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Texture has a special role in the animated short film Oh Willy..., which was selected to compete at the Clermont-Ferrand international short film festival in January. The puppets and sets are made of wool, felt and other fabrics, from fine llama fleece to old couch stuffing. This gives the film a soft, tactile atmosphere that complements its strange and touching story.
Fifty-something Willy, plump and ill-at-ease, returns to the naturist community where he grew up to visit his dying mother. This brings back memories, not all of them pleasant, which build into an emotional crisis when his mother finally passes away. Distraught, he wanders in the woods at night, coming face to face with his fears, but also finding an unusual source of comfort. (trailer)
Bullhead and A Cat in Paris pick up Oscar nominations
Michaël R Roskam’s feature film debut Bullhead, representing Belgium at the Oscars, is among the five films nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Academy Award. Bullhead is Belgium’s sixth Oscar nomination in this category. Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s A Cat in Paris also grabbed a nomination in the Best Animated Feature category. The winners of the 84th Academy Awards will be announced in Hollywood on 26 February.
Bullhead is an emotionally driven tale of revenge, redemption and fate set against the backdrop of the Belgian bovine growth hormone mafia. The story starts with young cattle farmer Jacky (Matthias Schoenaerts) who is approached by an unscrupulous veterinarian to make a shady deal with a notorious beef trader. But the assassination of a federal policeman and an unexpected confrontation with a mysterious secret from Jacky’s past set in motion a chain of events with far-reaching consequences.
Production houses continue quality Animation
The Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) confirmed support for eight animation projects in its recent subsidy round. The list might not be endless, the projects are promising with several new titles from production outfit Lunanime, known for their work on A Cat in Paris, and a big-budget sequel to Sammy’s Adventures by nWave.
Kris Mergan and Geert Vandenbroele, who created the creative animated short Good News, are to receive funding to start producing their next animated short Diamond. Production outfit Lunanime can also start on two of its projects: Bram Mondy’s Rapsodie en rose and Rémi Vandenitte’s Betty Blues. Finally, Ben Stassen of nWave (Fly Me to the Moon) directs and produces the sequel to his animated b.o. hit Sammy’s Adventures: the Secret Passage, titled Sammy’s Adventures: Flight From Paradise.
Clermont-Ferrand selects shorts from Flanders
The Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (27 January-4 February) has selected Nicolas Provost’s Moving Stories, Michael Palmaers’s Nuru and Marc Roels and Emma de Swaef’s Oh Willy for its 34th edition. The minority co-production The Monster of Nix by Dutch artist Rosto also received a spot in the fest’s programme. According to the fest, ‘a selection for Clermont-Ferrand is participating in the biggest adventure a film can experience.’ The selections at the prestigious French short fest once again put shorts from Flanders in the international limelight.
Provost is now something of an old hand at Clermont-Ferrand after picking up a Special Jury Award for his short Plot Point in 2008. Last year, the festival even presented an overview of Provost’s major works and invited two of his shorts, Stardust and Storyteller, for competition.
VAF Wildcards 2011 announced
The Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) has once again awarded five promising graduation filmmakers with a VAF Wildcard. This year’s winners are Kenneth Mercken’s The Letter and Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah’s Brothers in the fiction category, Kenneth Michiels’s Twenty-One + Seven and Jeremy De Ryckere’s The Heir for Documentary and Boris Sverlow’sShattered Past for Animation.
The VAF Wildcards are aimed at giving young filmmaking talent a chance to embark on a first professional project by providing a (starting) budget of €40,000 or €60,000, plus a professional coach. Now in its seventh edition, the VAF Wildcards have quickly become the most important awards in Flanders.
Short Cinema celebrated at Leuven Short Fest
The 17th edition of the Leuven International Short Film Festival (3-10 December) again highlights talented short cinema from Flanders. With a strong Flemish short film competition, the VAF Wildcards and a number of professional activities, Leuven is for a short time the epicenter of short cinema in Flanders.
2011 has been a strong year for Flemish shorts with the Cannes Jury Award for Wannes Destoop’s Swimsuit 46 and the Grand Prize in Valladolid for Kevin Meul’s The Extraordinary Life of Rocky. Now the IKL fest has selected 20 short films from promising directors who may give us a new wave of international Awards in the future.
Screener.be VOD platform kicks off
Flanders Image has launched a new promotional VOD platform: screener.be. The launch coincides with the start of IDFA, the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam. Most of the record number of Flemish docs that are selected for this year’s festival are also available on the brand new VOD platform.
Screener.be allows professional users who are interested in acquiring for distribution or selecting material for festivals to screen audiovisual creations made in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium. In addition to documentaries, it also contains animation, fiction and experimental Filmlab fare in different lengths. The screener.be promotional platform enables users to watch films at their own convenience, when they want and how they want. All works can be streamed in high quality once users are logged in.
Cat nominated for Euro Awards, shortlisted for Oscars
Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli's animated feature A Cat In Paris has been nominated for the European Film Award for Best Animated Feature, it was announced by the European Film Academy at this year's Seville European Film Festival. Almost simultaneously, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confirmed that the film has also been shortlisted for the Animated Feature Film category at the 84th Academy Awards.
In A Cat in Paris, a cat leads a secret double life: It spends its days with Zoe, the daughter of a police chief, but by night accompanies a cat burglar on the rooftops of the city. One day, while Zoe's mother is investigating a series of night burglaries, a criminal kidnaps the little girl.
Klumpies ready to conquer the world
Animated series Klumpies, a co-production between Universal Music Belgium, Flemish kiddiecaster Ketnet and Ghent-based animation studio Creative Conspiracy, is launched at this year's Mipcom (3-6 October) in Cannes.
Klumpies, which is is targeted at four- to seven-year-olds, will broadcast on Ketnet and Club RTL in the French-speaking part of Belgium. The producers recently teamed up up with BBC Worldwide for international distribution. BBC Worldwide is introducing Klumpies in Cannes to several international TV-content buyers.
1st-day at Mipcom
Flanders-based production outfit 1st-day is to present two refreshing animation series at this year’s Mipcom (3-6 October). Chickentown introduces zINO the rooster and his pen of absolutely lunatic chickens, while Charly Vet tells the story of a young girl who's passionate about wildlife. 1st-day can be found at the Flanders (i) booth (20.14).
'One egg a day keeps the butcher away!’ is the tagline for Chickentown (39 x 8 min), the animated series co-produced by Leuven-based 1st-day. The brand-new series already appears to be an international success; last week Canal+ Poland purchased the show, joining such broadcasters as Canal+ France, RTBF, NDR, Disney Asia and Orange Cinema. Chickentown is directed and created by Niko Meulemans.
