For decades now, America, the birthplace of the Animated Cartoon, had no world-class animation festival. Annecy, France, Hiroshima, Japan, Zagreb, Croatia and Ottawa, Canada all had great festivals, each as important to the animation community as Cannes and Sundance are to the live-action film industry. On the week of March 24th-30th, 1997, things changed permanently. We now have that festival: The World Animation Celebration.
The World Animation Celebration consisted of 4 events: the Animation Celebration proper -- a juried showing of animated films from all over the world; The First International Business Conference for Television Animation; The New Animation Technology Expo and Conference; and the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Opportunities Expo and Seminars. All but the Animation Opportunities Expo had their premieres that week. ASIFA-Hollywood had been running their Animation Opportunities Expo for several years prior to the WAC.
The first couple of days were kind of quiet, with most of the screenings happening at night. I felt kinda bad for the good folks at Animation World Network...their seminar on Animation on the Internet was scheduled for 1-4 pm the first day of the festival, and was sparsely attended. Too bad...they even gave ANP a good mention...merci beaucoups.
Things started to really take off on Wednesday with the first day of NATE, as the New Animation Technology Expo was called for short. It was a trade show which brought the manufacturers of animation hardware and software together to show off their new technology. It was quite surprising to see just how accessible some of the animation programs were...many ran on stock IBM compatible or MacOS computers, a far cry from a few years ago when such software ran only on expensive UNIX workstations like those made by Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems. It would probably surprise the animation fan that a lot of the stuff on TV and even in the movies were inked and painted using a computer not too much more powerful than what you are using to look at this web site. Pretty fascinating stuff.
That night, the World Animation Celebration honored what they called the "Outlaws of Animation" with a special presentation. Ralph Bakshi was honored with a special Lifetime Achievement award, and the works of veteran gonzo animators Bill Plympton and Danny Antonucci, and upstarts Corky Quackenbush and John Dilworth were screened. It kinda felt as if one name, that of John Kricfalusi, was missing from the proceedings. Bakshi proceeded to remedy that by literally grabbing John out of the audience and insisting he speak. It was nice to see that Bakshi and John K. were on good terms almost 10 years after Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Bakshi threatened to throw an Easter Sunday screening of his classic Fritz The Cat, but apparently no arrangements for a venue could be made.
Thursday brought a salute to Warner Bros. Animation, which seemed to be an ubiquitous presence at the Celebration. With WB now owning the Cartoon Network, Hanna-Barbera and the WB TV network, they seemed to be everywhere, even to the point of parking a replica of the Scooby-Doo "Mystery Machine" on the premises.
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Page last updated 1/15/1998
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