Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 28, 2009. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
With around 1,800 submissions in the competition categories, the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film has recorded an increase of around 200 titles over the previous year for its current 16th edition (May 5–10, 2009). They include the Japanese animated short-film Oscar winner “La Maison en Petits Cubes.” Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States have entered the most productions in the race for awards.
“La Maison en Petits Cubes,” which received an Academy Award (“Oscar”) for Best Animated Short Film from the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on February 22, is scheduled for the International Competition at the 2009 Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film. The twelve-minute film by Japan’s Kunio Kato uses striking images to tell the story of an old man who builds his “block” house ever higher because of rising water levels. But fundamentally, he is fleeing from his memories.
A total of around 1,800 films (previous year: around 1,600) were submitted to the competition categories International Competition, Young Animation, Tricks for Kids, Animated Series, AniMovie and Under Commission for the upcoming 16th edition of the Stuttgart festival. The respective preselection juries chose 245 titles, which will be shown in the Baden-Württemberg state capital from May 5. The majority of submitted titles come, in descending order, from Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Russia and Australia. But nations such as Iceland, Cuba and Nepal, which appear only sporadically on the animation agenda, have also submitted films this time.
Cooperation with fmx/09 and Kreativraum Stuttgart
This year, the 16th Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film will take place from May 5 to 10 on exactly the same dates as its long-standing partner event FMX (www.fmx.de). For the cooperation with fmx/09, currently billed as the 14th International Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Digital Media, this means twice the animation enjoyment and twice as many creative guests from the animation scene. At the same time, the city of Stuttgart, the Stuttgart region and MFG Medienentwicklung Baden-Württemberg will present their “Kreativraum Stuttgart” media week in early May, with events for the creative industries including the European Creativity Dialogue and the “Pop-Open 2009” music trade show organized by Popbüros Baden-Württemberg.
