Digital shorts

Felix Massie, a graduate from last year, has received funding from the UK Film Council and Aardman as part of South West Screen's Digital Shorts program.



The film will be his first since Keith Reynolds can't make it tonight (2007) which is due to be screened at the Animex festival early next month, along with two other graduate films from Newport - t.o.m. and Stiff Upper Lip.

1st festival success for 2007 graduates!

Jonay Ortiz de Urbina, in collaboration with composer Sergio López Figueroa, has received the Best Original Music award 2007 at the SCIFE festival in Spain, with his graduation film Homeland (2007).


Congratulations to both! Let's hope this is the one of many accolades our graduate films receive this coming festival year. Watch this space!

Past Graduate Update

Garth, Ginny and Johnny have just completed a 30 and 15 second promo for a new series of the Nickelodeon show 'Zoey 101'.

You can view the promos here, but it might be a bit odd as there is no sound. The promos should start running this weekend.

IV International short film contest on the theme of Intercultural Dialogue

“ANOTHER LOOK” is a short film contest organised by the association Association Artistique Espèce d’Espace in collaboration with Fondazione Mediterraneo and with the support of Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures. The objective of the contest is to favour mutual knowledge and understanding between the peoples of the two rivers of the Mediterranean through a “cinema of proximity” supplied by cinema via Internet.

The subject for the short films and synopsis is intercultural dialogue between the European Union and the countries of the Southern river of the Mediterranean: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey.

The contest Direction will select 10 short films (which will be awarded 500 Euros) and 3 synopsis (prize 4.000 euros). The authors of the synopsis engage themselves to make the short films. Selected short films will be diffused on the Internet on www.euromedcafe.org as from April 2008.

Particular attention will be given to those works that:

• Underline the importance of dialogue and tolerance in the relations among peoples and cultures;
• Give a new look, original and innovative about themes such as integration, immigration, menaces of conflict;
• Enhance the knowledge and understanding of other cultures as a way to fight against prejudices, clichés, stereotypes, sources of conflicts and misunderstandings;
• Deal about collective imaginaries and mutual representations;
• Underline the diversity and richness of peoples of both sides of the Mediterranean;
• Attach importance to the right to difference.

The “Another Look” contest has been divided into two sections: ‘Inspiration’ and ‘Completed Shorts’.

Inspiration: 3 prizes of 4,000 euros will be awarded by an international jury to the best synopsis on the theme of intercultural dialogue. The money will go towards the realisation of a short film based on the selected synopsis. Closing date for the synopsis is 5 November 2007; filmmakers will have until 31 March 2008 to make their short films.

Completed Shorts: 10 prizes of 500 euros will be awarded by an international jury on the theme of intercultural dialogue. Closing date for sending films is 10 December 2007.

For further details visit http://www.euromedcafe.org/contest.asp

e4 sting in Pictoplasma!

Garth and Ginny's e4 competition sting is being screened as part of pictoplasma's characters in motion festival this year!
If your off to Berlin for the festival give us an email so we can meet up for drinks.

Operator in Depict!

A slightly shorter version of this years air scheme film Operator has been shortlisted for the Depict! award at the Encounters Festival in Bristol. Go to the the website http://www.depict.org/shortlists/206/ where you can view it and rate it if you wish.

SSAW International Animation Masterclass with Michael Fukushima - 21st Nov

Masterclass Diary

21 November 2007

Michael Fukushima International Animation Masterclass

10.00 - 12.00
CA312
The Atrium, University of Glamorgan (Adam Street, Cardiff)

SPACES LIMITED TO 30 - PLEASE SIGN UP BY EMAILING US BELOW

Michael Fukushima has been directing and producing animation films since 1984, when he left the Classical Animation program at Sheridan College. He also taught Classical Animation at Concordia University for several years. On the strength of his first auteur film, Tako, Fukushima was invited to the National Film Board in 1990, where he completed the Hot Docs-winning animated documentary, Minoru: memory of exile. He’s been an NFB producer since 1997.

Fukushima’s credits as an NFB producer reflect the eclecticism and diversity of his own tastes, ranging from abstract animation to kids’ films to documentaries, the Web, mobile phones and more. He is the creator of the Hothouse, a program that is helping usher in a new generation of animation filmmakers to the NFB. He’s particularly fond of abstract and slightly off-centre animation and is part of the movement melding animation with interactive installations, thereby introducing animation into new venues and to new audiences.

His notable recent productions include the Genie Award-winning cNote by Chris Hinton, Lillian Chan’s award-winning Jaime Lo, small and shy, Sainte Barbe -- a poignant puppet-animation film by Swiss filmmakers Cédric Louis and Claude Barras -- and two shorts from the mobile phone anthology Art of Seduction. Fukushima’s current productions include The Down Project (a workshop film with four adults with Down Syndrome), the interactive installation and short film HA’Aki, and Bruce Alcock’s elegiac Vive la rose. He is in development on high-profile co-productions with the UK’s Paul Bush and Oscar®-nominated Koji Yamamura from Japan.

Email to attend

http://www.screenacademywales.org/masterclassesPage2.asp