The 33rd annual Anima Festival – the Brussels International Festival of Animated Drawing and Animated Film –starts with a proud announcement. The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences recently appointed the Anima Festival in the short animated films category. This means that the Anima Grand Prix for the best short film will be selected for consideration as Belgium's entry for an Oscar 2015 award in the short animation film category.
For the third consecutive year, BNP Paribas Fortis is the presenting partner of the Festival. The support which BNP Paribas Fortis provides to the Anima Festival is intended to promote this field of popular culture but it also makes a significant economic impact. The business success of this event helps to channel valuable aid to all those involved in the creation of animated films, including the colleges which teach those skills and their students, in Belgium and elsewhere.
Anima received for this edition 1,300 animated films out of which 143 films have selected for the international competition – including 69 short films – made by both professionals and students from thirty countries, and 20 films which will be shown in the national competition. Fifteen never-before-seen feature-length movies will also be screened at the Festival, nine of which have been entered for the competition.
Anima 2014 will open on Friday 28 February at 8pm with The Wind Rises by Japanese animated film master Hayao Miyazaki.
During Festival week, a number of films on the programme will also be shown in cinemas in Antwerp, Charleroi, Ghent, Mons, Leuven, Liège and Namur.
For more information go to www.animafestival.be
Every year during Carnival holiday week, the highly-esteemed Flagey Cultural centre in Brussels plays host to this must-try event for animated film fans.
Each year the Festival attracts over 35,000 visitors who are lovers of animated drawing and animated film in all its forms. From the outset Anima has offered a dual format. Every afternoon, both new and classic-repertoire animated films are screened for family audiences. In the evenings the Festival explores the most diverse trends in artistic animated film-making.
Meanwhile on the fringes of the Festival a number of other activities are scheduled: an Animation Night extravaganza; ‘Futuranima’ workshops aimed at the pros and would-be pros; an exhibition; retrospectives; and a free daily workshop for children. There will also be a large number of invited guests (film directors and producers). The Festival thus provides an opportunity for meet-ups, discussion and interaction among those who either practise or closely follow the art of the cinema.
Anima is also a valuable springboard for introducing students to the professional world and for the Belgian schools themselves, some of them ranking among the most prestigious ones, including Ecole de la Cambre and the RITS School of Arts in Brussels, Sint-Lukas School of Arts (Brussels, Ghent and Leuven), KASK / School of Arts van de Hogeschool Gent, Haute Ecole Albert Jacquard in Namur and, last but not least, MAD (Media, arts and design faculty) in Genk.