Melbourne International Animation Festival 19-26 June 2011

For a quick summary, click here folks.

Program summaries all in the one place!
	OPENING NIGHT GALA SCREENING (unclassified 18+) Monday 20 June, 7.00pm Ladies & gentlemen... come and help us open the festival. We take a collection of the hottest films from competition, mix them with some of our favourite spicey classics from the special programs, add in a seasoning of the top new Australian films and round out the whole shebang with some guest appearances and a couple of surprises that won’t be screening in any other part of MIAF. This is the essential MIAF Showbag and the numbers are strictly limted. OPENING NIGHT TICKETS: Full $25, Conc $20 (Opening Night tix can also be claimed if you buy a full festival pass)
	UPA Retrospective (unclassified all ages) > UPA 1: The UPA Style, Friday 24 June, 6.15pm > UPA 2: The Classics, Saturday 25 June, 7.30pm > UPA 3: Mister Magoo Collection, Saturday 25 June, 2.00pm - special $6 tix for kids Ever heard of Mr Magoo? Gerald McBoing Boing? Howdy Doody Magic Hat? How about animators such as John Hubley, Robert “Bobe” Cannon, Steve Bosustow, Zack Schwartz, Dave Hilberman, Jules Engel, Paul Julian or Gene Deitch? If the answer is yes then you’ll really want to see these two programs. If no, then you HAVE to see these two programs. UPA Pictures is an essential, elemental part of animation history. Born out of the bitter 1941 Disney strike, it brought together animators who believed in the power of art and who didn’t believe in the relentless realist approach to animation design that Disney comprehensively made his own. Together they took animation off on a whole new path creating enduring characters, thought-provoking subject matter, and a surprisingly diverse body of modern work along the way, often pushing the animation envelope. Tee Bosustow (son of UPA co-founder Steve Bosustow) has helped us curate these three sublime programs of classics, oddities and UPA essentials and will journey to MIAF to introduce them, giving us a first-hand insight into this dynamic chapter of animation history.
	International Programs (unclassified 18+) > International Program 1: Tue 21 June, 6.15pm / Sat 25 June, 3.00pm (repeat) > International Program 2: Thu 23 June, 6.15pm / Sat 25 June, 4.30pm (repeat) > International Program 3: Fri 24 June, 8.00pm / Sun 26 June, 3.00pm (repeat) > International Program 4: Sat 25 June, 6.15pm / Sun 26 June, 4.30pm (repeat) > International Program 5: Sat 25 June, 7.45pm / Sun 26 June, 6.00pm (repeat) > International Program 6: Abstract Showcase: Wed 22 June, 8.00pm > International Program 7: Long Shorts: Thu 23 June, 8.00pm > International Program 8: Supinfocom Is Back!: Fri 24 June, 6.00pm The engine room of the whole kit-and-kaboodle! Eight programs featuring more than 100 of the very best and the very latest short, animated films. Every style, every genre, every technique. Your comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the international indie animation scene.
	Australian Showcase (unclassified 18+) Saturday 25 June, 4.15pm One of our most important and popular programs. There aren’t many opportunities to see Australian animation on the big screen and each year MIAF probably shows more than any other event in the world. This is an opportunity to see what Australian animators are doing, how they’re doing it and how the artform is travelling. After the screening there is a chance to meet many of the animators, hear them talk about their films and ask them questions about their work. If MIAF were a corporation, we’d be calling this our “core business”. Don't forget to check out other Australian films in Panorama 4: Australian, Best of the Next 4: Australian, Late Night Bizarre, International Program 6: Abstract Showcase, Kids Program and the Animation 101 series of talks.
	Technique Focus – Cut-Outs (unclassified 18+) Sunday 26 June, 4.00pm Every year we curate a program focusing on a specific animating technique. This year – as promised – it’s cut-outs. On one level, cut-out animation is a pretty easy technique to grasp. It’s one of the easiest techniques to teach to kids for example, but the level of complexity that masters of the form bring to it can breathe life in to what are nothing more than small pieces of cardboard. The technique has been a mainstay of many Russian and Eastern European animators, such as Yuru Norstein, whose graceful little characters have enchanted audiences for decades. This program mixes a collection of master works dating back to the 1940s with a selection of recent works, which are in competition.
	Focus On Poland (unclassified 18+) > Focus on Poland 1: Tue 21 June, 6.30pm > Focus on Poland 2: Wed 22 June, 6.15pm > Focus on Poland 3: Saturday 25 June, 9.00pm Polish animation is simply extraordinary. It has always been so. Our Masters Of Polish Animation several MIAF’s ago was one of the most spellbinding programs we have ever screened. Poland’s history and culture ensures an extraordinary depth in virtually every artform her artists tackle, and animation, most assuredly, is no exception. Our recent journey to Poland found contemporary animation there is as strong as it’s ever been and these three programs demonstrate a community of animators that have mastered new technologies to astonishing effect standing shoulder to shoulder with those steeped in the traditions of exquisite puppet and hand-drawn animation.
	New York’s Who’s Who (unclassified 18+) Tuesday 21 June, 8.15pm We’ve been working on this one for years. It’s finally boiled down to an eclectic, high energy, roll-call of indie animators working in the Big Apple right now. We’ve visited lofts, semi-legal studios, schools and film collectives. We’ve been passed DVDs in festival bars, met animators in lower east side cafes and banged into them at airports. We’ve racked our memories, chased down leads and followed up on myths, legends and tall tales – probably using up every favour we have in the City That Never Sleeps. So, time to show some films already!!
	Supinfocom Is Back!! (unclassified 18+) Friday 24 June, 6.00pm Year after year, students from France’s Supinfocom school have been sending us stunning graduation reels and, year after year, we’ve been showin’ ‘em! But last year there was no Supinfocom grad reel because they switched from a four-year course to a five-year course. But they’re back! The latest Supinfocom graduation reel is the first from that five-year course and the results are stunning!! So stunning, in fact, that we have devoted an entire competition program to the best of them. (see also Le Lab d'Images Collection)
	Six Pack Film Tribute (unclassified 18+) Saturday 25 June, 6.00pm Wander down a certain street in Vienna (which feels, for all the world, like Brunswick St, Melbourne circa 2000), search out a door with a tiny sign that reads, ‘Six Pack Film’, ring the bell and ….VOILA, enter a treasure trove of Austrian experimental and abstract film. Abstract Nirvana! Shelf after shelf of DVDs, VHS tapes, a climate controlled room of 16mm and 35mm films, books, magazines, artwork. To be sure, it’s a specialised taste, but if this kind of filmmaking intrigues, inspires, confounds and excites you as much as us then you’ve just found a second home. Six Pack Film is another distributor that MIAF has featured pretty much every year. Often, their films have formed the backbone of our Abstract Showcase and, always, their annual package of submissions is one of our postal highlights. Often challenging and uncompromising, Six Pack Film titles are at the forefront of the abstract and experimental animation scene and this program reaches back deep into their archive to make that point. > http://www.sixpackfilm.com
	Abstract Showcase (unclassified 18+) Wednesday 22 June, 8.00pm A collection of in-competition, recently released films focusing entirely on abstract and experimental animation. Outstanding examples of non-narrative, highly imaginative cinematic art and some of the most intriguing, challenging and rewarding films in competition.
	SIGGRAPH Highlights presented by RMIT (unclassified 15+) Tuesday 21 June, 8.00pm Our annual wrap-up of hi-end, hi-concept digital splendours from one of the great mother lodes of the form – SIGGRAPH USA and SIGGRAPH Asia.
	Goodbye Mister Christie (unclassified 18+) Phil Mulloy -- FEATURe -- Sunday 26 June, 5.30pm We don’t show many features at MIAF. But this is Phil Mulloy!! His short films (particularly the Intolerance Trilogy) have been some of the most unique and acerbic inclusions in our programs and have won Best of Fest awards in years gone by. Phil was ill the week they were doing ‘Compromise 101’ at film school and his films are all the better for it. And, it would be fair to say, he’s never been a slave to the notion of fine art. His films are often (in fact, normally) a gut-punch delivered with a paint brush. They hold up a sort of pseudo-mirror that somehow reflects where we might be about to go (typically some version of hell). And they are made by a man in a hurry. These images burst from the screen in much the same way as they were probably thrown down on the page in the first place. They can be ugly and contradictory. For his feature, Phil has parked his brushes and plugged in a tablet. The look has changed a bit, so has the pacing, even some of the anger has been given a seat but that strange mirror his films put in front of us is still in our face. The Christies feel like ‘un-people’ and they live in a world where talk is cheap, friends aren’t really friends and nothing that anybody says seems definitive or important. Sound familiar? To quote a certain Richard who may not want his name splashed across MIAF’s website … “one of the most accomplished pieces of quintessential freakery I’ve seen in a good long while”. > read interview with MIAF Director Malcolm Turner > http://www.philmulloy.com
	SKY SONG / Taevalaul (unclassified 18+) Mati Kutt (Estonia) -- FEATURe -- Saturday 25 June, 3.15pm Only the Estonian’s can make these kind of joyously confounding films – and we love them! Challenging, highly interpretive, wickedly entertaining – a trolley full of constantly twisting symbolism being pulled along at the end of a slightly fraying surrealist rope. Way more than a simple tale about a postman trying to deliver a package to the moon, Sky Song is an ode for all of those who like to fly.
	KIDS PROGRAM (unclassified all ages) Saturday 25 June, 11.30am A very special program of films selected to spark the imaginations of our most special audience. Heaps better than Saturday morning TV and not a toy ad in sight.
	Best Of The Next: (unclassified 15+) The International Graduate Animation Festival Sunday 19 June, 3.30pm, 4.30pm, 5.30pm. 6.30pm A ‘festival within a festival’. Four diverse programs looking at the next generation of indie animators from a variety of angles. There are two programs of the best international student films drawn from more than 60 different schools in 25 countries; a screening of the Royal College of Arts (UK) 2010 graduates – AND we round the whole shebang off with a program spotlighting the Australian student animation scene.
	Royal College of Art’s (RCA’s) 25th Anniversary (unclassified 18+) Thursday 23 June, 8.30pm London’s Royal College of Art animation department has been doing what they do best for 25 years – where does the time go?! There hasn’t been a year that MIAF hasn’t happily played a healthy number of RCA films in competition and with the grand ‘Three-Oh’ ticking over we decided it was time to do a stock-take on the hundreds of films that have been created there. But where to begin? In true MIAF style we went straight to the top – that would be Joan Ashworth, Professor and Head of Animation at RCA. Despite being nearly an hour late (a classic London distance calculation misfire common to us simple country folk not savvy to the ways of the big city) we were gifted a collection of RCA’s ‘best’ 100 films. This is now one of our most treasured possessions and the temptation was to leave immediately before they changed their minds and asked for them back. From that staggering collection of animated wonderfulness comes this tribute to 25 years of outstanding animation craft. Giving the tribute a certain symmetry is a program featuring a collection of films drawn entirely from the RCA’s 2010 graduating class, which will be included in the Best of the Next Graduate screenings. In the way these things often work out at MIAF, the whole deal was nailed down over a roast chook in Estonia … but that’s another story. > http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=159410&CategoryID=36692
	'ANIMATE PROJECT' COLLECTION (UK) (unclassified 18+) Friday 24 June, 7.45pm Britain has been a world leader in producing stunning auteur animation. At the centre of this for 25 years has been ‘Animate Projects’, an organisation dedicated to funding and producing a stunning armada of brilliant films. This program attempts to bring together a dynamic fistful of their best.
	International & AUSTRALIAN PanoramaS (unclassified 18+) Wednesday 22 June > Panorama 1: International: 5.00pm > Panorama 2: International: 6.00pm > Panorama 3: International: 7.00pm > Panorama 4: Australian: 8.00pm Introduced two festivals ago, and going from strength to strength, MIAF’s fourback-to-back Panorama Programs offer a short, sharp survey of films that missed out on jury room consensus but are just too good not be screened. And this year we have added an Australian Panorama, solely for local films! This is where some of the festival's gems reside, so at $6 a session, there's absolutely no excuses.
	Late Night Bizarre (unclassified 18+) Saturday 25 June, 9.30pm MIAF’s annual, ever popular, irresistible, train-wreck of a program – you wanta turn away but you can’t. Expect insane prison inmates, robust insect sex, an experiment involving a long spike and an ass … well, you get the picture. There’s more too but these were the only plots we could publish.
FORUMS
	Careers IN ANIMATION Forum presented by Holmesglen (unclassified all ages) Thursday 23 June, 7.00pm Our annual FREE Careers Forum will be back with its no-holds-barred look into what it takes to get a foothold in the animation industry – and what it takes to stay there.
	Animation 101 series (unclassified 18+) Animation 101: Pause Fest - Future Vision: Tue 21, 5.15pm Animation 102: Gaming Cutlure in Animation: Wed 22, 5.15pm Animation 103: Making a Cut-Out Film - 'My Good Half' a work in progress: Thu 23, 5.15pm Animation 104: MultipPlatforms - Animation In All The Right Places (The Gradual Demise Of Phillipa Finch) : Fri 24, 5.15pm A series of short, sharp, straight-to-the-point, intensive little download presentations about a specific element of animation and/or a film in the line-up.
There’ll be a club, the return of our Opening Night Gala screening, the always sold-out Best Of The Festival presented by JMC Academy, the Closing Night Party and much more animation loving. It ain’t over til the Fat Man sings … and he’s only warming up!
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