Animation Festival Done Right

The WEBSITE for the Ottawa Animation Festival (September 22-26, 2004) has just posted details for all of their screenings and retrospectives, and it’s pretty damn exciting. Kudos to artistic director Chris Robinson for putting together one of the most diverse and daring group of programs I’ve ever seen for an animation fest. The screenings range all the way from Soviet propaganda films to contemporary French animation, Popeye to Harvey Birdman, and Hayao Miyazaki to Robert Breer. There’s also original programming concepts like the “Words in Motion” series. Even the competition jury members are cool folk like Bill Plympton, Gary Baseman and Mo Willems. I’m honored to be the programmer for one of the tributes at this year’s Ottawa fest: the Fred Crippen Retrospective. This is the first major retrospective of Fred’s work, and if you only know him as the creator of ROGER RAMJET, then be prepared for an eye-opening experience. Fred will also be coming up to Ottawa to partake in the festivities.