Well, Annecy is over for another year. I came here not only to expand the minds of the French with Sick and Twisted but I went on a search for some great films for an additional show I am adding and calling “New Generation Animation.” It will feature Sophisticated, Innovative and Cutting-Edge Animation but not losing the sense of fun. I saw tons of great animation and received tons of submissions.
In a nutshell, Annecy is all about the shorts, shorts are king here. The main prize or the Annecy Cristal is reserved for the best short. Programs consist of Shorts in Competition, Shorts out of Competition, Graduate Films, Commissioned Films, TV films and Feature Films. I focus on the short films looking for that gem, Brian the Nice Guy also went to some of the feature films.

Saturday night was the closing ceremony, each year the Festival has a theme, this year it was the ‘Moon.’ The artistic director, Serge Bromberg, came out in a sort of astronaut costume and pretended to land on the moon. I think it was funny because the translations (a little headpiece where the translators would very dryly translate from French or English depending what they were speaking from the stage) were a little dry but the French were laughing!

This is the Moon set for theclosing ceremonies - this is the end with all of the winners mingling.

The winners of the shorts were: the Audience award went to Sick and Twisted favorite PES and his ‘Western Spaghetti,’ a cool film showing PES making spaghetti in the crazy creative way that he does, we hope to be showing this at San Diego this year. The Special Distinction went to David Oreilly’s ‘Please Say Something,’ a warped love relationship between a cat and a mouse. Special Jury Award (second place) went to Cordell Barker’s, (another Spike and Mike favorite, of “The Cat Came Back” fame) with his ‘Runaway,’ a funny film of a runaway train and what it takes to keep it going. The best first feature goes to my favorite, “The Man in the Blue Gordini”, a funny twisted film about standing up to authority. And first place went to ‘Slaves’ a dark, disturbing film about two children who were taken from their families by government sponsored militia in the Sudan and made into slaves.
On the feature side Henry Selick’s ‘Coraline’, tied with Australian Adam Elliot’s ‘Mary and Max.’ Audience favorite went to an Irish film ‘Brendan and the Secret of the Kells.”

The parties were not as great as they were in the past but the Danish Animation party at the old Bastille (prison) was pretty good. The Annecy closing party was great in the people meeting way; I hooked up with Peter Lord of Aardman fame and talked the very busy Serge Bromberg. Serge has always been good to me and Sick and Twisted.

Annecy Artistic Director Serge Bromberg and Spike confer at closing party.

A fan gets tagged by Spike.

Bill Plympton was there having a great time as well as Aussies Darcy Prendergast and Doug Bayne who were fascinated by a meat sculpture of a castle which they christened ‘Chateau d’Boueff.

This is the closing party.

All and all it was a great Annecy for me this year, I’m sure one day I’ll get the hang of it.