DIRECTORS MESSAGE

You have to love it when a plan comes together!

I can tell you it’s been an interesting year. It’s a fascinating process putting together a festival like AIAF. And the Director collects the best and worst of those moments.

Some of these moments crept up on me slowly. I don’t remember the exact day that it dawned on me that the rapidly rising mountain of submissions had turned into an all time record for submissions but in the end we received more than 1500 entries and AIAF 06 represents our juries best crack at narrowing that down to the most impressive.

Other moments are simple, singular moments of triumph. Such as the day I opened an email from one of my animating heroes. Peter Chung - an artist who’s animated 1990’s series Aeon Flux drove a stake through the heart of my over-Disneyed early conceptions of what animation was capable of - was saying “Yes, AIAF can play a selection of the Aeon Flux series and, by the way, these are my favourites”. Simple as that. Wish I’d asked years ago.

And sometimes there is a moment ….. a silent drumroll of a moment ….. when a plan just simply comes together. Eight months out and I have a mish mash of ideas for the AIAF 06 line-up in my mind. I am captivated by the notion of a program curated around the comic art aesthetic and I’ve got a box of tapes and a journal of notes that might turn into something. I am more or less constantly surrounded by a debate about the role and value of computer animation vs ‘hand-made’ animation. I am sitting in a beer garden at a festival in Ottawa wondering if it’s maybe just cold enough to give this table up. I am introduced to Rosto, a filmmaker who’s name I instantly match to a collection of extraordinarily memorable films. Within five minutes he’s fearlessly, fulsomely lecturing on the absolute need to preserve animation (and cinema) as an artform first and foremost. The final shape and form of AIAF 06 owes much to that chilly afternoon. Rosto is a CG animator of extraordinary vision and skill. His films are adaptations of his graphic novel. He makes all his films for all the right reasons.

His latest – “Jona/Tomberry” is an adaptation of his graphic novel. Grasping this, seeing how it simultaneously blended with and contrasted to so much of the material I wanted to include in the Comic Art program was the catalyst for finally getting that program together. And in some strange way it is also simultaneously the perfect match and contrast to the Aeon Flux Collection.

These are the sorts of coincidences that Festival Directors spend so much of their time trying to maneuver themselves into the path of - and AIAF 06 is the on-screen outcome.

But while plans coming together are all very fine and while we love all the people we deal with in the grand mission to get this festival on the road – there comes a time when it has to be about the films. And that time is…..NOW! It’s been a strong year for short, creative animated film all round the world and that shows on the screen. Enjoy!

Malcolm Turner
Executive Director
Australian International Animation Festival