In an awards ceremony Sunday evening, December 10, at the Jaxx Theater in Hollywood, the long-running LAAF (Los Angeles Animation Festival) competition announced winners of its top animated short and feature awards in several categories. The event was hosted by festival co-founder Miles Flanagan and comedian Adam Sartain.
“Once again we had a successful event and provided a great forum for filmmakers to share their work, meet and mingle and receive recognition for their contributions to our animation community,” said Flanagan.
Topping the list of winning submissions, judged by a panel of professionals, was Best of the Fest winner The Voice in the Hollow from Colombian director Manuel Ortega, who also won Best Short Film Director, and Best Feature winner Slide, the ninth feature from independent film favorite Bill Plympton. Plympton won a Best Feature Director nod and a Best Music Video prize as well.
“LAAF is America’s best animation festival,” commented Plympton. “The brilliant LAAF team has curated the next wave of world animation into a very hospitable fest that is crackling with high energy! I networked a ton and will definitely be back next year.”
The Winner for Best International Short Film was La Fille au Béret Rouge (The Girl with the Red Beret) from director Janet Perlman and the animation studio of the French program of the National Film Board of Canada. Best International Feature went to The Other Shape, directed by Diego Felipe Guzmán of Colombia.
The winner of Best Student Director was Yoo Lee for the short film The Nectar Instead. Lee also won for Best Student Comedy, which carried a prize of Storyboard Pro software from Toon Boom — one of three prizes offered by the company. The winning 2D student short Braided, from director Chenxi Zhang, received prize software from TVPaint.
The full list of LAAF 2023 winners is posted here.
The nine programs over two days included a well-attended Night of Cartoon Voices on Saturday, which boasted a screening of the yet-to-be-released-to-streaming, first-ever Looney Tunes stop-motion short Daffy in Wackyland from the Warner Bros. Animation story team of Peter Browngardt and writer/director Max Winston, who appeared on the panel.
The short was voiced by panel participant Eric Bauza, who was interviewed along with Cheryl Chase, known as the voice of Angelica Pickles in Nickelodeon’s Rugrats, and Tracy Grandstaff, the Universal executive who was the voice of MTV’s Daria throughout its run. The group performed live as their cartoon alter-egos in scenes from Pulp Fiction and When Harry Met Sally. Appearing opposite Chase was TikTok star Jeremy Olenski. The Saturday event was hosted by festival co-founder John Andrews, former MTV and Klasky-Csupo vice president and supervising producer of both Daria and Beavis & Butt-Head in their original MTV runs.
