Artistic Director Marcel Jean has announced a few changes in the short film program for the 2017 Annecy International Animation Festival. Starting with next year’s June event, three of the out-of-competition programs will be replaced by two new competition sections: “Young Audience” and “Perspectives.”
The Young Audience competition will offer a new special prize, which will be presented at the Annecy Town Hall on June 16. The Young Audience Award winner will be decided by a Junior Jury.
“We felt that it was essential to give films for a young audience more space,” said Jean. “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.”
Perspectives is focused on 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 program will also be inaugurated with its own prize, the City of Annecy Award, also to be bestowed at the June 16 ceremony. This award will be juried by three young art students who will provide a contemporary point of view on the two programs in this section.
“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,” said Jean.
2017 is the 30th anniversary of the friendship agreement between Annecy and Sainte-Thérèse in Canada. In honor of this occasion, the three jurists of the City of Annecy Award for 2017 will be college students from Sainte-Thérèse. The City of Annecy is the proud partner of this initiative.
“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,” concluded Jean.
