Cartoonists going to the Platform International Animation Festival in Portland next week will be invited to be part of an experimental collaborative animated film. Dan Meth will round up 100 artists and have each draw 7 frames of a new unscripted short cartoon — on location at a bar full of cartoon fanatics. Sounds like fun. You can sign up in advance by contacting Dan at dammeth-at-danmeth.com.

Montreal folks have been getting some awesome animation exhibits lately. Philip Street writes about one that he saw recently:

Brew readers might want to know that even though the Disney exhibit at the Montreal Musée des Beaux Arts closes this weekend, there is another exhibit just down the street in the Loto Quebec building (500 Sherbrooke St West) featuring the work of Frédéric Back. Sketches and gouache paintings from the ’40s and ’50s, as well as storyboards and production art from several films, are on show on the main floor until August 5. Amazing and inspirational stuff.

Frédéric Back also has an impressive new website at FredericBack.com.

The GL. Holtegaard museum near Copenhagen has a Kay Nielsen exhibit on display until August 19. The show features over 120 drawings and illustrations, including some of Nielsen’s work from Fantasia on loan from Disney. If you can’t make the show, there’s plenty of Nielsen’s illustrations online at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive and ArtPassions.net.

(Thanks, Alex Rannie)

For those of you who were disturbed by our post of Bimbo in Israel, here’s the flip side of the coin.

Currently playing in San Francisco is Disney In Deutschland, a new play by John J. Powers. It purports to recount a meeting between Uncle Walt and Der Fuehrer, face-to-face, with Leni Riefenstahl thrown in for good measure. It even goes so far to suggest Disneyland was Adolf’s idea! Calling Max Bialystock!

Luckily, our brave buddy Harry McCracken went, saw the play and posted his review here. It sounds awful.

In two weeks, the Platform International Animation Festival will commence in Portland Oregon. Amid and I will both be there, and I urge you to attend as well. We’ve both been asked to host several panels and screenings, and we are happy to do it. I’ll even be a juror for the television animation competition.

The festival will have four venues with separate tracks of programming - all of it worthwhile. We will be posting several times in the next ten days about some the incredible events planned (or you can explore the programming grids now). First up, here are the two panels I’ll be moderating:

On Friday, June 29 from 2:30pm to 4 pm at Winningstad Theatre, I’ll be hosting a tribute to cartoonist extraordinaire Basil Wolverton. I’ll be discussing his influence on cartooning and animation with panelists Marv Newland, Kenny Scharf and Basil’s son, Monte Wolverton. Rare film and video will be screened.

On Saturday, June 30 from 4 pm to 5: 30pm at the Northwest Film Center: Whitsell Auditorium / Portland Art Museum, I will moderating a panel in tribute to William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. We will taking a good look at some of the earliest of their TV cartoons and talking about what made them so much fun. Animator Ward Jenkins (Laika), exec Michael Ouweleen (Cartoon Network) and again, artist Kenny Scharf will join me to discuss their life and work.

For more info, visit PlatformFestival.com.

Andreas Deja is not only one of the best of the current generation of Disney animators, he’s one of the most passionate voices on the subject of drawn character animation and an enthusiastic spokesperson on the history of the art.

Andreas will be speaking at the Van Eaton Galleries Thursday June 21st, a benefit lecture for Asifa Hollywood’s Animation Archive. If you haven’t heard Andreas speak, you are in for a real treat. If you’ve ever been to the Van Eaton Gallery space in Sherman Oaks, you know seating is extremely limited. To purchase tickets and for more information, call 818-788-2357 or visit vegalleries.com

You read about it in Flip, and now you can see it in person. Thursday night, Jerry Beck and his 16mm projector are the opening act for Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys at the Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood.

Janet and her boys play authentic 20s jazz music live, and I start the proceedings by providing about 45 minutes of vintage musical shorts and cartoons in glorious monophonic, non-digital 16mm movie projection. It’s a lot of fun - and if you’re in the area, I highly recommend you join the crowd. Janet and her band are pretty amazing! Here’s that fun clip again, of Janet teaching you how to play Tonight You Belong To Me on the Ukulele.

Thursday, June 7th, 8:00 pm
The Steve Allen Theatre
4773 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood
(West of Vermont, across from Barnsdale Park)
$15 323-666-4268 for reservations
More info at JanetKlein.com

Opening on Sunday, June 24, 2007, The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons will fill the Allentown Art Museum’s Kress and Rodale galleries through September 16, 2007. This exhibit is an expanded version of the 1985 Museum of Modern Art retrospective, curated by Steve Schneider (author, That’s All Folks, The Art Of Warner Bros. Animation), consisting of over 150 drawings, paintings, cels, and animated films of Warner’s classic cartoons from the 1930s through 1960.

If you are anywhere near the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia area this summer, you gotta go. The exhibit’s opening will be celebrated with a public preview party on Saturday, June 23, 2007, from 6 to 8 PM. For more info, go to the museum website.