Jury 2008

Georges Schwizgebel, born in 1944 in Reconvillier in the Bernese Jura. Paradoxically, it is the influence of his parents which, at the age of 15 and a half, leads him to start training in painting at the School of Fine Arts. He meets Daniel Suter at the School for Decorative Arts. They soon dream of producing cartoons in their future studio — GDS, named after their initials (Georges-Daniel-Schwizgebel/Suter). Both are employed in an advertising agency. Alongside this bread and butter work, Georges, Daniel and Claude (Luyet) undertake their first attempts at cartoons in an old watch-making studio. In 1970, an order for an animated part for two documentaries leads to the three apprentice animators turning self-employed. The team starts to produce credits for French-speaking
Swiss television. The Flight of Icarus (Le vol d'Icare) earns Schwizgebel a study prize and Perspectives a quality prize of sufficient importance to enable him to produce Off-side (Hors-jeu). His career as an independent film maker takes off. Films follow one after the other, recompensed, as do exhibitions. Georges Schwizgebel soon becomes one of the best known film makers in the world of animation, his personality is relayed by documentaries and tributes.
This well-rounded author of 15 short films has seen his work pick up prizes at Cannes, Annecy, Zagreb, Hiroshima, Stuttgart, Ottawa and Espinho. His films 78 R.P.M. (78 tours,1985) and The Ride to the Abyss (La course à l'abîme,1992) rank among the hundred most influential animated films on a list published by the Festival d'Annecy in 2006. The Man Without a Shadow (L'homme sans ombre, 2004), his first collaboration with the National Film Board, garnered 17 international awards. Though he first used rotoscoping, Schwizgebel later traded in this tool for a freer approach marked by the gestural application of colour and the frequent use of geometric shapes. In addition to his films, he has also created theatre sets, television graphics, designed murals and posters and participated in numerous art exhibitions.

More about the author at swissfilms.ch and in the monograph Des peintures animeés / Die laufenden Farbbilder / Animated paintings; Olivier Cotte, Editions Heuwinkel, 2004.

Regina Pessoa was born in Coimbra (Portugal) in 1969: "I lived in the countryside in a small village near Coimbra until I was 17 years-old. My entire universe was rural. We didn't have television, which was very boring... but in retrospect, thinking things over, maybe it saved me as we read and listened to our elders telling stories."
She graduated from Oporto School of Fine Arts. In 1992, she embarked on her career in animation film by working at Filmógrafo, where she worked on the animation of the films The Otlaws (Os Salteadores,1993), Fado Lusitano (1995) and Stowaway (Clandestino, 2000) by Abi Feijó and was also co-author of the films Vicious Cycle (Ciclo Vicioso, 1996) and Christmas Stars (Estrelas de Natal, 1998).
In 1999, she directed and animated her first independent film The Night (A Noite), using the technique of engraving on plaster plates. In 2005 she directed her second short animation film Tragic Story with Happy Ending (História trágica com final feliz), co-produced by the French studio Folimage, the Portuguese studio Ciclope Filmes and the National Film Board of Canada, and again employing an engraving method: "When I was a child, my uncle used to draw on the walls and doors of my grandmother's home with pieces of coal. Seeing him do this gave us a sense of freedom because we didn't have paper and pencils but we always had walls and doors - maybe this stayed with me unconsciously because now, much later, it's already the second film that I‘ve made in engraving technique."
These two films have since gone on to win a number of awards worldwide. Regina Pessoa is currently involved with the production of her new animation project Kali, the Little Vampire (Kali), again a Portuguese, Canadian and French co-production.

More about the author...

Giannalberto Bendazzi is a professor of History of Animation at the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy). He is a film critic and historian and has been studying animation since the age of 19 (today he is 62). His best known work is Cartoons, 100 Years of Cinema Animation, a world history of the medium that has been translated into various languages.  A good book is also Alexeieff — Itinerary of a Master (in English and French, 2001), which is devoted to the famous auteur of experimental short films.
In order to promote animation in every part of the planet, Giannalberto got involved in many more books, festivals, retrospectives, articles, essays, lectures, classes and so on. He puts it this way: "I don't love animation in a way a collector loves his stamps or a fan loves his football team. I admire this art that has always been underestimated and therefore deserves a special praise."

Jerzy Kucia was born in 1942 in Soltysy (Poland). A truly multi-faceted artist, he is variously, a director, scriptwriter, designer, animator and producer of animated films, a graphic artist and painter. From 1961 to 1967 Jerzy Kucia studied painting, graphic arts and animated film at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Professors WacÅ‚aw Taranczewski, Konrad Srzednicki, WÅ‚odzimierz Kunz. After graduation his artistic activities concentrated on printmaking and painting. He participated in over 150 exhibitions and received many awards. He also teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Professor Jerzy Kucia has been the head of the Animated Film Studio at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts since 1980. He has been invited to lecture in Vancouver, London, Munster, Ljubljana, Bombay, Lisbon etc. Since 1996, he has been running the annual International Krakow Animated Film Workshops organized for young artists from all over the world. 
"I arrived at animated films as a medium and a way of expressing myself quite accidentally. I never intended to be a filmmaker. At the urging of friends, I did some short exercises using animation techniques, and I found that, with the use of time and
movement, I could more easily express myself on contemporary matters, on the
people around me who were dealing with the same problems I was, on the psychologies of these people, and the painful issues of those times (the end of the 60's). Due to the difficulties in finding production opportunities for my film concepts, and the time-consuming and tiring procedure of making these films, I tried to give up working in this field, but the chance to create using movement and time had turned out to be decisive..." Jerzy Kucia

More on his life and work (in Polish language)...

Jelena Girlin: I was born on a very dark November evening of 1979, with the first snow. My motherland was the Soviet Union, but there is no such country any more.
I was always interested in film, and costumes. I wanted to be a fashion designer, but thank God I got involved in animation. I graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts at the end of June 2001, and a few weeks later I gave birth to my first child. I started working in animation during the 3rd year of my studies at the academy, under a strong influence of The Quay Brothers and Jan Švankmajer, and now I am working on my 5th production. But before this one, the first to come was Hair (Volosõ, 2000), then GUF - the cathedral of unborn souls (GUF - katedraal sündimata hingedele, 2001), The Table (Laud, 2003), and The Dress (Kleit, 2006). And now me, and my wonderful partner, and a really good friend Mari-Liis Bassovskaja are working on Oranus, which will be finished in 2009. It is impossible for two people to think in the same wide way, but here we are. I hope that the great people, who truly help us, will continue their good work, because without them, we can't make such films.