1. PANEL: Be Organised! – – Talk about International Film Associations for Animation  Wednesday April 24, 2024 10:00 am, Eugen-Bolz-Saal, Festival Centre Members of various associations talk about why it is important for everyone in the industry to work together on behalf of animated film and what tasks associations can take on – in society, in politics and, of course, for their members. The discussion will be held in English. Admission is free. Registration is not required. After the panel we invite you to our Get together at the filmmakers’ lounge from 11:30 am- 01:00 pm. Join ..read more

It is not easy working in animation and never has been, regardless of whether you are self-employed or employed, whether you work artistically or commercially. There are hurdles everywhere, on both a small and large scale. In animation is has never been ease to receive sufficient funding for films and animation is often underepresented at film events, film institution or film academies.  So for an individual person it seems like an endless struggle for recognition. Thats why beeing a group helps you to get stronger together. When the international association ASIFA was founded in 1960, t ..read more

This year’s winner of the ASIFA Prize is Michaela Pavlátová, an well reknown animation director from the Czech Republic. Her films have received numerous awards at international film festivals, including an Oscar nomination for “Reci, reci, reci / Words, words, words” in 1992. Her Film “Repete” has also won a series of awards including the Grand Prix at the International Animation Festival Hiroshima and the Golden Bear in Berlin. Her last film “Tram” premiered in Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes and won Annecy Cristal in 2012. In 2021, she directed the  Czech-Slovak-French co-product ..read more

The 2023 ASIFA International Academic Conference led by ASIFA-CHINA was successfully held on October 28th and 29th in Jilin, China. Animation scholars and practitioners from international community gathered there sharing their cutting-edge knowledge and latest research results. And ASIFA Academic Magazine, the result of this event, collects the papers accepted. This inaugural edition was organized with “Pan Animation” as the theme, which is proposed by Johnchill Lee, Vice-President of ASIFA and Secretary-General of ASIFA-CHINA. With the development of new media and new technologies, animation ..read more

Cover of the 50th Anniversary book The 50th Anniversary Book, now offered online as a downloadable PDF file. ASIFA was officially registered as an organization in France on June 15, 1961. In 2011, to document the past, present and consider the future, memories, essays, opinions, reflections and many images were gathered to celebrate the 50th Anniversary. Thank you to Nelson Shin, Chris Robinson and Ed Desroches for this 256 page treasure. Download the book PDF (59MB) Table of Contents Looking Forward to Another Half Century of ASIFA Introduction ASIFA 50th Preface ASIFA History Chart ASIFA ..read more

The mood of the crowd at Animafest Zagreb 2022 – the festival’s first full-scale edition in three years – was joyous, but the programming was sombre. The short film competition was heavy on searing psychological dramas and tales of conflict and political oppression. Even the comic films often had a macabre edge. One work in particular stood out against all this. Laura Gonçalves’s The Garbage Man is the director’s tribute to her late uncle Botão. At a reunion in the Portuguese village of Belmonte, her family reminisces about the man’s modest life and exceptional character, r ..read more

When we reflect on the modernist aesthetics in animated cinema, probably the first thoughts that come to mind, despite the many earlier examples, are about the revolutionization of the field in the middle of the 20th century by U.P.A studio in the West, and by Zagreb school of animation in the East of the Iron Curtain. Their new means of expression, utilizing highly stylized, simple, functional, and minimalist graphics together with the innovative limited animation movement in rejection of the realism and the naturalistic golden standard of Disney, correlate with the revolutionary changes and ..read more

Designers help establish the cinematic world in which the story takes place. We provide visual themes, and variations on those themes, that add subtext and history to the characters and environments that make up the story. We must visually—and efficiently—fill out the personalities of the characters and motivate the environments with thematic meaning and drama. Ralph Eggleston Art and design have always been known to identify the culture of a certain time and place, such as the design of Soviet propaganda posters in the 1930s or the various rounded typographies popular in the 1970s. Animatio ..read more

Crossing the Rubicon – Remember Gil Alkabetz By Chris Robinson What are these dark days I see?/ In this world so badly bent/ I cannot redeem the time The time so idly spent/ How much longer can it last?/How long can it go on? I embrace my love, put down my hair/And I crossed the Rubicon Crossing the Rubicon, Bob Dylan To say it was a shock would be a gross understatement. When word spread in September 2022 that the gentle, Israeli-born, German-based animator Gil Alkabetz had taken his life, few could reconcile the news. Unknown to many of his colleagues in the animation circuit, Alkabetz had b ..read more

In December 2019, Luce Grosjean of Miyu Distribution, gave a powerful, overdue and emotional statement about harassment and inappropriate behaviour within the animation community.  Here is an excerpt from Grosjean’s 2019 talk: “And we hear stories. Direct testimonies. Women being harassed, touched without their consent, feeling pressured to do something they may not feel comfortable doing. And today, I want to tell everyone who is in this room, and I hope it will be heard above: I am tired. Tired of trying to ‘be understanding.’ Tired of trying to make things move, change, or to let it go ..read more