Distinguished NFB animator Torill Kove honoured at Vancouver’s SPARK ANIMATION
Skwigly
Oscar-winning animator Torill Kove was honoured in Vancouver by SPARK ANIMATION, Western Canada’s largest celebration of animation, presented by the Spark Computer Graphics Society.
Images provided by the NFB
Torill Kove received the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the field of animation, as well as this year’s Canadian Film Prize for her new short film, Maybe Elephants, co-produced by Mikrofilm and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
This new honour for Maybe Elephants brings the total to four awards and mentions to date, including the Short Film – Audience Prize at South Korea’s Bucheon International Animation Festival and Best Nordic-Baltic Animated Youth Film at Norway’s Fredrikstad Animation Festival.
I’m honoured and deeply touched to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Spark Animation festival. This is an occasion for me to reflect on how fortunate I’ve been to have a career as an animation director with the National Film Board of Canada and the Norwegian animation studio Mikrofilm. I owe these two animation studios and everybody who has collaborated with me on my films a great debt of gratitude. I interpret this award both as an acknowledgement of my work so far and as encouragement to keep making more films.
-Torill Kove
It’s also the fourth collaboration of the NFB and Norway’s Mikrofilm with the Montreal-based animator—a stellar run of animation excellence over two decades, encompassing three Academy Award-nominated shorts, including her 2007 Oscar winner, The Danish Poet.
Produced by Maral Mohammadian (NFB) and Lise Fearnley (Mikrofilm), Maybe Elephants continues its festival tour this month at the London International Animation Festival, taking place online and in cinemas from November 22 to December 1. The film has been selected by more than 20 festivals so far, including the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, LA’s Animation Is Film and AFI FEST, and the Toronto International Film Festival and Ottawa International Animation Festival.
For more on the making of the film, check out Skwigly’s interview with Torill Kove in episode 30 of Animation One-To-Ones