Indie British animator Phil Mulloy’s Dead But Not Buried won the Best Animated Feature Award at the 2011 Ottawa International Animation Festival this weekend. The fact that Mulloy also took the same prize last year at the fest for the film’s prequel Goodbye Mister Christie must set some sort of impressive record in the animation festival scene. Nevertheless, commercial moviegoers may not quite know what to make of Mulloy’s bizarre, dark humor and primitive style of animation.
The Nelvana Independent Animation Grand Prize went to Stephen Irwin’s disturbing short Moxie, which features a pyromaniac bear who misses his mother. Pjotr Sapegin’s haunting and memorable puppet short The Last Norwegian Troll, which is narrated by the great Max von Sydow, also received an honorable mention.
The OIAF Award for Best Narrative Short went to Frederick Tremblay’s Blanche Fraise, a puppet-animated work about a couple who try to survive in a dying forest.
Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby, who won an Oscar or Best Animated Short for When the Day Breaks in 2000, were the recipients of the Canadian Film Institute’s Best Canadian Animation award for their film Wild Life, the story of a British aristocrat moving to 19th Century Alberta.
Here are the rest of the winners:
- Ben Cady’s The Goat and the Well (The NFB’s People’s Choice Award, and Undergrad Award)
- Bowon Kim, E-sun Jung and Dasom Yoon’s I’m Sorry (Best High School Animation Award)
- Eamonn O’Neill’s I’m Fine, Thanks (Best Graduate Animation)
- Jason Carpenter’s The Renter (Disney Award for Best Student Animation)
- Noriko Okaku’s Joyz’ Electropia (Best Music Video)
- Andrea Dorfman’s Equality Effect (Best Promotional Animation)
- Adam Foulkes & Alan Smith’s Intel Ad: The Chase (Best Commissioned Animation)
- The Bezalel Academy of Art & Design (Best Animation School Promo Reel)
- Richard Negre’s One Second Per Day (Best Abstract/Experimental Animation)
- Jesus Perez and Elizabeth Huettermann’s Der Gross Bruder: The Older Brother (Best Children’s Animation)
- Johannes Weiland & Klaus Morschheuser’s Das Bild der Prinzessin (Princess’ Painting) (Best TV For Kids Award)
- Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time: It Came From the Nightosphere (Honorable Mention: Kids TV Award)
Mati Kutt, Jan Pinkava, Aaron Augenblick were the jurors for the shorts and commissioned projects, while Anne Brotot, Biljana Labovic and Claude Cloutier judged the feature category. Here’s a big huzzah to Chris Robinson and the rest of his team for putting together another fantastic event, packed with eclectic programs and artistic ventures from all over the globe.
For more info, visit www.animationfestival.ca
