Billed as the “world’s largest event dedicated to animation”, the Annecy International Animation Festival kicked off on a resilient note this week to record attendance according to arecent report from Variety, with the French city’s mayor proclaiming widely that “the best response to this tragedy is to live even more forcefully and more intensely.” Art heals, and the unprecedented crowds on opening night at Annecy were reportedly met with animation “delegations” offering their creative salve from both sides of the Atlantic. The evening featured two shorts and a full-length film to join a schedule spotlighting Mexican work as a focus this year, as well as an animation celebration of the world ofDisney.
The opening feature courtesy of French animation firm Sacre Blue, a “surreal story of sisterhood” and magic titledSirocco and the Kingdom of Air Streams, was preceded by the North American block of major shorts representing both the Mexican focus for this year’s festival and the strong studio presence this year. Mexican animator Ram Tamez presented his black-and-white short “Kikiriki” (The Beast), followed by the much-anticipated premiere of Disney’s new animated short “Once Upon A Studio.”
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If These Walls Could Talk
A “passion project… started on the fly” courtesy of directors Dan Abraham and Trent Correy, thenew Disney shortmarks the 100th anniversary of the animation house, and offered an animation treat for festival-goers given the film’s as-yet-unclear trajectory of screened distribution following. According to Variety, the delightful short “brings more than four hundred characters back to life” in under ten minutes, “throwing hand-drawn, CG and live action characters into a dizzy mix as they collectively buzz around the Roy E. Disney animation building on the Disney studio lot.” The film reportedly brought back more than 40 of the original voice actors from Disney animated films to be produced and featured a “gentle comic mayhem… leading towards a sentimental close set to the studio’s most emblematic song.”
Significant to the “mouse house” legacy, the film opens with the posthumous presence of legendary Disney animator Burny Mattinson, who started with Walt’s animation house onLady and the Trampand storyboarded throughoutDisney’s 90s renaissancefilm catalog, spending almost seventy years with the studio before passing away in February of Disney’s centenary year. “Boy, if these walls could talk,” Mattinson reportedly announces in the film before queuing the anniversary figures who spring to life from Disney studio frames. Film co-director Dan Abraham said of the celebratory short: “This is a love letter to the medium, to Disney animation, and really a thank you to anyone in the audience that’s ever connected with a film over the last hundred years.”
The centenary film was spearheaded in the animation department by Andrew Feliciano on CG work and by animator co-legend Eric Goldberg (of Robin Williams' “Genie” character fame) on hand-drawn elements. Disney’s “Once Upon A Studio” will compete for the Grand Prix du Court Métrage alongside other shorts at the festival.
