Annecy Festival creates two new sections for 2017 edition
The world-renowned Annecy International Animated Film Festival has announced the addition of two new screening/award categories to its upcoming 2017 edition. In an announcement from the festival’s Artistic Director Marcel Jean, it was revealed that the approach to the short film programme curation would be modified, with three ‘out of competition’ programmes to be dropped and replaced with the two new sections Young Audience and Perspectives.
The first, as its title suggests, will be focused on films that cater to younger audiences and will be accompanied by a newly-created special prize awarded by a Junior Jury to be presented at the Annecy Town Hall on June 16th.
Perspectives will be devoted to “helping new creatives, emerging films and those produced in collaboration or offering a singular perspective on the world we live in and the state of animation”. This category will also have its own special prize – the City of Annecy Award, in partnership with the City of Annecy – to be presented on the 16th with its jury made up of three young Art students from cégep of Sainte-Thérèse, in honour of 2017 marking the 30th anniversary of the friendship agreement between Annecy and Sainte-Thérèse in Canada.
We felt that it was essential to give films for a young audience more space. We think it’s important to select more films for this audience and show them in their own programme so as to offer the best overview of this type of production. Through this prize we would like to recognise the vitality of films for young people and encourage more production.
The term perspective, meanwhile, can be defined in many ways, but we are using it to denote notions of representation and looking at something, as well as possible changes. It’s a wide-ranging concept, which is moving forward and calls the future. All the short films shown at the Festival are worthy of being in the spotlight. It’s impossible to have nine or ten screening sessions, but by adding these new sections we are showing off the films and recognising them through awarding some of them prizes.
-Marcel Jean, Festival Artistic Director
Film and project submissions are now open for next year’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival, which will take place June 12th-17th 2017. For more info on the festival visit annecy.org