Animation fest to liven up Athens in April
The European Animation Festival, or AniFest ’06 as this year’s event has been dubbed, will be staged in Athens between April 10 and 12 at the Apollon Filmcenter Cinemax (19 Stadiou St). The event’s aim is to facilitate exchanges between audiovisual artists from various parts of the world, while also showcasing domestic projects and offering support for the development of an independent non-commercial distribution network for animation projects. Preparing themselves for the European Animation Festival are a number of artists and experts from various cultural backgrounds. The event will feature tributes to Monique Renault, Vassilis Mazomenos, and Vouvoula Skoura. Also on the agenda are projections of some of Europe’s best examples of animated work in 2005, based on the results of the Cartoon d’Or awards. Films produced by students of the British School of Animation will also be shown at the Athens event. There will also be a special focus on young artists from Greece, Israel and the Netherlands. The three-day festival’s schedule will also include a seminar with participation by Greek and foreign artists who will collaborate with the Greek Scriptwriters’ Association on the topic of scripts in short animated films. The festival is being organized by the European Animation Center in conjunction with the General Secretariat for Youth, with additional support from various other local agencies, among them the Greek Film Center, Media Desk Hellas, the Audiovisual Media Institution, the Greek Directors’ Society, the Greek Scriptwriters’ Association, and the Panhellenic Film Critics’ Association.
