(Source: The Advocate)
Red Stick hopes to become Oscar qualifier for animation
The Red Stick International Animation Festival has entered its sixth year and founder Stacey Simmons said the festival continues to evolve and has become more focused on films.
Red Stick, sponsored by LSU in partnership with the Louisiana Technology Park, the Mayor-President’s Office, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and Baton Rouge Area Digital Industries Consortium, will run Nov. 10-13 in downtown Baton Rouge at the Shaw Center for the Arts and several other downtown locations.
A major part of the festival’s evolution, Simmons said, is its pending application to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to become an Oscar qualifier.
If it gets the designation, which wouldn’t happen until next year, any animated film screened at the festival would be eligible to be considered for Oscar contention.
Unlike feature films, which have to run for at least a week in New York or Los Angeles during the calendar year to be considered for nomination, animated films qualify by screening at certain film festivals around the world — Toronto, Venice, Sundance and Tribeca, for example.
If Red Stick is accepted, it would be the first animation festival to become an Oscar qualifier and one of only about 10 film festivals in the U.S.
But Simmons said there would be other benefits, beyond the prestige.
“It’s significant because it means that we become a more filmmaker-driven festival. It’s more likely that producers will come here to look at short films that might have burgeoning talent that they might want to see more of. It changes how we see ourselves and our participation in the global entertainment market.”
Simmons said that the application, and the evolution of the festival in general, has led to a significant change in the format this year: there are no workshops.
Workshops, along with lectures, made up the educational component of the festival.
The lectures are still there, but Simmons said Red Stick didn’t have the resources to do both the workshops and expose people to more and better animated films.
Cutting the workshops, she said, wasn’t an easy decision “because it’s something that’s been a staple of what we’ve been doing.” But, she added, “we want to play in the same sandbox as other festivals ….”
“Looking at what the academy looks for has shifted our focus a little bit,” she explained. “We’ve really changed our focus to be more filmmaker-centered. Instead of focusing on ways to bring the process to people, we’re bringing filmmakers to people.”
This year’s festival offers four “special” screenings:
--“Tangled,” a new take on the classic tale of Rapunzel. Red Stick will be the first to prescreen the Disney film, Simmons said. There have been test screenings, but this will be the first time it will be screened for a general audience. An associate producer on the project will address the group.
--“Howl,” an independent film about the obscenity trial of Allen Ginsburg in which the titular poem is animated. The supervising animator will be there to talk about the film. Simmons noted the film, rated NC-17, is not for children, but “it’s still pretty relevant and I think people will be surprised by it.”
--“My Dog Tulip,” an independent film about a lonely, frustrated man who finds his life changed after he gets a dog. The film, which includes one of Vanessa Redgrave’s last performances, features animation hand-drawn on an electronic tablet.
--“Waking Sleeping Beauty,” which Simmons said has generated some Oscar talk, looks at the difficulties of making some of the movies that have become iconic Disney films. Simmons said the documentary looks at the cultural relevance of several Disney movies that almost didn’t make it through the system. A producer will be on hand at the screening.
A full list of lectures and other films that will be screened can be found at http://www.redstickfestival.org.
Another new element will be a small comic book convention, which was added after organizers found the two largest pop culture-focused conventions in the country are comic conventions — San Diego’s ComiCon and another in New York.
Fandemonium will include a screening of a science fiction film that has not yet found a distributor with the film’s star, Robert Picardo, of “Star Trek: Voyager,” in attendance to sign autographs.
There will be a room with merchandise and the talks scheduled will be geared toward science, science fiction and pop culture.
A second new event will be a performance of “Video Games Live,” the popular, interactive touring concert at 7 p.m. Nov. 13. The concert will feature composer Tommy Tallarico. The Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra and Chorus will perform alongside game footage synchronized to music and lights. Simmons said she was thrilled to get the concert because it shows the cultural impact of video games outside of just playing them.
“It demonstrates all this effort and that they’re real art, and real jobs are created around this stuff,” she said.
Simmons said the festival continues to generate interest. She said more school groups than ever applied to attend this year (from as far away as Oklahoma), and the 2,000 students were more than the festival could accommodate.
As for its mission to help expose opportunities in the field of digital media, she said, “I think it’s really telling that people are starting to sit up and take notice.
People are starting to look around at the change that’s happening in our cultures — who still has a job and who can get a job.
College and high school kids are looking at this and saying, ‘I want to do this.’”
She said the city and state see the festival as a piece of a broader puzzle that includes the LSU Center for Computation and Technology; the Avatar program, which allows students to minor in digital media; and the Electronic Arts video game-testing center here.
“And I think the fact that we’re able to get the attention of the studios is a good indicator that we’re on the right track,” she added.
Simmons noted there have been murmurs of turning the festival into two concurrent festivals next year, one on animation and another on films.
Simmons said the ticketing system is a little different for the festival this year, with a Red Pass now costing $5, which gets you access to regular and competition screenings and Cartoonapalooza. The four “special” screenings are an additional $5.
This year, the Princess Ball for young girls will be held the previous Saturday, while the VIP dinner will offer tickets to the general public. There will be a pub crawl and a ghost hunt overnight at the Old State Capitol.
Director Dean Wellins will be there to talk about “Tick Tock Tale,” a new Disney short film.
The festival will present a lifetime career achievement award to animator Priscillano “Pres” Romanillos, the Disney animator who worked on the title character of Pocahontas and supervised Shan-Yu, the leader of the Huns in “Mulan” for Disney before working at DreamWorks. Romanillos, who died of leukemia at age 47 in July, did his last work for Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog,” and DreamWorks’ “Shrek Forever After.”
The festival got 437 films submitted from around the world for its Best of the Fest film competition, which consists of the categories: animated short films by students; animated short films by professionals; experimental/visual music animation by students; experimental/visual music animation by professionals; scientific visualization; commercials; game animation; animation for young audiences, and music video.
It will give an award for the best film overall, as well as awards in partnership with the 2010 Sci-An Awards, which honor entries for scientifically accurate 2-D and 3-D animation created to enhance the understanding of science.
Publish Date:
11-01-2010
