AniMazSpot Welcomes Kaj Pindal
Animation Spotlight is delighted to announce that Kaj Pindal (Denmark/Canada) and Cinzia Bottini (Italy/Singapore) have recently joined the AniMazSpot international jury panel. Many people think of AniMazSpot as simply an annual animation festival, but actually at its core is a non profit organization with a mandate to support and promote animated shorts filmmakers.
The most important success of this mandate has been their unique panel of animation experts, who not only score each short, but give the filmmakers comments and advise. Entrants consistently tell us it’s what they appreciate most about AniMazSpot, now in its fourth year. Many filmmakers have taken advantage of the panel’s ideas to apply to their next short, and every new short of theirs that have been entered into the next festival have been much better, thanks to the AniMazSpot panel.
Pindal and Bottini join a distinguished group, which this year includes; Kine Aune (Norway), Frank Mouris (New York), Paul Dopff (France), Weiling Guo (China), Bill Matthews (California), Dr. Jose Garcia Moreno (Mexico), Yaprak Morali (Turkey), Larry Loc (California), Malcolm Turner (Australia), Jim Keeshen (California), Sharon Wu (Taiwan), Jack Bosson (California), and Monique Renault (Netherlands). Visit www.animazspot.com, click “entries”, then, “intern’l panel” to see other panel members who have come and gone over these first four year, and often return once again. They seem to enjoy it as much as the entrants.
AniMazSpot is particularly pleased with the addition of the internationally revered Kaj Pindal, who has now added an Emmy to his long list of International awards, for Peep and the Big Wide World, a half-hour animated children’s show, featuring the characters of Peep, Chirp and Quack, which introduces pre-schoolers to a range of science topics.
Kaj Pindal is a long-time professor of classical animation at Sheridan College, but the origins of Peep pre-date his 1970 beginnings at Sheridan, back to Pindal’s long creative career at the National Film Board of Canada. Pindal actually began his animation careen in his native Denmark, during the Second World War. His international acclaim began when he moved to Canada, and started woking with the NFB in 1957, animating, designing and directing shorts such as; People by the Billions, I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, the City: Osaka, and his Oscar nominated, What On Earth, among countless other animation gems.
Cinzia Bottini, on the other hand, is a relative newcomer, in comparison, to animation. She comes to AniMazSpot through the recommendation of Giannalberto Bendazzi, the historian and author of the soon to be republished version of his highly popular tomb, Cartoon, the encyclopedia of world animation.
Bendazzi was Bottini’s MA thesis advisor at the University of Milan, which she followed up by working with Bendazzi on his upcoming revision of Cartoons. In August she moves to Singapore to continue her studies in animation and work on her Ph.D. at the Nanyang Technological University, where a number of AniMazSpot entries have come from. So, AniMazSpot welcomes Kaj Pindal and Cinzia Bottini to continue our mission to advise and support animation shorts filmmakers from around the world.
With this in mind, AniMazSpot has invited a number of top animation professionals to participate in the celebration of UPA Pictures, the little studio that revolutionize the style and content of animated shorts back in the 50s. Their award winning shorts continue to inspire several generations of animation filmmakers. “Magoo at the Alex” is the event, which will take place on September 15, as part of the AniMazSpot 2012 festival, from September 10 to 16. The evening event will screen all 15 of UPA’s Oscar nominated and winning shorts, recently restored by Sony Pictures. Check www.animazspot.com, click “events” for schedules, ticket sales, and studio tours.
