MIAF Makes It To 10 in 2010!
21-27 June 2010, acmi cinemas

Wow! We’ve survived 10 years.

In 2010 the Melbourne International Animation Festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary. As well as the regular avalanche of animated goodness covering the very best recently released and historical animation, we are planning three special 10th anniversary highlight programs for your ultimate enjoyment!

Read on animation fans!

International Programs (Competition)
The backbone of the MIAF line-up. These screenings gather together the very best recently released short, auteur animations from the 2,000+ submissions we receive from 40+ countries. The films cover every imaginable style and genre. In addition to five programs of eclectic individual films, the competition programs will also feature screenings that focus specifically on Digital, ‘Long Shorts’ and Abstract films.

Edouard Salier: Special Guest Presentation + Q&A
Edouard Salier is an animator with an awe-inspiring vision for his films. His best known films (“Flesh” and “Empire”) tackle enormous subjects and depict enormous environments. Porn adorns entire cityscapes of skyscrapers, entire cities are razed over and over by acts of war (or terror??), the military machine infiltrates the very DNA of unquestioning societies. His works get bigger, more complex, more challenging and more ambitious as he goes. His command of digital animation technologies is among the most assured of anybody working in the field. And his work just keeps getting better and better – his latest film “FOUR” is an immense and challenging achievement. We could have played it last year but we knew we had to hold it until we had the man himself here to introduce it.

Technique Focus – “Scratch” Film
Scratch film (or ‘direct-to-film’) is, by any definition, a painstaking way to create animation. Scratching images directly into film stock takes a steady hand and a mystical grasp of ‘visual rhythm’. Len Lye and Norman McLaren were the earliest, and most important, exponents of the form but modern day animators such as Richard Reeves and Steve Woloshen (both long-time MIAF favourites) continue to create stunning examples of the technique. This program combines a selection of outstanding recently released ‘scratch’ films with some of the finest classics. The program will be introduced by MIAF’s guest, Steve Woloshen, and will include a retrospective of his finest works along with a collection of historical classics and recently released films in competition.

Autour de Minuit Showcase
Autour de Minuit is one of the most interesting animation and production houses in Europe. Their modest, cramped Parisian office is home to an eclectic stable of animators including MIAF guest Edouard Salier, Nieto and H5. On top of this, Autour de Minuit acts as a distribution hub for a stunning roster of European animators. From this treasure trove MIAF has sourced some of our favourite films over the years – “Dix” (Bif - France), “Plasticat” (Simon Bogojevic Narath - Croatia), “Obras” (Hendrick Dusollier – France) and “Fast Film” (Virgil Widrich – Austria) to name just a few. They’re even producing Rosto’s latest opus “The Monster Of Nix” which we’re obviously keeping a very close eye on. During a recent visit we started flicking through their rolodex and have curated this collection of classics from their golden archive PLUS a sneak preview of some works in progress!!

10 Years of MIAF Highlights
Wow – we made it to our 10th anniversary!!. We’ve received more than 12,000 entries, screened more than 2,500 films, had some of the most talented animators in the world come and hang out with us – we must have learned something!!! Three screenings will review some of the hits, misses and should-a-beens from those years so we can relive some of the highlights and catastrophes that are all part and parcel of staging an annual animation festival. There will be one program focusing on Australian highlights a second focusing on the International Competition highlights, and of course, how could we go forward without a program of Late Night Bizarre highlights - you KNOW you want it!

The Twisted Tales of Felix The Cat
In its time, Felix The Cat was easily the world’s most famous animated cartoon. Our research into New York animation reminded us just how big a deal (and how much fun) Felix was. The best Felix cartoons depicted a world in which nothing was ever quite as it seemed. Everything had an edge and Felix straddled the excesses of the swinging jazz era and the innocence of cinematic cartoons with consummate ease. Loved for more than 75 years, Felix The Cat is a classic in the truest sense of the word and for every episode that contains an eye-popping narrative audacity there is another that depicts the equally startling simplistic innocence of the age in which Felix ruled.

The Best Of The Next:
International Student Animation Festival
Kicking off with the Australian Student Panorama, this series of four short programs takes an up-close look at the incredibly eclectic and often anarchically vibrant world of student animation. With graduate reels from more than 60 of the world’s leading schools as well as a treasure trove of individually submitted 1st films to choose from, this is your up-to-date snapshot at what the next generation of animators is doing. Priced at just $5 per screening, this whole mini-festival can be taken in in a single night - plus there’s the Animated Music Video Competition playing in the MIAF Club in between and after the screenings.

SIGGRAPH Wrap-Up
SIGGRAPH is without doubt one of the most important gathering points for the international digerati. Whether it is short films, ads, software demo reels, trailers or music videos, SIGGRAPH exists to bring the finest digital animators and their work together. This year, we bring the very best works from SIGGRAPH Asia and the ‘mainland’ USA SIGGRAPH (held in New Orleans) to the big screen.

International Panorama Series
MIAF now receives more than 2000 entries each year and there are a lot of fantastic films that for one reason or another don’t make it past the consensus of the jury and into competition. A collection of these ‘must-see’ films get their big screen opportunity in our Panorama series. This year, three short programs lined up in quick succession on a single night will feature the best of these gems – a ‘festival within a festival’.

Animated Music Video Competition
Music videos have long made great use of animation and special effects but even the best of these don’t always play that well embedded in regular competition programs. So we have created a separate collection and put it on loop in the Festival Club – and it’s FREE!!

Careers In Animation Forum
A MIAF institution presented by Holmesglen, this FREE forum puts the audience in touch with a panel of people working in the real-world animation industry. They talk about what it takes to break into the industry, what it’s like once you’ve broken in, what sort of skills the industry is demanding and much, much more.

Kids Program – JUST $5
A program of extra-special films selected for our most extra-special audience – plus whichever grown-ups they want to bring along. Best suited for ages 4-7 years, these films bring the wonder of animation onto the big screen. They’re entertaining, thought provoking, colourful and enchanting – without a toy ad in sight!

Australian Panorama + Meet The Filmmakers Forum
One of our most popular and important programs. Showcasing Australian animation is what MIAF loves to do best and, as a result, it’s this program that we tour nationally and internationally. The program will feature a collection of the best, recently released Australian animated shorts and will present local work in all of its diverse glory. Immediately after the screening in cinema, you'll have an opportunity to be introduced to the filmmakers who created some of the works in the Australian Panorama (as well as other Australian films spread throughout the festival), ask them about their work and join in a discussion about animating in this wide, brown land.

Late Night Bizarre
When your mailbag fills with more than 2000 short animated films, as ours does each year, there’s going to be some pretty ‘wrong’ moments. This MIAF favourite brings together a collection of the strangest, most mind-expanding indescribables from that mailbag and puts them up on the big screen where we can all have a good look at them. Some are fall-over funny, some are outlandishly odd, some are just impenetrably imponderable. Together, they are Late Night Bizarre. Buckle up Spanky!

PLUS…….

There’s a lot of other stuff we’re working on RIGHT NOW but just can’t quite put on the website yet – even though we really, really want to.

So stay in the loop…..

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