Between 5-13 Jun this year, I spent nine days at the Annecy Animation Festival in France, a trip sponsored by Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Awards (ifva) and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

I flew from Hong Kong to London, transferred to Paris, and then went by train to the town of Annecy in the southern part of France. The Annecy Animation Festival features works in several categories, including featured films, shorts in competition, films shown out of competition, students section, and a classic retrospective. Altogether more than 200 films were shown at the festival. The selection consisted mainly of independent works, especially shorts with a strong European animation flavor, many of which are low budget yet highly watchable films. These films provided excellent points of reference for me.

The festival was kind enough to give me a pass, which allowed me to enjoy many animation works that I had been eager to see, and I also got a chance to see many shorts in competition. I observed an interesting habit among festival attendees. While waiting for screenings to start, the audience liked to fold paper airplanes and flew them across the auditorium, often hitting those sitting in front. Sometimes when the planes landed on stage, a round of applause would follow.

In addition to film screenings, there were also many conferences at the festival. I attended one on 3D television at the MJC Novel located in the northern part of the town. The speakers were animators and researchers from England and France, who talked about the history of 3D animation and discussed the future development of 3D films and how they could become even more popularised with advances in home entertainment technologies. In addition, I also took part in a seminar with animators whose works were in the competition, and listened as they shared their experiences on producing those films.

On the morning of 11 Jun, I visited an exhibition hall located on the hillside in Annecy, which was converted from an old castle. The exhibition showcased the original manuscripts, interviews and historical background materials of award winning animations from past editions of the festival. When I got back to the festival’s lakeside main venue, I saw that workers were already setting up the equipments and seats in preparation for the closing ceremony. Unfortunately I had to eave the next day and was unable to attend the ceremony.

What impressed me most during the whole trip was the attitude of the people towards animation. In Hong Kong one rarely sees a film festival devoted entirely to animation, and the audience for animation is relatively small. Mainstream animations all tend to be cutesy, the number of genres is limited, and many Hong Kongers only think of animation as a childish pastime. I don’t know if it was because of the cultural difference or that the festival managed to gather together animation lovers from all over the world, but I really felt that people at Annecy held animation in higher regard than in Hong Kong. This is the kind of creative environment I hope to be in.