LAAF – The 2nd Los Angeles Animation Festival
The 2nd Los Angeles Animation Festival will take place at the Cinefamily / Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood (at 611 N. Fairfax) December 2nd through 5th. Its shaping up to be quite an event.
The festival will feature a tribute to stop motion clay innovator Will Vinton, including a screening of his 1986 feature The Adventures of Mark Twain (in 35mm). Opening night will premiere Jan Svankmajer’s new feature Surviving Life (photo above) and the fest will premiere screenings of several contemporary international animated features, including the Japanese anime mindblowers Redline and Midori-Ko, the Chinese independent feature Piercing 1, the Czech stop-mo In The Attic and Sylvain Chomet’s latest masterpiece The Illusionist. Teddy Newton from Pixar will do a presentation on the making of his short Day & Night. There will panels, parties, shorts and several more features, including two with live musical accompaniment — independent animator Brent Green’s experimental feature Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then accompanied by Green and members of Fugazi and Giant Sand; and Rene Laloux’s 1973 masterpiece Fantastic Planet with live score by LA indy band Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound. LAAF will also feature panels, parties and these three contests:
“Unfinished Masterpieces”, an opportunity for animators to submit their unfinished projects. Directors of the chosen projects will be allowed to present their work.
“Character Screen-test”, a contest where the Best Character gets the prize.
“Dangerous Experiments”, an anything goes contest that encourages the most way-out interpretations of the word animation.
A 5-day festival pass is $125, $85 for students with valid ID, while supply lasts. Tickets for most shows are $10. For aspiring filmmakers, there’s a November 15th deadline looming for submissions to several contest categories. Further information on the contests, including submission deadlines, can be found at the festival website. Entry is free and all selected works will be programmed in front the festivals features and special presentations. Films will be judged and winners picked by industry juries including animation filmmakers Maureen Selwood, Sheila Sofian, Jen Sachs, Mark Osbourne, Corky Quakenbush, Peter Hannan and others to be announced.
The festival is being produced by co-directors Miles Flanagan, owner and lead director of Parallax Studioworks and John Andrews, executive producer of production company ka-chew!, in conjunction with their partner, the non-profit Cinefamily. For more information on festival passes and programming Click here.