Video site Vimeo launches an awards show

When I posted Kirsten Lepore’s Bottle last week, I neglected to mention that the film is one of five animation finalists in the first-ever Vimeo Awards which take place on October 9 in New York City. The other nominees are Pixels by Patrick Jean, Something Left, Something Taken by Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata, Coalition of the Willing by Knife Party, and Between Bears by Eran Hilleli. There are also some animated films in the Experimental and Motion Graphics categories.

The eclectic group of nominees in the animation category is impressive, and made more notable by the fact that the nominees were chosen from the pool of films posted to the video hosting site. They strike me as being far more representative of the current state of short-form animation than this year’s Oscar nominees.

I won’t go so far as to say that the Academy chose poor films, but nominating four (for the most part) generic CG films and yet another Wallace & Gromit short hardly represents the breadth and diversity of today’s animation scene. It also does little to boost the public’s perception of what animation is capable of as a medium. Awards can’t be expected to always honor the best, simply because “best” is such a subjective concept, but they should at the very least make an effort to accurately represent the field they’re celebrating. The Vimeo Awards have done a good job of that in their inaugural edition.