About the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF)
From September 21st to 25th, the nation's capital will once again become the center of the animation universe. The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) is the largest event of its kind in North America, a major film event attracting attendees from around the world. Film buffs, art lovers and cartoon fans won't want to miss this year's great line up of screenings taking place at ByTowne Cinema, National Gallery of Canada, Empire Theatres Rideau Centre and Arts Court Theatre.
JURIES:
INTERNATIONAL JURY FOR SHORT PROGRAM, STUDENT, AND COMMISSIONED ANIMATION
Mati Kütt
Mati Kütt, painter and director, is one of Estonia's most talented animators. A budding artist since childhood, he abandoned a career in engineering and began in animation in 1981 with Monument, one of the sections in the compilation film 1+1+1. After collaborating for many years with Avo Paistik at Joonisfilm, in 1989 he embarked on a career as an independent filmmaker with Labyrinth and began one of the most complex and variegated esthetic quests in contemporary animation. His films (including Institute of the Dream, Button’s Odyssey Smoke Sprat Baked in the Sun) combine different techniques such as stop motion, oil painting and pixilation.
Jan Pinkava
Jan started at Digital Pictures in London, animating and directing TV ads and graphics. Inspired by tales of glory he moved way out west in 1993 to a town called PIXAR. There he got a big hug from John Lasseter and directed several award-winning commercials before striking Oscar® gold in 1998 for Best Animated Short Film Geri’s Game, which broke new ground in the computer animation of crazy old men. Jan also pitched in on a number of Pixar’s early features, animating on A Bug’s Life and storyboarding on Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc. When invited to create a feature, he eventually came up with Ratatouille, the story of a cooking rat, for which he shared an Oscar® nomination for “Best Original Screenplay” in 2008. More recently, Jan has been working on another original story about a boy and his unusual dog, titled Little White Lie.
He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two sons.
Aaron Augenblick
Comedy Central’s Golden Age was created, written, and directed by Aaron Augenblick. The ten episode web series was later released as a 22-minute short film, playing in numerous film festivals throughout the world. Golden Age was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the grand prize for commissioned films by the 2007 Ottawa Animation Festival.
Augenblick was the animation director and executive producer for Superjail on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.
The latest production from Augenblick Studios is the Comedy Central horror/comedy series Ugly Americans. Aaron Augenblick is serving as the animation director, designer, and supervising producer.
INTERNATIONAL JURY FOR ANIMATED FEATURE FILMS
Anne Brotot
A fine arts student, Anne graduated from the National School of decorative arts in Paris (ENSAD), where in 1984, she first experimented with computer graphics in the brand new CG post-graduate course. She was one of the first students in France working on a CG animated short film, which received an award at Eurographic in 1985.Anne has worked for various French computer graphic companies, including “Fantôme”, TDI, and Médialad. From 1991 to 2000, Anne taught Computer Graphics at ENSAD and ENSCI (National school of Industrial Design). In 2000, Anne was involved in the creation of the new Supinfocom School in the south of France (Arles) as the managing director.
In 2008, Anne became the managing director of Supinfocomgroup in Valenciennes which consists of three schools: Supinfocom for Animation, Supinfogame for Vidéo-game and ISD for industrial design.
Biljana Labovic
Biljana studied graphic design at the Academy of Arts in Belgrade and started her career as a children's book illustrator in Serbia. She made her first animated short Non-Stop in 1995 and two years later moved to New York to study animation at the School of Visual Arts, and pursue a career in animation.
For more than ten years, Biljana has been collaborating with Bill Plympton on numerous short films, commercial projects and three feature films. She produced the Academy Award nominee Guard Dog, and produced and co-art directed the award-winning feature, Idiots and Angels. Biljana has also collaborated with director Emily Hubley on the animation for Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Hubley’s feature debut, The Toe Tactic. Her motion graphic work can be seen in the Academy Awarded documentary Freeheld by Cynthia Wade. Currently, Biljana is the animation producer on The Ruined Cast, an animated feature film in pre-production, directed by Dash Shaw and produced by John Cameron Mitchell. She has also been teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Claude Cloutier
Born in Montreal, Claude Cloutier studied printmaking and worked as an illustrator before turning to comic strip art, mainly for Croc magazine. He has cultivated an absurdist sense of humour based on shifts in meaning and has gained recognition for the meticulous execution of his drawings, which are suggestive of engravings. He joined the NFB in 1986 and directed The Persistent Peddler, an adaptation of his comic strip album La Légende des Jean-Guy. The film was selected for screening in competition at Cannes in 1989. His next film, Overdose (1994), which is part of the Rights from the Heart series, competed in the 1995 Berlinale. In 1999-2000, he collaborated on the Gémeaux Award-winning Science, Please! series. After From the Big Bang to Tuesday Morning (2000), he directed Sleeping Betty (2007), a short animated comedy that received wide public and critical acclaim and swept up 23 international awards, including a Jutra and a Génie. With his last animated short The Trenches (2010), Claude Cloutier delivered an anti-war film in which archival World War I images were reconstituted and contemporized through his artistry brushwork. He is now currently working on a new production with the National Film Board of Canada.
Each year, the Ottawa International Animation Festival commissions an artist to create original artwork for celebration and promotion on an international scale.
FESTIVAL POSTER:
The 2011 Festival Poster was designed by renowned illustrator and animator Gary Leib.
Gary has won wide praise for his work as an animator and cartoonist, including a 1994 Harvey nomination for his comic book Idiotland. His illustrations and cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker, Musician Magazine, The New York Observer, Raw, Blab and as weekly features in The New York Press for many years. He is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and has taught in the graduate computer animation program at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
The grown-up poster will be available to purchase at the Aniboutique at this year's Festival. Be warned: if you look under 25, we will ask for ID!
Festival Facts:
Last year's event had a total attendance of over 27,000.
Over 1800 delegates from the animation community attended last year including animators, production executives, educators, students and fans.
During the week of the Festival, there are 92 screenings and 46 professional development events at six venues across downtown Ottawa.
You don't have to work in animation to attend! Tickets for screenings are $12 and can be purchased at the door. It's as easy as going to a movie. If you want to attend everything - there are day, weekend and full passes available. We also have a ticket six-pack.
The OIAF is a division of the Canadian Film Institute, a charitable organization.
In addition to the main Festival - the OIAF runs a number of outreach events and activities such as our:
- Toon Apprentice high school lecture series
- Animation Celebration (a free screening for elementary classes)
- Animation School Fair
- free NFB workshops for families and teens
- the Adobe Toon Apprentice Pass
- and our Toon Apprentice website.
We also work to help the Canadian animation industry with the Canadian Animation Directory.
Our industry side event TAC generated over 7 million dollars worth of production deals in 2009.
The Festival has been running since 1976. Read about its history here.
AND GET YOUR CALENDARS READY!!! Here are some other Animated Festivals coming up soon courtesy of Animated-festivals.com:
ANIMAFRIK Animation Festival
Ghana 25th Oct 2011 - 28th Oct 2011
Competitive - No Fee Submission Deadline: On-going Details >
ANIMACAMPUS TALLINN 2011
Estonia 15th Nov 2011 - 19th Nov 2011
Non-competitive - Fee Required Submission Deadline: 5th Sep 2011
Animation Film Festival Animated Dreams
Estonia 16th Nov 2011 - 20th Nov 2011
Competitive - No Fee Submission Deadline: 15th Aug 2011
Anilogue International Animation Festival
Hungary 23rd Nov 2011 - 1st Dec 2011
Competitive - No Fee Submission Deadline: 15th Sep 2011
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