The fourth edition of Cartoon Springboard will take place in Valenciennes, France, from 4 to 6 December 2018. It will be an excellent opportunity for the young talents of European animation schools to improve their animation project by pitching it in front of a panel of experts from the audiovisual world.

Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales - the company behind the international success of such films as Grimur Hakonarsson’s Rams, Carla Simon’s Summer 1993, Hlynur Palmason’s Winter Brothers and Tomasz Wasilewski’s United States of Love - starts an annual talent initiative in its home town. The event will introduce talents from Poland and abroad to a leading film executives.

PRAGUE: Winter Flies by Olmo Omerzu has been voted by the members of the Czech Film and Television Academy (CFTA) as Czech Republic’s official entry for the US Academy Awards in the Foreign Language Film category.

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (aka PÖFF) has been appointed as a consulting organisation for the 12th Asia Pacific Screen Awards to suggest nominees for the best Asian screen talents and films. 

The Asia Pacific Screen Awards appoints an international selection committee to choose around 40 nominees from the presented candidates. The selected films and filmmakers will be presented as official nominees during the award ceremony that will take place on on 29th of November, 2018. 

PÖFF is the only consulting member that is not geographically located in Asia or the Pacific. The other consulting members are Jocelyne Saab (Lebanon), Jeannette Paulson Hereniko (Pacific), Aijaz Gul (Pacific).

On the selection, Tiina Lokk, director of PÖFF said ‘We are extremely honored to represent the European perspective on Asian and Pacific cinema. Asian films have been incredibly successful at Black Nights throughout the years. Eight of the festival’s 14 Grand Prixs have gone to films from the region. Last year alone the best film in our Official Selection, Night Accident (2017) was made in Kyrgyzstan, while the best director award went to South Korea’s Ju-hyoung Lee for Excavator (2017). We hope that this will further our ties with the region, its industry and their cinematic output, which our audiences, juries and programmers alike have come to admire.’

About APSA
The Asia Pacific Screen Awards, based in Brisbane, Australia, honours cinematic excellence from 70 countries and areas in the region, and recognises filmmaking that best reflects its cultural origins. APSA is an international cultural programme supported by Brisbane City Council and managed by Brisbane Marketing, and is endorsed by foundation partners UNESCO and FIAPF-International Federation of Film Producers Associations. The award ceremony is an exclusive presentation unique to Brisbane and is streamed globally via live webcast.

During its first decade, APSA has seen more than 2500 films in competition. In 2017, the 41 nominated films represented the stories of 25 countries and areas in the Asia Pacific region.

The European VoD Meetings took place from 3 to 6 September in Venice. It was the 1st edition of a necessary and much-awaited professional training course dedicated to European Cinema VoD platforms, distributors and aggregators, as well as tech providers and right holders interested in the digital distribution of their catalogue.

The European VoD Meetings were organized by EuroVoD, in partnership with the International Venice Film Festival and Venice Production Bridge, gathering 48 participants from 35 different companies, including 24 VoD platforms from 18 European countries.

The European VOD Meetings were a tremendous opportunity for the European network of EuroVoD members and a large number of companies working in the VoD sector, to share useful and constructive moments of benchmarking and networking.

The workshops on technology, digital marketing, audience development and branding, as well as the conferences on online piracy, heritage films and European policies regarding VoD provided a platform for all – on the emblematic and unique island of San Servolo - to build together a decisive segment of tomorrow’s audiovisual sector.

Under the presidency of Jean-Yves Bloch and management of Silvia Cibien, the expert guests invited to the debates were Cristian Mungiu, Nicola Mazzanti, Cristian Grece from the European Audiovisual Observatory, Reiner Rother (Deutsche Kinemathek), Wendy Bernfeld (Rights Stuff), Chris Le Maitre (Audio-Visual Antipiracy Alliance), Thierry Chevillard (Blue Efficience), Marzena Rembowki (Netflix), Gabriele Bertolli (European Commission, Creative Europe), Laetitia Facon (CNC), Christine Eloy (Europa Distribution), Gianluca. Guzzo (MyMovies), Nikolaj Mathies Knudsen (Gruvi), Jaume Ripoll (Filmin), and were moderated by Michael Gubbins. The VoD Meetings also provided the opportunity to bring together the technical directors of UniversCiné, Kinow, EYZ Media, Filmdoo & Fassoo, thus allowing identifying the best practises and accurately analysing the key challenges of the sector.

EuroVoD will continue these discussions in Berlin, from 6 to 9 February, with, we strongly hope, just as much interest from the participants and the industry.

Applications for the second module of this 1st edition are already open online, on the EuroVoD website, until December 10th.

Three masterclasses, three 3-day workshops, pitching for stop motion shorts with 15 projects in the final, numerous presentations, LAIKA recruitment, animation breakfasts with special guests, and one-to-one meetings will take place during the 3^rd edition of ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum in Lodz (Poland, October 8-13, 2018). 

For almost one week Lodz, the third most populous Polish city, will become a capital of stop motion animation. Film producers, distributors, representatives of TV broadcasters and VOD platforms, animators and other guests from around the global animation industry invited to take part in ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum 2018 will share their knowledge with those who just take their first steps in the animation world.

ANIMARKT 2018 programme includes events open to public, as well as workshops and meetings available only for those selected in the recruitment process. The admission to ANIMARKT is free, however the registration is required. It can be done by visiting the event’s website: www.en.animarkt.pl – the Programme 2018 section. 

ANIMARKT 2018 highlights 

• Angela Poschet Masterclass “How to plan and schedule stop motion production to not lose money and do it successfully.” It will be a look behind the scenes of “Isle of Dogs” from the Production Supervisor point of view. Angela will talk about her work, involvement and responsibility: planning and monitoring the shooting timeline and the set and puppet fabrication progress during the whole production.

Angela Poschet is an award-winning Line Producer, Production Supervisor, Manager, Consultant for animation productions in Europe. Her credits include numerous distinctive and commercially successful film and television projects. She was the Production Supervisor on Wes Anderson latest stop motion movie “Isle of Dogs” and Tim Burton’s Oscar nominated “Frankenweenie”.

• Alvaro Ceppi Masterclass "Paper Port: development and production of a Latin American paper-motion series.” Alvaro will go through the whole process of the show, a hybrid papercraft stop motion/2D TV series from Chile, from concept-story development to its production.

Alvaro Ceppi is a creative director, producer and partner of Zumbastico Studios (www.zumbastico.com). Among his work are the animation series “Horacio & The Plasticines”, “Zumbastico Fantastico” (first original Latin American series premiered by Cartoon Network) and the hybrid stop-motion show "Paper Port", now on its 2nd season. He has also directed and produced several short films, documentaries, music videos and commercials.

During the Masterclass, Alvaro will be supported by Carlos Bleycher, Head of Story & Script of “Paper Port” series. 

• Barry JC Purves Masterclass “Animation - a celebration of artifice.” Barry will look at what animation is, and how an awareness of the techniques and the tricks and the process are all part of the enjoyment of animation. Barry will also look at how this awareness of the artifice is shared by other arts such as theatre, opera and dance.

Barry JC Purves has been involved with stop motion animation for forty years now, on series as “Wind in the Willows” and most recently, “Twirlywoos”, as well as his own award winning darker, adult short films, such as “Next”, “Screen Play”, “Rigoletto”, “Achilles”, “Plume” and “Tchaikovsky”. Along the way, Barry was involved with “King Kong” and “Mars Attacks!”. Barry has written three books on animation, and teaches around the world. He also directs and designs for the theatre, and is currently involved with a play called “Playhouse Creatures” and a play about the Brontes.

• ANIMARKT TALKS – one-day conference with presentations about presence of stop motion animation in commercials and video games. Detailed programme and keynote speakers of this event will be revealed soon.

ANIMARKT 2018 novelties 

• LAIKA recruitment – the one and only meeting in Central and Eastern Europe, during which Anna Kvorning from LAIKA will recruit animators and costume fabricators to work in the studio in Portland, US. Anna Kvorning oversees talent acquisitions at LAIKA and has been with the studio for 5 years during the productions of “Boxtrolls”, “Kubo and the Two Strings” and “Missing Link”. 

• Animation breakfast: Distribution and promotion of short films – Laure Goasguen from MIYU Distribution will share her experience on working with such titles as Oscar-nominated “Negative Space” (dir. Ru Kuwahata, Max Porter) and “Garden Party” (dir. Florian Babikian, Victor Caire, Vincent Bayoux, Lucas Navarro, Gabriel Grapperon, Théophile Dufresne). 

• Animation breakfast: Funds, regional organizations, and animation. Meeting co-organized by Lodz Film Commission, an organization providing comprehensive and professional assistance to producers of feature, documentary, and animated films, will be a chance to gain knowledge of different ways of receiving financial and organizational support.

• MOMAKIN agency consultations – MOMAKIN agency offers to liaison with talented artists and service providing companies working in animation industry, including animators, set designers, character designers, sculptors, model makers, puppet makers, post-production specialists and other crew members. It represents crew members who underpinned artistic successes of numerous international productions, including animated shorts, children’s series – both animated and documentaries. Consultations at ANIMARKT 2018 are aimed at producers looking for a film crew, as well as at professionals seeking for new projects.

 ANIMARKT 2018 supports new talents 

Introduced last year, ANIMARKT Pitching turned out to be a great success. Its winner, Martin Smatana, thanks to the received award was able to complete his short “The Kite”. A compilation of some scenes from this stop motion animation will be shown during the event.

At this year’s ANIMARKT Pitching representatives of the 15 projects selected for the pitching will take part in the training sessions with tutors experienced in script writing and public speaking: Wim Vanacker and Nancy Denney-Phelps. Then, the selected projects will be presented on October 11th, 2018 in front of the Jury and the audience. Pitching awards include contribution in-kind sponsored by the Audiovisual Technology Center (CeTA) with a value of PLN 60.000 (c.a. $16,000) and PLN 40.000 (c.a. $10,600), and prizes sponsored by Dragonframe, DitoGear, Playade Sound Studio, FestivalWhizz, Ale kino+, CITIA. 

To help new talents to improve their skills in creating stop motion animation, three 3-day workshops will take place at ANIMARKT 2018. Steven De Beul and Ben Tesseur from the successful Beast Animation studio will lead “Directing stop motion animation” workshop. Carlos Bleycher, a scriptwriter, content consultant and story editor specialized in animation and childrens’ oriented content, will give theoretical and practical examples how to develop characters of TV series that fit organically into the story (“Character development and storytelling” workshop). And for the second year running, Tim Allen will supervise a group of stop motion animators during his intense “Character animation” workshop.

ANIMARKT 2018 – networking opportunities

Networking plays a key role at ANIMARKT. To help people to get to know each other and start collaboration, this year a special Matchmaker tool will be introduced. All registered participants of ANIMARKT will gain the access to Matchmaker website with the profiles of all people taking part in the event. It will help in setting the one-on-one meetings and finding future collaborator.

ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum grows and this year all of its events will take place in EC1 Lodz complex, located in the revitalised buildings of the power plant which commenced generating and transferring power in 1907. It served as the main heat and power plant for the residents of Łódź until 2000. Currently EC1 Lodz – City of Culture is a space open for various cultural and artistic activities. It became the home of the National Centre for Film Culture, the Łódź Film Commission and the Centre for Comics and Interactive Narration.

For details on the full programme and to register for the ANIMARKT 2018 event, visit website: www.en.animarkt.pl.

Who stands behind ANIMARKT? 

The organizer of ANIMARKT is MOMAKIN (www.momakin.pl) – a multi-tasking unit working for popularizing and propagating animation and supporting creators in Poland and in international arenas.

The Main Partners of the event are: EC1 Łódź – City of Culture and Lodz Film Commission. The partners of ANIMARKT also include: Audiovisual Technology Center (CeTA) from Wroclaw which is also the founder of the awards for pitching winners, ASAF (Czech Republic), Mozinet (Hungary), Fest Anča International Animation Festival (Slovakia), Dragonframe, DitoGear, FestivalWhizz, Mlodzi w Lodzi, Playade Sound, CITIA, Ale kino+, Boutique Hotel’s, SPPA – Polish Animation Producers Association, SFP – Polish Filmmakers Association. ANIMARKT is partially funded by the International Visegrad Fund, Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and co-financed by the Polish Film Institute.

TRIESTE: The upcoming edition of When East Meet West (WEMW, 20-22 January 2019) will launch a new East & West double focus and will bring together over 450 film professionals from more than 35 countries and, in particular, from the 2019 spotlight regions: Central Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine) and Benelux.