Easter Mundi

Another update from the Lendas Animadas camp - one of my episodes Como Surgiram as Estrelas will be featured as part of a special series of programmes taking place at the Rio Creative Conference this weekend. Put together with the lovely folks at Anima Mundi (where this episode screened in competition last year and was picked as one of the 10 best Brazilian films of that edition) the screening kicks off 11am on April 7th at the Cidade das Artes in Rio de Janeiro.

Women, they're absolutely everywhere

I just received some good news regarding Lendas Animadas, the Brazilian pre-school series I worked on a little while ago - one of the episodes I animated just picked up the Audience Award for Best Children's Short at the FESTin Portuguese Film Festival in Lisbon. Turns out the kids are alright.
On top of this the series is also a finalist for the 28th Prix Jeunesse International festival and competition which will take place in Munich from May 25th-30th.
Congrats and kudos to the team, most of all to Art Director Adriana Meirelles who was my immediate supervisor on the series and did an amazing job in keeping me on track, especially considering I don't speak any Portuguese.
Speaking of amazing women in animation, if you head on over to Skwigly's Twitter feed I've been corralling some coverage from the past year in honour of International Women's Day. There are some fantastic articles and insights - not to mention films - worth checking out there if you missed them the first time around.
While we're on the subject here's a rundown of the industry's inspiring female talents I've had the pleasure of personally interviewing since my days at the magazine began:

• Abigail Addison
• Anete Melece
• Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi
• Ann Marie Fleming
• Anna Ginsburg
• Becky Sloan
• Britt Raes
• Chintis Lundgren
• Chloé Alliez
• Claire Blanchet
• Corinne Merrell
• Corrie Francis Parks
• Desiree Stavracos
• Diane Obomsawin
• Emilie Timmermans
• Emmanuelle Loslier
• Emma Burch
• Eva Cvijanović
• Fatima Yasrebi
• Francesca Adams
• Haley Mancini
• Hilary Audus
• Isabel Peppard
• Isabelle Favez
• Janet Perlman
• Janice Nadeau
• Jeanette Bonds
• Jelena Popović
• Jessica Borutski
• Joanna Hepworth
• Joanna Quinn
• Karni (and Saul)
• Kirsten Lepore
• Laura-Beth Cowley
• Lisa Hanawalt
• Lori Malépart-Traversy
• Loup Blaster
• Lucy Izzard
• Magdalena Osinska
• Manuela Leuenberger
• Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre
• Melissa Johnson
• Michèle Cournoyer
• Michelle Kranot
• Nina Paley
• Nora Twomey
• Rebecca Wallace
• Réka Bucsi
• Ruth Fielding
• Ruth Lingford
• Sally Arthur
• Sarah Matthews
• Sarah Phelps 
• Sarah Van Den Boom
• Signe Baumane (2013)
• Signe Baumane (2017)
• Tünde Vollenbroek
• Veronica L. Montaño
• Yvonne Van Ulden

To be perfectly honest it should be a longer list, though I have some personal goals toward the gender parity of our coverage in the years to come that should hopefully amend that.

As for the present, the latest addition to our interviews section is the splendid Julie Roy who I had the pleasure of interviewing at last year's Annecy festival. This week saw her win her second Canadian Screen Award as a National Film Board of Canada producer (her main role is Executive Producer of the NFB's French Animation Studio). The winning film, directed by Matthew Rankin (an interview with whom went up a few months' back), is The Tesla World Light, which documents a troubled period of the renowned inventor Nikola Tesla’s life through a combination of exquisitely performed pixilation and experimental filmmaking techniques. Julie's producer filmography also includes some absolute crackers such as Paula (Dir. Dominic Étienne Simard), Kali, the Little Vampire (Dir. Regina Pessoa), In Deep Waters (Dir. Sarah van den Boom), Pilots on the Way Home (Dir. Priit and Olga Pärn), Inspector Street (Dir. Emmanuelle Loslier) and The Head Vanishes (Dir. Franck Dion) among others, so it was a real privilege to get to learn about her career path and process, as well as some insight into how the NFB approach the marketing and distribution of their films once they're done.

One last thing that, again, involves some super brilliant animation ladies, chiefly Lauren Orme, Dani Abram et al who have been working like mad on the first edition of the revived Cardiff Animation Festival. Having curated and hosted the animation strand of the Cardiff Independent Film Festival for a few years, as well as the city's regular meet-up Cardiff Animation Nights, the team have outdone themselves with an amazingly high-quality inaugural official selection for this year's event. I'll be involved in the festival in various capacities that I'll elaborate on when they've all been cemented but until then be sure to to get your hands on festival passes so you won't miss a thing.
That's it for today, I'll leave you with this new piece by Anna Ginsburg that I had nothing to do with but absolutely love:

Naughty little rock-faced children, scampering around

Just got wind of some good news that one of the episodes of Lendas Animadas I was lead animator on is presently a finalist for the Japan Prize International Contest for Educational Media. I'm not sure what happens if it wins but the event's Facebook page has put up the first (to my knowledge) clip from the episode which you can check out below:

As you've probably deduced, the animation is taken from collages and drawings by schoolchildren across Brazil that have been made animatable. I was working to storyboards by the project's Art Director Adriana with only a vague idea of what the narrator guy was saying, so it's kind of a new experience to actually see this with subtitles. This is also the same episode that screened at Anima Mundi back in July - Como Surgiram as Estrelas (How the Stars Were Created) - and I'm chuffed to say it was picked as one of the 10 best Brazilian films at that festival, making it eligible for a BNDES Award. It didn't win though. So, y'know, fingers crossed for this other thing.

Another Manic Mundi

I was very happy to learn recently that some work of mine will be playing at Anima Mundi this month. For whatever reason this year's edition is taking place just nine months after 2016's in which Klementhro played. While my next film remains on hold for the duration of my current contract (I literally have to leave the country every day to go to work, so personal film time just isn't on the cards), the festival will be including an episode of Lendas Animadas, the Brazilian TV series I was working on last year, Art-Directed by my pal Adriana Meirelles.

The particular episode featured is one I was lead animator on titled Como Surgiram as Estrelas (How the Stars Were Created) and will play in the screening Children's Shorts 2. I'm not sure when it will actually be broadcast but getting to be part of Anima Mundi again is grand news indeed as they've always been pretty good to me. As usual the festival has two sets of screenings in Rio de Janeiro and  São Paulo, the times/dates for our screening are as follows:
Rio de Janeiro

• 15/07/2017 - Cine Odeon, Centro Cultural Luiz Severiano Ribeiro - 2pm
• 20/07/2017 - Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil CCBB/RJ - 3pm
• 22/07/2017 - Centro Cultural dos Correios - 1:30pm
• 23/07/2017 - Cine Odeon, Centro Cultural Luiz Severiano Ribeiro - 11am
• 27/07/2017 - Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil CCBB/RJ - 3pm

São Paulo

• 26/07/2017 - Caixa Belas Artes - 3pm
• 29/07/2017 - Centro Cultural São Paulo - 2:30pm
• 30/07/2017 - Centro Cultural São Paulo - 1pm

If anyone's able to make it to the fest it's looking like a great edition overall, with other selected work including Chintis Lundgren's Manivald, Rune Spaans's The Absence of Eddy Table, Eva Cvijanović's Hedgehog's Home, Ann Marie Fleming's Window Horses, Diane Obomsawin's I Like Girls, Jennifer Zheng's Tough and Sean Buckelew's Lovestreams.
Happy Brazil times!