Anima is the largest and undoubtedly the most beloved animation festival in Belgium, attracting more than 20 thousand viewers each year. Taking place during the yearly carnival week when most local schools hold spring breaks, a lot of attention is given to the younger audiences. Yet, the festival also presents a variety of programs for the grown-up animation lovers with its many retrospectives, international and regional competition programs as well as conferences and exhibitions.
I had the opportunity to be involved at the festival as a surprise jury member for the applied animation section. Given the budgets available in the advertising industry, it is usually the most hip animators who are hired to make those clips, meaning this section tends to be a source for some real eye-candy. The makers of one of my favourite shorts from 2006, The Blackheart Gang’s “Tale of How” were competing with their new ad. Ordered by United Airlines, “The Sea Orchestra”by Shy the Sun i.e.Ree Treweek and Jannes Hendrikz displays hords of sea creatures playing the Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue as a United plane flys over the ocean. Also competing was the allegedly most expensive commercial to date, Guiness “Tipping Point” by Nicolai Fuglsig (also known for his Sony Bravia “Balls”). Playing in a small town, the clip shows an improvised domino game on the streets, resulting in the appearance of a spectacular statue of Guiness.
Within the applied animation section two different categories were considered for awards: advertisments and music videos. The award for the best advertisment went to a clip by of a French children’s channel Tiji TV. Made by a young French director-designer Yoann Lemoine, the “Balloon” is a simple, but beatifully executed story of a kid’s imagination when her baloon flies away into the blue sky. The best music video award was given to a Dutch artist-filmmaker Rosto for his dark music video “No Place Like Home”.
The highlights from this year’s short film competition included the newest sequence of Nick Park’s popular Wallace and Gromit series, “A Matter of Loaf and Death”, that was awarded at the festival as the best short for children by both the international jury and the festival audience. In the new sequence, Wallace and Gromit run a bakery business in a town where a serial killer appears to be targeting all bakers. Following the pattern of the previous films, it is again Gromit who will take the lead to protect his master from the worst, as the town’s bakers are taken out one by one.
The main award of the section went to the recent festivals’ favorite “Skhizein” by Jérémy Clapin, a funny but also touching short about a man who is hit by a 150-ton meteorite and is thus shifted from his self by exactly 91 centimeters. It is the sensitivity of Clapin in dealing with the difficult theme of mental illness that lifts the film above those that are simply funny.
This years’ feature competition presented a total of nine titles from all around the world. The competitive line-up included both recent festival hits such as the Annecy-winning “Sita Sings the Blues” by Nina Paley, and Bill Plympton’s “Idiots and Angels” , but also titles still virgin to European festivals such as the first feature of Tatia Rosenthal, “$9.99” , a stop-motion quest for the meaning of life. It was this film that the festival’s partner, Be TV chose as the best feature, which means that the audiences in Belgium should soon have the film on their TV-screens: the Be TV award comes with the acquisition of broadcast rights.
For the full programme and a complete list of awards have a look at the Anima 2009 official website.
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