- Title: SWEDEN: EUROPEAN ANIMATORS GATHER FOR THE 10TH CARTOON D'OR FILM FESTIVAL
- Date: 23rd September 2000
- Summary: (REUTERS- ACCESS ALL) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (French) FABIEN DROUET SAYING: In fact the idea came from..a silly story really, a little dramatic story. It's the story of a dog who is killed, therefore it's quite stupid. What interested me was to try to really focus on the dog and and. what I found also interesting was the all the ridiculous things that happen to the dog."
- Embargoed: 8th October 2000 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: GOTLAND, SWEDEN
- Country: Sweden
- Reuters ID: LVA61OTFNU1WGKE6Y1CBOP4PNQYK
- Story Text: Europe's finest young animators gathered on the Swedish island of Gotland last week for the 10th 'Cartoon d'Or' - an annual prize awarded to the best European short animation film - at the Cartoon forum in Visby.
Five nominees from all over Europe were selected for the competition but there was only one winner - Portuguese animator Jose Miguel Ribeiro with "A Suspeita" (The Suspect), a tale of terror on a train.
For the last decade, the movers and shakers of Europe's animation industry have gathered once a year to promote creativity at the Cartoon Forum.
While the more established companies pitch their latest ideas to potential buyers and distributors, the forum sets aside time and money to promote the work of up-and-coming animators in Europe.
This year's five nominees from Denmark, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and Portugal were already winners of smaller European competitions - Annecy, Brussels, Espinho, Rome and Stuttgart among others - before being selected for the Cartoon d'Or.
Considered a barometer of European flair and sponsored by the European Union, the Cartoon d'Or awards the winning filmmaker with financial preproduction support for his/her next feature film or TV special project. Previous prize winners include British animator Nick Park, director of "Chicken Run" who collected the trophy twice - in 1991 he won for "Creature Comforts" and in 1994 'The Wrong Trousers." He went on to scoop an Oscar.
Jose Miguel Ribeiro's winning entry, "A Suspeita", portrays the tale of a group of passengers on a train journey, one of whom is incorrectly suspected of murder. The film which took more than five years to make follows in the same vein as Nick Park as Ribeiro created his characters from plasticine.
One of very few animators in Portugal, Ribeiro described how astonished he was to win.
"I am very surprised because I knew there were four other nominees and the cartoons were very good quality and I was happy to meet the them. I thought the prize would go to someone else the last thing I thought was that I would win.
I'm totally surprised but I'm very happy."
The other four nominees presented very different styles of cartoon and the themes were equally as disparate.
Jonathon Hodgson from the UK chose to depict one of the poet Charles Bokowski's less intense pieces for his debut cartoon.
He explains how the project came about when he bumped into artist, Johnnie Hannah who also appreciated Bokowski's work and the pair decided to collaborate.
"It was finding a poem that was actually possible to use because most of his stuff is far too extreme. We couldn't get funding from Channel Four for some of his stuff he writes, but I think it still has the sentiments there, it just doesn't describe things in such a graphic way so it's still very powerful but slightly more subdued than his other work," he said.
French animator Fabien Drouet teaches children in his spare time in the Brittany capital of Rennes. Having received financial assistance from various established funds in Rennes, Drouet decided to tell the tale of a dog who sees his life flashing before him.
"It's the story of a dog who is killed ...therefore it's quite stupid. What interested me was to try to really focus on the dog and and what I found also interesting was the all the ridiculous things that happen to the dog," he said.
One of the nominees was a recent graduate of the London College of Art. The sole female finalist from Denmark, Siri Melchior's cartoon "Passport" was her graduation film. It depicts the story of a small girl with her mother and sister on a train journey to leave the country when their passports are stolen. Although Melchior didn't believe she would win the competition, she said she was delighted to have the opportunity to make such good contacts.
"It's very inspiring for me to see how people they pitch their series and how different kinds of series are received so I'm very inspired, I will go home and write a proposal or a series, definitely," she said.
Perhaps the most amusing cartoon nominated was the creation of Belgian animator Benoit Feroumont who chose to tell the story of an oversized man with a peculiar obsession - fly splatting!! Where did it originate? "Ah, it's a very simple idea, I wanted to make an action film with a big character and a little character. I had all kinds of possibilities but when I was drawing, it became a very small fly and a great big man, very large, and I tried to explore..with an action film it's easy to do a chase with a fly when he hits everything but I tried not to be too cynical and to give a good reason why the guy did what he did and to explore his personality and his reason," he said.
The Cartoon d'Or awards were held on Saturday (September 23) in a ruined church in the island's capital of Visby. More than six hundred guests filed into the ruins to be entertained by local folk musicians and actors before the prize was awarded to Jose Miguel Ribeiro. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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