can read about in my article about that festival.

I arrived back home after a week at the ARSENALS Film Festival in Riga, Latvia followed by another week teaching in Luzerne, Switzerland to find e-mails from Adam Elliott and Melonie Coombs, Karl Cohen, and Merlin Crossingham.  All of them had exciting news that I want to share with my readers so please read the three new articles and enjoy.

As a fellow member of ASIFA/San Francisco and a friend of Karl Cohen's for many years I am thrilled that he has received the 2008 ASIFA Laureate Award.  Karl, a true Renaissance Man of animation, is a historian, notable collector of animated films, and author of many authoritative articles published in periodicals throughout the world.  He is a professor of animation history at  San Francisco State University and the author of Forbidden Animation :  Censored Cartoons and Black Listed Animators in America.  Last, but not least, he has been the President and guiding light of ASIFA/San Francisco for over over two decades.  The ASIFA/San Francisco newsletter, which Karl edits and is the primary writer, is read by animation fans around the world for the wealth of information that he gathers each month.

Monstra is a very civilized festival. During the day there were screenings for local school children. At the beginning of the second week competition screenings started, but not until 19h00 (7:00 PM). The seven competition sessions were packed full of such crowd pleasers as The Tale of How by the Black Heart Gang, Ree Treweek, Jannes Hendrikz, and Markus Smit, a trio of South African animators who call themselves a collective and Estonian animators Jellena Girlin and Mari-Liis Bassovskaja’s The Dress. Both of these films have won awards at several major festivals. There were also new treasures to discover, like award winning animator Koji Yamamura’s latest film A Child’s Metaphysics. Koji’s view of the serious business of childhood has both humor and sadness as he deals with the pitfalls and joys of being a child.

When I first learned that the 2008 Annecy Festival of Animation (9 – 14 June in Annecy, France) was spotlighting feature films I was quite apprehensive. An animated feature has to be really good to make me want to stay in my seat for an hour and a half without falling asleep or wishing that it was over, but I was in for a pleasant surprise at the festival this year. Of 40 features submitted to the selection committee, 9 were placed in competition, 12 screened out of competition, and 3 were shown as special premiers. It was a fine selection and the subject matter and styles were so varied that there was something to please everyone.

Nina Paley’s brilliant musical adaptation of the Indian epic Ramayana, Sita Sings the Blues, was an instant crowd pleaser. Drawing the film together with songs from the 1920’s songstress Annette Hanshaw, including the poignant Mean to Me, Nina tells the legend of the Indian god Rama from Sita’s point of view. Nina also weaves her own personal story of her husband’s mid-life crisis and subsequent dumping of her via e-mail throughout what she refers to as “the greatest break-up story ever told”.

The 2^nd ANIMART, a summer meeting about animation and related arts, will be held 13 through 20 July in Monodendri, near Ioannina, Greece. 2008 is the Year of Intercultural Dialogue and so workshops and programs will be presented by many leading professionals from around the world.

Workshops will include clay animation conducted by Rony Oren from Israel; animator and ex libris creator extraordinaire Rastko Ciric of Serbia will lead the Cartoon Animation workshop and Portugal’s Fernando Galrito will lead participants through “The Draw and the Pixilation”.

Mohamed Ghazala of Egypt will give us a glimpse into Egyptian and African animation, and Nik and I will talk about the history of music through animation. Nik and Rastko will reprise their musical act in the amphitheatre with a moonlight concert featuring what else? - Moon songs!

My spring festival season got off to a great start in Stuttgart, Germany at the 15^th INTERNATIONAL TRICKFILM FESTIVAL OF ANIMATED FILMS, May 1 through the 6^th. For Nik and me the big event of the week was to finally get to see the entire 82 minutes of Nina Paley’s wonderful feature film SITA SINGS THE BLUES. Although Nik composed and performed the intermission music for the film we had only seen segments and we were very curious about how Nina would fit the pieces together. Her use of three Indian voices in an unscripted conversation about the Sita legend worked beautifully to connect the action sequences. The fact that the voices were disagreeing about how they believe the history of Sita and Rama should be told was a perfect counterpoint to the 1920’s Annette Hanshaw vocals that accent both Sita and Nina’s stories. SITA SINGS THE BLUES was screened in the festival theaters and also on the gigantic out door beer garden screen to an enthusiastic crowd of hundreds. Prior to the screening Nik played music from the film to set the mood.

hosted a lovely brunch for the ASIFA members at the festival. Buba (former head of ANIMAFEST ZAGREB and Vice President of ASIFA Croatia) and Vesna Dovnikovic (Secretary of ASIFA International) brought tasty and powerful traditional Croatian liquors which truly added to the festive air of the party. A good time was had by everyone.

The big event of the day was the awards ceremony and I believe that the juries did an excellent job, so without further ado the winners are . . .

GRAND COMPETITION

Jury: Joanna Quinn (Great Britain), Moustapha Alassane (Niger), Caroline Leaf (USA/Canada/Great Britain), Igor Kovaljov (Russia/USA) and Danijel Suljic (Croatia)

GRAND PRIZE (best short film in the festival) - festival statue, cash award of 2.500 Euros, and honorary presidency at the next festival