Katie Mackin’s Annecy Festival Diary: Day Three

Each year, close to ten thousand guests descend on the picturesque town of Annecy to enjoy the work of the newest, best and brightest in the animation world. Katie Mackin, Passion Pictures Melbourne’s managing director and EP, shares her adventures at AIFF 2016.

A little dusty this morning. A slow-ish start. More coffee. More cheese.

Headed to the Cartoon Network party, lots of young Aussie animators there, nice to see such a good representation of our Antipodean compadres!

Lunch highlight: tartiflette (for the uninitiated, tartiflette is basically potatoes, and a lot of cheese, and lardons, with some more cheese and potatoes thrown in for good measure: basically scalloped potatoes with a cholesterol problem). Delicious, but not ideal when one must stay awake for the remainder of the afternoon.

Headed off off to the Commissioned Films in Competition 2 screening (after a whole lot of coffee); again, some really strong work being shown, very inspiring. Guilherme Marcondes’ film, ‘The World of Autism’ is a gorgeously designed stop-motion piece. We saw another really interesting film from The Moth Collective: ‘A Kiss, Deferred’; made for The New York Times and based on a true story of war-time love – it absolutely stole our hearts. Using 2D animation, the tale is evocatively told through the use of layered elements, which perfectly frame the sweetly designed characters.

The Stromae music video for ‘Quand c’est?’ (from Xavier Reyé and Luc Junior Tam) is a moody, evocative piece; a lone dancer (Stromae himself) on a stage interacts with unfurling 3D elements around him. Stark and graphic – loved it. And ‘DDWIWDD: Dan Deacon When I was Done Dying’ – a blend of work and techniques from a collective of 9 animators takes on a journey into the afterlife. Very cool.

8pm and time to head to the Passion Party! More to come!