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Annecy 2017
  1. A Closing Ceremony Full of Firsts!
  2. GOBELINS on the Big Screen
  3. Honorary Cristal for...
  4. Annecy, the Best-est...
  5. Poster designed by...
  6. Two New Festival Awards
  7. A Tribute to Erotica...
  8. Midnight Specials
  9. China is Annecy’s Guest Country

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This year’s topics, poster, what’s new, GOBELINS, l'école de l'image trailers, Honorary Cristal…

This page tells you all about the Festival and Mifa 2017! Stay connected!

A Closing Ceremony Full of Firsts!

The Closing Ceremony on Saturday 17th June will mark the end of the Annecy Festival, but there are still plenty of surprises in store!

There will be the world premiere screening of Genndy Tartakovsky’s latest short Puppy!, in which the residents of the illustrious Hotel Transylvania find their world turned upside-down when youngster Dennis gets a surprise monster-sized pet!
Erlking, a short by Georges Schwizgebel (recipient of the 2017 Honorary Cristal), will be shown as his son, Louis Schwizgebel-Wang, plays the piano.
Athleticus "Le Tennis de table" by Nicolas Deveaux will put a ping-pong match between a sea lion and a hippo on the big screen!
Also on the programme, the latest animated short by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Romain Segaud, Two Snails Set Off, adapted from Jaques Prévert’s famous poem entitled Chanson des escargots qui vont à l’enterrement (Song of the snails on their way to a funeral).
Already selected in several festivals, Until We Coleidescape, an abstract animation by Reinhold Bidner, will also be presented.
And last but not least, you can discover the fascinating world of Quebec native Guy Delisle, a comic book author-turned-filmmaker, with his short La Dent.

On Monday the 12th, you can also check out a premiere screening of Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Short "Strike Hard" on the Pâquier at 10:10 pm.

GOBELINS on the Big Screen

We don’t fix what’s not broken at the Annecy Festival! Every year, students from the famous GOBELINS, l'école de l’image lend their talents to make the opening sequences shown before each screening at the Festival.

Inspired by this year’s Festival theme, these young animators are using "China: Guest Country" as their guiding line. With invaluable help from Chinese students from the new international class at the GOBELINS and the Conservatoire de Musique Paul Dukas, in Paris, they have made five short films that will be premiered throughout Festival week.

Dedicated to Sei Rionder, a former student and teacher throughout the project and a "beam of light in the world of animation" who left it far too soon, this collection is particularly heartfelt for the students.

Get an exclusive look at these original creations with a Chinese touch, from 12th June, in theatres and on Annecy Live.

Mifa & Variety’s Animation Personality of the Year Award

This year’s Mifa & Variety Animation Personality of the Year Award will be bestowed upon a duo of distributors: Marc Bonny from Gebeka Films and Eric Beckman from GKIDS.

Created in partnership with Variety in 2015 for the Mifa’s 30th anniversary, this award is meant to showcase figures who have contributed to the evolution of the animation industry with their work, commitment and way of thinking.

Following Chris Meledandri from Illumination Entertainment and Aardman founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton, two distributors will be receiving the award in 2017:

  • Marc Bonny, Founder and President of Gebeka Films, the company behind several animated hits (Kirikou and the Sorceress, My Neighbor Totoro, Louise en Hiver, My Life As a Courgette, etc.).
  • Eric Beckman, Founder and CEO of GKIDS, which has also contributed to the success of several films (Ernest & Celestine, Approved for Adoption, Avril and the Extraordinary world, etc.).

Mickaël Marin, Head of Economic Development & Mifa, commends the work accomplished by these two distributors who have helped animation conquer new territories: "In today’s world where the animation supply is overabundant and audiences are highly solicited, now more than ever, the role of distributors is about taking risks, backing filmmakers and supporting films from their project stage to when they hit theatres."

Honorary Cristal for Georges Schwizgebel

This year, the Annecy Festival will be awarding its Honorary Cristal to Georges Schwizgebel, one of Switzerland’s animation greats.

After studies in Graphic Design at l’École supérieure des beaux-arts and l’École des arts décoratifs in Geneva, Georges Schwizgebel discovered animation at the Annecy Festival.

In 1970, he founded the Studio GDS (commissions and personal work) with Claude Luyet and Daniel Suter, and started producing and making animated short films.

Since The Flight of Icarus (1974) to Erlking (2015), he has made a score of films with virtually all winning international prizes (Cannes, Zagreb, Hiroshima, Stuttgart, Ottawa, Espinho, etc.). Two of them, 78 Turns (1985) and The Ride to the Abyss (1992), can be found in the list of the 100 best animation films.

He has been to Annecy many times, including twice as a jury member in 1983 and 2000 and the Festival also rewarded one of his films, The Subject of the Picture, with the CANAL+ award in 1989.

Consequently, the Annecy Festival will celebrate the work of this great Swiss animator, who is currently working on new projects, by rewarding him with the Honorary Cristal at the Closing Ceremony on Saturday 17th June.

"Annecy, the Best-est Festival of All!"

The Folimage studio has been given the mission of creating the official partners’ trailer for Annecy 2017.

"Folimage is absolutely delighted to create the Annecy 2017 official trailer, the latest piece of handiwork to come out of the animation studio installed at La Cartoucherie, between the sun and the mistral wind. Over its 35 years, the studio has shaped itself through the complicity, talent and imagination of an array of artists and technicians.

In this amazing location that combines creation, production and distribution, the catalogue is open to all possibilities: traditional animation features, digital series, literary adaptations or shorts using drawings, sand, paint or paper cut-outs. The studio is also a recognised brand for the originality of its productions, both in France and abroad, as well as its unwavering desire to produce quality films.

This year, we’re singling out ARIOL the little blue donkey, created by Emmanuel Guibert and Marc Boutavant, who already has a total of 12 comic books published by Bayard and a strip that appears in the magazine J’aime Lire. He’s an extremely loveable character that has fans of all ages and from many countries. After the release of the first series in 2009, we set out to make the second in 2016, which will be programmed on Piwi in September!

This time around, along with all his classmates, our hero is going to have to present a show paying tribute to animation in general and the Annecy Festival in particular. Under the watchful eye of Mr Blunt, the kind-hearted class teacher and guitarist, the team will have the heavy task of depicting the average journey of a Festival badgeholder, from screenings to conferences and between the market and evenings under the stars. Emmanuel Guibert has also written a song that is sure to get the audience singing along together."

Poster designed by Ugo Bienvenu and Kevin Manach

Two young artists created this year’s official poster for the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Market: Ugo Bienvenu and Kevin Manach. Former GOBELINS, l’école de l’image students, they often work together as a duo.

Both illustrators, animators and filmmakers, their creative collaborations are easily recognizable thanks to their contemporary experimental style inspired by comic books from the 40s and 50s.

Bienvenu and Manach told us about their source of inspiration when designing this sweet and sticky poster: "When we heard about this year’s highlighted themes (China as guest country and erotica), we immediately thought of Jade, Ugo’s wife who has Chinese roots.
We stared at her through the bay window: she was eating a ham sandwich out back in the garden.
We replaced the sandwich with an ice-cream cone, the garden with Lake Annecy, and voila!
"

The poster’s typography was done by Christian Debbane.

To see more of their work, check out their agency’s website

Check out the poster

Two New Festival Awards!

The Annecy Festival has opened up two new competitive sections for short films, which will receive two special awards!

The creation of the Young Audiences section will come with the creation of a new special prize, the Young Audience Award, chosen by a jury of youngsters. "We wanted to recognise the vitality of films for young audiences and encourage their production", explains Marcel Jean.

The second section, called Perspectives, will receive the City of Annecy Award, which has been set up to support new filmmakers or films from emerging film markets, collaborative films or films that offer unique perspectives on the world we live in or the state of animation.

These two new awards will be announced during the Special Prize Ceremony at the Annecy Town Hall on Friday 16th June.

Learn more

A Tribute to Erotica This Summer!

Annecy is bringing you a rather risqué theme this year: animated erotica! Curiosity, exploration and discovery are on the agenda!

Marco de Blois, Programmer-Curator at the Cinémathèque québécoise, has chosen the films that will make up these special programmes: "This programme is structured around four themes: 'GL(amour)' draws us into the world of stars and larger-than-life characters; 'Wet Dreams' pays tribute to sexual fantasies; 'La joie de vivre' offers a playful and sometimes sarcastic celebration of lust. […] So many films to whet your appetite and spice up your trip to Annecy, since animation beholds plenty of guile and charm."

Things are sure to get hot and heavy in Annecy this summer with the programme Erotic Animation: Tastes and Colours!

Midnight Specials

The special programmes are getting a special addition this year: the Midnight Specials! Reserved for an adult audience, these late-night animation screenings will be dark, spicy, disturbed, subversive, sexy and over the top!

The two artists who created the official poster for Annecy 2017, Ugo Bienvenu and Kevin Manach, were inspired by this programme and so they illustrated it: "In view of this programme’s content, we chose to not show the screen, but its modest vis-à-vis, which is more respectable in our eyes."

While you’re waiting for the final programme for these late-night screenings, check out what these two young artists’ concocted…

See the poster

China is Annecy’s Guest Country

This year, the Festival and Market have decided to pay tribute to Chinese animation through different events:

  • A major exhibition at the Château d’Annecy, musée lacs et montagnes, presenting work and installations by artists and filmmakers like Sun Xun, Haiyang Wang, Wu Chao and Weilun Xia, who are working at the frontiers of contemporary art and animation.
  • A retrospective programme of a dozen films screened at the Festival including Princess Iron Fan, as well as programmes of historical and contemporary short films, a retrospective on Sun Xun, Xu An and Xi Chen, and some of the best shorts from Chinese schools.
  • Chao Wu, jury member, currently teaching in Canton, she is also working in digital animation and video art.
  • A Chinese delegation set to attend the Mifa, led by the SARFT, with a pavilion space of over 150 m².

Festival Artistic Director, Marcel Jean adds that "China is a great country, almost a continent and its animation is rich and varied."

Find out more about Chinese animation in June.

Read the press release