ree Sou African films selected for Annecy Film Festival

31 March, 2016 - 07:55

Three local animations are among over 250 films that will be showcased at the world's biggest animation festival, Annecy in France. Stick Man - the half-hour Christmas Special co-created by Triggerfish Animation, 'n Gewone Blou Mandagoggend and the student film Arid made the cut under various categories after 2,700 applications were sent in from across the globe.

Arid, which was created at Cape Town's Animation School and directed by Charl van der Merwe is the first South African student film to make it into the festival, and is inspired by a series of photographs taken by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher of a Sudanese tribe called the Dinka people.

Van de Merwe says he is excited about the news and had hoped for international reaction given the hard work they put into developing a unique African look.

I worked on it with a team of six people so we were all quite surprised when we heard about it. We didn't expect it at all.

Local animation lovers won't get a preview of the film until next year as the festival has exclusive rights to it.

Nuno Martins who is the principal of the Animation School says if Arid wins an award at the festival, it would be in line to be nominated for an Oscar.

It's not an immediate qualification but it's a step into Oscar territory. It would need to win another two or three to become eligible.

He says while international platforms such as Annecy give weight to some of the good the work that is being produced here at home, steps need to be taken to own the intellectual property for the productions - as Trigger Fish has done with their successful animation Khumba.

Khumba did incredibly well worldwide. We need to build up a lot of credibility so that in future we can fund our own projects and we can start selling our projects back to the world but as it stands now, in my opinion, this is a great way to introduce us to the film industry.

The directors of all three films listed for the festival, hope to represent their projects in person at Annecy in June.

www.ewn.co.za

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