Ottawa 09 International Animation Festival

OIAF 09 Winners!

MARY AND MAX WINS GRAND PRIZE, FRENCH ANIMATORS SCORE HAT-TRICK AT OIAF

OTTAWA, ONTARIO (October 18, 2009) – The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) comes to an end with the highly anticipated closing ceremonies held this evening at the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau. Organizers announced the winners of the official competition during the ceremonies.

This year’s event, held October 14-18, was a tremendous success with packed screenings, sold out workshops, high profile networking events such as the Television Animation Conference and the Recruiting Fair. The Festival is a major international film event that attracts 1500 industry pass holders from across Canada and around the world with a total attendance of over 25,000. Although the final numbers are not officially in, there are strong indications that this year’s Festival reached the highest attendance to date.

The 2009 international jury for Short Program, Student and Commissioned Films include: Amid Amidi (USA), Jim Blashfield (USA) and Suzan Pitt (USA). The international jury for Feature Film Competition include: Thomas Meyer-Hermann (Germany), Christa Moesker (Netherlands) and Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre (Canada).

The Festival has a special jury made up of local kids to select the Best Short Animation Made for Children and the Best Television Animation Made for Children. This year’s kids jury included: Tallie Doyle, Tegwyn Hughes, Jamie McCormick, Felipe Bemfica, Isabelle Birchall, Aditya Mohan, Paris Mullin, Quinn Murphy and Eric Ding.

GRAND PRIZE for Best Animated Feature

Mary and Max, directed by Adam Elliot, Australia

“The film tells a simple and strong story about friendship, deep understanding of the human condition with all it’s defects. It is a perfect balance between tragedy and comedy.”

Honourable Mention:

My Dog Tulip, directed by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, USA

“The jury was profoundly touched by one particular film therefore would like to award an honourable mention. This film has an outstanding style and above all, the way in which it allows the audience to identify with the characters and the relationships.”

Nelvana GRAND PRIZE for Best Independent Short Animation

Kaasündinud Kohustused (Inherent Obligations) - by Rao Heidmets, Estonia

"We selected Obligations because of its compelling portrayal of sexual politics, its disturbing but effective metaphors and the director's bold and provocative vision."

HIT Entertainment GRAND PRIZE for Best Student Animation

Laska (Chick) – by Michal Socha, Poland

"This remarkably confident animation takes its exotic graphic style to an extreme as its characters carry out an intense, elegant and brutal mating dance."

GRAND PRIZE for Best Commissioned Animation

Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, A Journal Diary) – by Bastien Dubois, France

"A deeply personal and touching documentary. The film buoyantly realizes 3-D space, and combines a hand-drawn feel with a dimensionality that hovers just off the page."

Best Animation School Showreel

Rhode Island School of Design (USA)

BEST Narrative Short

Please Say Something – directed by David OReilly, Ireland and Germany

"A film that compels us to reassess our notions of aesthetic execution and beauty in computer animation. The film has a fragmented story structure and surprisingly personal character interactions."

Honourable Mention:

Köögi Dimensioonid (KitchenDimensions) – directed by Priit Tender, Estonia

"Visions of the impossible arise from daydreams in the kitchen; imaginings are born out of the mundane and every action has its surrealist counterpart; Tender creates an entire parallel universe."

BEST Experimental/Abstract Animation

Peripetics – directed by Jamie Raap and Henrik Mauler, UK

"A series of lavish and mysterious vignettes which use 3-D animation to suggest sculptural metaphors suspended in space."

Honourable Mention for Passionate Art Making: Myth Labs – by Martha Colburn, Netherlands

"Flying in the face of respectable animation conventions, the director's approach is both aggressive and seductive."

Adobe Prize for BEST High School Animation

Did U See That – by Yuri Rhee, Ha Jung Kim, Paul Kim and Hyun Jung Lee, Korea Animation High School, South Korea

"With simple and strong line drawings the filmmakers create a modern fairytale."

BEST Undergraduate Animation

The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! – directed by Jake Armstrong, School of Visual Arts, USA

"An expertly designed, scripted and animated tale of a space explorer and a monster who just wants to play fetch."

Honourable Mention:

Mak the Horny Mac Daddy – by Ian Miller, University of the Arts, USA

"Mac Daddy is worth this mention because of its uninhibited expressiveness in animation."

BEST Graduate Animation

Lebensader – directed by Angela Steffen, Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemburg, Germany

"A moving portrait of a child's vision is created through the rich realization of natural form, dynamic animation and sophisticated design."

BEST Promotional Animation

Nick Idents – by Ljubisa Djukic, Ole Keune and Bettina Vogel, Dyrdee Media GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

"A funny, spare, well-conceived series of network IDs that use Nick's iconic orange colour to humourous and clever effect."

BEST Music Video

Nullsleep "Dirty ROM Dance Mix" - by Stieg Retlin, USA

"A mix of pulsing 8-bit graphics and glitch imagery provide a jolting backdrop to the bloops and bleeps of video game-inspired music."

BEST Television Animation for Adults

Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, A Journal Diary) – by Bastien Dubois, France

BEST Short Animation Made for Children

Nicolas & Guillemette, directed by Virginie Taravel, France

Honourable Mention:

Enter the Sandbox, directed by Kevin Adams, Canada

BEST Television Animation Made for Children

Lost and Found, directed by Philip Hunt, UK

Honourable Mention:

Tom and the Slice of Bread with Strawberry Jam & Honey 'Tom's Band' / 'Tom and the Nice Family' (Tom und das Erdbeermarmeladebrot mit Honig), directed by Andreas Hykade, Germany

The National Film Board of Canada PUBLIC PRIZE

Madagascar, A Journey Diary (Madagascar, carnet de voyage), directed by Bastien Dubois, France

Canadian Film Institute Award for Best Canadian Animation

Le Tiroir et le Corbeau (The Drawer and The Crow) – by Frédérick Tremblay, Canada

"A poetic, artfully-realized stop-motion film about alienation, love and memories."

Honourable Mentions:

- For its visual variety and inventive animated interpretation of a classic French Canadian folk song, the CFI Award goes to Vive La Rose, by Bruce Alcock

- For its daring, dynamic graphic visualization of the Billy Collins poem, The Art of Drowning, by Diego Maclean

- For its intelligence, wit, and achieving maximum impact with minimal means, The Paper Prince, by Hamish Lambert

About the OIAF

From October 14th to 18th, the nation's capital will once again become the center of the animation universe. The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) is the largest event of its kind in North America, a major film event attracting attendees from around the world. Film buffs, art lovers and cartoon fans won't want to miss this year's great line up of screenings taking place at ByTowne Cinema, National Gallery of Canada, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Empire Theatres Rideau Centre and Arts Court Theatre.

Du 14 au 18 octobre, la capitale du pays deviendra le centre del’univers de l’animation. Le Festival International de l’Animation d’Ottawa est un évènement prestigieux qui attire des spectateurs de partout dans le monde. Mordus de films, amateurs d’art et adeptes de dessins animés ne voudront surtout pas manquer la superbe programmation de cette année. Les projections auront lieu au Musée canadien des civilisations, au Cinéma Bytowne, au Musée des beaux-arts, la Cour des Arts et Empire Theatres – Centre Rideau.

Honorary President: Otto Alder

Otto Alder is working as a curator for festivals all over the world and has served on many juries and selection committees (Hiroshima, Annecy, Ottawa, Leipzig, Brisbane, Rome, Zagreb, London, Seoul, Stuttgart, Tampere, Espinho, Shanghai, Tallinn, Moscow, etc.). After organizing the Animation Festival Stuttgart, he was director of animation at the Leipzig Festival for 13 years. He was also co-founder and co-director of the Fantoche International Animation Festival. Besides making his own films, photographs, and art, Adler has been teaching history of moving images and animation at the Lucerne School of Art and Design since 2001, where he is a professor and co-director of the animation department. He has been a member of ASIFA since 1988 (director of board 1993–1998).

Jury

International Jury for Short Program, Student and Commissioned Films

Amid Amidi (USA)
Amid Amidi is a Manhattan-based author, critic, historian and entrepreneur. His recent book, Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation (Chronicle Books) won the prestigious 2006 Theatre Library Association Award for best English-language book about film and television.
He is the co-founder of CartoonBrew.com, the most highly-trafficked animation blog on the Internet. His Ottawa 2009 goal: avoid all physical altercations with the city's oafish club bouncers.

Jim Blashfield (USA)

Jim Blashfield is known for his innovative work in animation, live-action, and combinations of the two. He is the recipient of a Grammy, a Cannes Golden Lion, and several MTV awards for the groundbreaking photo-based animated music videos his studio created for Talking Heads, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Michael Jackson, Tears for Fears, and others in the late 1980s. More recent work includes The Lone Ranger, with music by Bill Frisell, Dream of the Scarlet Crustaceans (a 44 ft. by 4 block long animated video installation), and The Tasseled Loafers, a live-action/animation collaboration with the Oregon Symphony, Gus Van Sant, Chel White, and Joan Gratz. In 2006, Blashfield completed production on the stop-motion film Bunnyheads, and Pancreas, a music video for Weird Al Yankovic. He is currently finishing the short More Evidence for the Existence of an Archetypal Goat King and the multiple-screen public art installations Hydropoetics and The Equilibrium Chamber.

Suzan Pitt (USA)

Suzan Pitt's works have pushed the boundaries of the animated film form, thriving in both the art world and in television, theatrical, and festival venues. She has had major exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York, and the Stedlijk Museum in Amsterdam. She has designed two operas in Germany, which were the first operas to include animated images for the stage (Damnation of Faust, and The Magic Flute). In addition, Pitt has created two large multi-media shows — at the Venice Biennale and at Harvard University. Her animated films have won many prizes worldwide, including first prize at the Atlanta Film Festival and the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, along with the International Critic's Prize, winning Best Short Film at the Naples Film Festival and the GOLDEN GATE AWARD at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and First Prize for Animation at the Morelia International Film Festival, Ojai Film Festival, and many others. Suzan Pitt currently teaches experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts. She lives in Los Angeles, Mexico, and at her remote cabin in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

International Jury for Feature Film Competition

Thomas Meyer-Hermann (Germany)

Thomas Meyer-Hermann was born in Cologne, Germany in 1956 and studied graphic design and animation at the Academy of Arts in Stuttgart from 1977 to 1984. In 1989 he founded the well-known Studio FILM BILDER, currently celebrating it's 20th anniversary. Since 1980, Thomas has directed six prize-winning shorts. Studio FILM BILDER has established itself as the go-to company in Germany for both traditional hand-drawn animation and computer-generated images. The studio has produced many award-winning films, including multiple-award winner The Runt, 2008's The Bunjies, which won honorable mention in the Best Television Animation Made for Children category here at the OIAF (dirs. Andreas Hykade & Ged Haney), and 2000's Ring of Fire, that year's OIAF Grand Prix winner. Meyer-Hermann has been a professor of animation at the Academy of Arts in Kassel, Germany since 2000, while also giving guest seminars around the world including at DFFB in Berlin, Queensland College of Art in Brisbane, and the Netherlands Institute for Animation Film in Tilburg.

Christa Moesker (Netherlands)

Born in 1967 in the Netherlands, Christa Moesker is a professional animator who studied graphic design at the Academie of Art Minerva in Groningen, the Netherlands, from which she graduated in 1993. Her first film, Sientje (1997) received both critical acclaim and awards from around the world. Since then, Moesker has been working as a freelance animator for different TV productions and film, while also designing characters and backgrounds for museums and educational 2D games.

Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre (Canada)

Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre is an independent French Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal, Quebec. Her work demonstrates new approaches to documentary film, blurring the lines between documentary and drama. The award-winning film animator has directed several short animation and documentary films including Post-Partum, Passages, and McLaren's Negatives (2007 JUTRA award winner for best animated film). She founded the animation and documentary production company MJSTP Films in 2004 ( www.mjstpfilms.com ). She is currently directing and producing her first feature-length animated documentary film, called Femelles, while also developing a film about Claude Jutra with the National Film Board of Canada.

Poster

Each year, the Ottawa International Animation Festival commissions an artist to create original artwork for celebration and promotion on an international scale.

The 2009 Festival Poster was designed by Montreal-based artist Theodore Ushev (http://www.ushev.com/). It will be available to purchase at the Animarket at this year's Festival.

Awards Design

Tick Tock Tom is the designer of the 2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival Awards.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT
"Figuring out what else your VCR can be sometimes requires a little surgery. I hate throwing things out while there is a chance of further use in them. Everyday technology contains so much intricate material. Creating the illusion of motion, life, and character is essential in my work. Like each of a paintings brush strokes, each piece is important to the final look. Small details help build character. The curve on a typewriter gear could complete the devious crook in a mouth if placed correctly. My final goal is to make you believe that the mass of metal you are looking at could come to life at any moment."

BIO
Tick Tock Tom has been taking his toys apart since he was a kid. Many of his influences come from the robotic icons of his childhood. Things to blame include Johnny 5, an unhealthy obsession with Transformers, and Radio Shack's Super Armatron. He has worked around engineers and welders for many years, paying attention to their mistakes, what they've done to correct those mistakes, and any resulting success. He is mainly self-taught, or taught by others that he has been lucky enough to gain wisdom from. There were also some welding courses that came in handy.

Tom began sculpting with scrap metal nearly 12 years ago when a friend gave him a computer monitor stating that, "you look like someone who could do something with it." The monitor, when combined with pieces from an old VCR, became his first piece of art. It was shown to a store owner in Ottawa, and Tom's first commission came into being. "Edgar" stood on Somerset street for 8 years until an incident that only the tennants of the building across the street could properly recount. Although he often works with humanoid forms, he has also made roses and various crawling creatures.

Tom's works have gotten him into many interesting projects. He has had work appear as props in movies such as Oddessa Films' Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace, and Departure Productions' Maggot Man where he was commissioned to create a futuristic rifle that transformed into a sword. He has created mechanical gauntlets and armor for fashion shows, as well as the awards for the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival. He returns to OIAF in 2009 with a brand new collection of awards.

Tom's works can be viewed at www.TickTockTom.com, and at La Petite Mort Gallery in Ottawa.