NFB’s Hothouse

Every year, for the past four years, the National Film Board of Canada has been running a neat program called Hothouse. The idea is simple: bring together a group of emerging artists from various disciplines and help each of them produce an animated short in 12 weeks. It’s kind of like a boot camp for cartoonists. The latest edition of Hothouse is just getting underway and eight artists—six Canadians and two Brazilians—will each have completed a film by the end of May. Their ‘mentoring director’ is Torill Kove, whose NFB short The Danish Poet won the animated short Oscar last month. The Hothouse website includes profiles of the filmmakers and a video podcast documenting each filmmaker’s experience. The completed Hothouse shorts from the past three editions can all be seen here.