Colin Rose(BBC), Nick Park,Peter Lord and David Sproxton from Aardman Animations

By Takashi Namiki

I traveled around Europe to attend animation festivals in three countries. Each festival had its own characteristic as each country has unique nationality; films. I found films shown there, management and so many other things greatly varied in the three festivals. The daily news letter distributed during the festival showed the difference very clearly.
In Cardiff, they have the news letter called "The Daily" with full-colored cover page, and the steal of the major films of the day. It gave me an impression of very "formal" one, but at the same time it was too formal to convey the atmosphere of the on-going event.
Of course it had one-colored page telling the latest news with the picture of the participants taken just the day before, but the next page happened to be the colored ads. and you could easily tell that this news letter had been prepared long time ago.
On the contrary, "Szem Szog" distributed in Kecskemet was very simple and it was only in Hungarian, it reminded me of ANIDO's old-time mimeographed copy. It was just one piece of paper printed on both sides, but the schedule of the day and the casual drawings and comments by the directors told us what's happening around the festival better than the one published in Cardiff.
However, as a reference for the later use, it did not have much of the information in it, moreover the number of the copies was limited so that they would run out of them in the afternoon. It's a little bit funny that I was occupied with collecting every issue which would not be so useful, but one day I was able to get only one copy even though I had wanted a couple of each issue. I was not very happy about it, then I realized that I would have exactly the same thing if I made photocopies of what I had. I wouldn't be able to understand what it said anyway because it's only written in Hungarian...

Zagreb, which has as long history as Annecy, made the eight pages of news letter in two colors. They were offset printed but the photos were a little bit rough probably because they were processed with the computer. With the photographs taken the day before and some explanations in English, I found their news letters most enjoyable to read. Annecy also made their news letter in two colors, but they had sixteen pages and the layout showed they put a lot of work in it. All of the issues together (six issues) look more like a magazine than collection of the news letters. I guess Annecy could not be compared with other festivals

"BIRD IN THE WINDOW"

My first stop was Cardiff, the capital of Wales, England. You go to the west for two hours by express from London and you will see the city with the population of about 300,000.
The third festival in England was first held in Bristle and moved to Cardiff. They always had everything exactly as they were supposed to be; you would know exactly what was going on if you saw the guide book, the speakers for the program were never different from the names written in the leaflet, and of course, the schedule of the screening was always perfectly followed.

People at the reception counter did not smile much and they were very strict about issuing the press card, it took me a while to get one. They stayed very official, cool and unfriendly.
In Cardiff, they do not have competition of the films that were sent to the office like other festivals do, but the committees had chosen the films to show beforehand. It probably creates the impression that most of the films are sophisticated; They showed about seventy films from May 27 to June 1 and important programs were shown in the St. David's Hall, the main screening place. This is a national concert hall with the capacity of 2000 people and it seemed rather too big for the screening.
The two programs, Short film Premier ("QUEST", "COUNTRY DOCTOR", etc.) and International Short Film 1-4 showed today's best animations of the world. They also had the program called "All Time Animation Favorite" containing the films like "FANTASIA", "SNOW WHITE AND SEVEN DWARFS", "DUCK AMUCK", "BAD LUCK BLACKIE", "THE LITTLE SOLDIER" and so on, which was very substantial.
As for the long films, they had films like "GHOST IN THE SHELL" and Henry Selick's (director of "NIGHTMERE BEFORE CHRISTMAS") "GIANT PEACH" with his speech, and also the tribute programs for John Halas and Friz Freleng, Will Vinton、Csaba Varga and Varga Stusio. Nick Park,Peter Lord and David Sproxton from Aardman Animations made a short trip from Bristol to have conversation and left the festival shortly after. 　 In the collection of the Klasky Csupo studio which made a great success with "SIMPSONS", Igor Kavalyov showed his new film he made in U.S. after he moved from Russia, "BIRD IN THE WINDOW" for the first time. They had very good programs and furthermore, everything started on time and went very smoothly. However, I could not enjoy myself very much because I did not know many people there. The good thing was I could do whatever I wanted to do by myself.

　On the other hand, I made a lot of friends at the festival in Hungary. It was held in the old town, Kecskemet, about two hours by train from Budapest, from June 5 to 8. This fourth festival in this country was also the first international long animation festival.

"Leo &Fred" The Hutday

As for the short films, they had the competition only among the Hungarian films. Among the films like Istvan Orosz's "CRY!" , Sandor Reisenbuchler's "ECOTOPIA ", I found "AMSTERDAM" by a new directorToth Eva, most interesting. Hungarian directors are noted that they always challenge and experiment new things in new field, but I could not find many of the works with their spirit. I understand it is hard and challenging to produce theatrical long films and commercial films at the same time, and it seemed to me that they were struggling to make a success in the situation. I was a little disappointed the work of Maria Horvath they showed was made for the commercial purpose. (And also I was really sorry that I could not see the face of Peter Szoboszlay during the festival; he was in London working on other project.)
　　It seemed young directors from Pannnonia Studio, which used to produce a lot of commercial films, have started making short films under Edit Bleier and their works in the new field are gaining recognition.
Ferenc mikulas, leader of Kecskemet Animation Studio and also the director of this festival, decided to add the competition of long films from this festival because there were not many good short films. 　

ANIDO's activities were introduced in TV

　Photo by Kazuha Okuda

Among other projects, ANIDO is promoting to establish the first animation museum in Japan. ANIDO's activities were introduced in TV Tokyo's morning program, from nine o'clock, called "Family Tokyo" on Oct. 17,1996. We showed some materials from our invaluable collections in the program. Namiki himself appeared in the show and animated the cut-out material from Kenzo Masaoka's "The World of Power and Women" and showed the material from "The Spider and Tulip" (1942), materials from Toei Animation Studio and so forth while interviewd.
Since this program is presented by the government of Tokyo, hopefully those who work for the government watched it and thought about giving some support to the project. The newly-built Tokyo International Forum would be the perfect location for the museum. As one of the cultures Japanese can be proud of, I am convinced animation should gain much more recognition and attention from all over the world.

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