Every aspect of French animation will be examined, including television:
For over 50 years, television has been the birthplace of significant series where great creators have distinguished themselves. Firstly, Jean Image, Jacques Rouxel and Serge Danot, who populated the imaginations of millions of children with a clown, a strange bird and a roundabout, followed by the innovator Georges Lacroix and his fabulous geometry, or more recently Delphine Maury and her political-literary stories… And in the middle of all that, the biggest names have worked in advertising, from Cohl to Grimault, as well as from Marius O’Galop and Robert Lortac to Pierre Coffin.
Studios and independent filmmakers:
Studios (La Fabrique, Les Armateurs, Folimage, Xilam…) and little and large production companies (Les Films de l’Arlequin, JPL, Vivement lundi !, Les Films du Nord, Autour de minuit, Sacrebleu, Je suis bien content and many others…) have sprung up and played hosts to exceptional talents: Florence Miailhe, Sylvain Chomet, Jacques-Rémy Girerd, Serge Elissalde, Pascal Le Nôtre, Michaël Dudok de Wit, Benjamin Renner, Jérémy Clapin, Franck Dion, Sébastien Laudenbach, Pierre-Luc Granjon, Bruno Collet, Sarah Van Den Boom, Jean-Claude Rozec, Marie Paccou, Édouard Salier, Stéphanie Lansaque and François Leroy, Bastien Dubois, Osman Cerfon, Céline Devaux, Boris Labbé…
And the country’s rich legacy of student filmmaking:
It is said that in France you can find the best animation schools in the world, or at least the biggest range of training programmes available between GOBELINS, l’école de l’image, Supinfocom, La Poudrière, l’ENSAD, Émile-Cohl, l’EMCA, l’ESMA and others.
Annecy, which will take place this year from June 13th through the 18th, has just started to announce its special programming events. Another early announcement is a program devoted to creative advertising that will explore the inherent tensions between artistic expression, aesthetic innovation, and selling products.
(Top: “Kirikou and the Sorceress,” Michel Ocelot)
