Friday, July 30, 2010

Vive L'animation!

I may have been to me, but I've never been to Paris and, unfortunately not Annecy.

A top-tier animation festival (and should be considered along with Ottawa and a few others a top tier film festival, in general), Annecy celebrated it's 50th Anniversary this year. In commemoration, they've released a 5 DVD set containing 40 films highlighting the half century of international animation.


The DVDs are Region 0, PAL.  Americans might not be able to watch them on their BluRay decks but any computer should have no problem.  BUY HERE!

And, being French, the booklet and menus are in French.  The overwhelming majority of the films are non-verbal, some (like "Frank Film") are in English with French subtitles, others (like "Bob's Birthday") are strictly  en français and we just have to lump it.

Many of these films aren't easily screened in any language: Robert Mitchell and Dale Case's "Further Adventures of Uncle Sam" (a iconic slice of 1970s zeitgeist), Alison de Vere's "Mr. Pascal", Jean-François  Laguionie "La Demoiselle et le Violoncelliste", and many others.

Also included are several popular films from this century -Chris Landreth's "Ryan", Jeremy Clapin's "Skhizein" and Michael Dudok de Wit's elegant "Father and Daughter".

These are 40 films which represent the best of international animation for the last 50 years, even with the exclusion of many American greats, it's a showing which make you proud to work in the same field as these greats.

(On a practical note, this ships from France.  I ordered on a Monday and received the package Thursday, standard delivery.  No problems.)

2 comments:

doug said...

how the hell does wendy tilby get 2 films (2!) for the 90's and they bypass my film which won the best tv show under 15 minutes?

unless, of course, it's a meritocracy and she's that much better...which is probably the answer. damn she's good.

roconnor said...

Doug, I expect you to have at least 3 in the "Second 50 Years of Annecy" Collection.