Thank you all for a wonderful festival! See you again 2013!

Winners of the International short film competition:

Grand Prix: "Luminaris" by Juan Pablo Zaramella (Argentina)
Motivation: Reminding us of the dark ages of animation, this film shines a light on the future.

Best design: "The Bellies" by Phillipe Grammaticopoulos ( France)
Motivation: Esthetics, perfectly suited to the surrealistic storytelling

Best animation: " Loom" by Ilja Brunck ( Germany)
Motivation: The award for best Animation goes to " Loom" for its beautifully crafted destruction of animated life.

The Jury's special price: "Tides to and fro" by Ivan Maximov ( Russia)
Motivation: for creating this delightful universe of its own, bound by the rythm of its tides.

The Jury's special mention: "Vicenta" by Sam Ort (Spain)
Motivation: The jury created a special mention for Vicenta, a film which dares to go beyond Nick Park

Audience price: Tord och Tord by Niki Lindroth von Bahr ( Sweden)

Winners of the young film competition:

The price in memory of Stig Lasseby: "God is dead" by Jonathan Madeland

Audience price: "God is dead" by Jonathan Madeland

Films selected of the competitions

We have now published a list of selected films for the competition programs. We received 216 films from 30 different countries. 34 were selected for the international competition.

For the youth competition program, 11 films were selected, competing for a price in the memory of Stig Lasseby.

Competition

The Great Bear

A new Danish film will be screened friday 21:00.

The Great Bear

Copenhagen Bombay

Sarita Christensen, producer and one of the founders of the Danish production company Copenhagen Bombay will be at the festival. She will present parts of Copenhagen Bombays production and speek about films she has produces.

http://www.copenhagenbombay.com/ Copenhagen Bombay

Sweedbanks aardman animations for the commercial program

http://www.aardman.com/ Swedbanks animated commercials

How to make something hard even harder

In 2008 Anders Gustafsson and Erik Zaring quit their jobs to create their own game, The Dream Machine. They created the graphics by hand with materials such as clay and cardboard. We'll take a look behind the scene and see why you'd want to take the hand-made approach.

More info about The Dream Machine: http://www.thedreammachine.se/

The Dream Machine - Stop-motion animated game

Hagelbäck joins the jury

Johan Hagelbäck will be in the jury this year together with Paul Driessen. Hagelbäck has worked in the animation profession since the early 70's and have an impressing filmography. Mostly recognized for his animations with sour milk and the films about Charles Nonsens, but it's only a small fraction of what he's done. He will present a program at the festival with some of his work.

More info about Hagelbäck can be seen here: http://www.sfi.se/en-GB/Swedish-film-database/Item/?ItemId=161595&type=PERSON

Sour milk animation by Johan Hagelbäck

Paul Dreissen comes to Eksjö

The legendary Dutch animator Paul Dreissen will come to Eksjö Animation Festival. Mr. Dreissen will be chairman of the jury. He will also present a program with a selection of his extensive list of films and tell us more about them. More details about the films will come later. Check out Paul Dreissen's website:
http://pdriessen.com/index.html

Image from the film 'On Land, at Sea & in the Air' made 1980.

About the festival

Between September 22 - 24 2011, Eksjö will for the fifth time become the center of animated films in Sweden. Just like the previous years the animated films are the main focus at the festival. Our goal is to show innovative animations from all over the world. Eksjö Animation Festival 2011 is now open for entries. You can download entry forms and regulations. The festival is arranged by the organization Eksjö Animation, who also produces animated films and run animation related projects.

Festival program

The festival program is not set yet. However we will show commercials, music videos, short films and some feature length films. Eksjö animation will screen their latest productions like the sex education film Sex på kartan (Sex on the map) and Dramat på tuvan (The drama at Tuvan) made by elders in Eksjö.

One of the most gorgeous films last year, The Illusionist will be screened, nominated for an Oscar and made by the creators of The Triplets of Belleville.

This years Alma price winner Shaun Tan have directed and made the design for the animated film The lost thing, also nominated for an Oscar 2011. http://www.alma.se/en

The Lost Things

We have some really interesting names coming up as guest for the festival. More info will be published as soon as its set. Book animation festival in Eksjö 22-24 September, there will be lots of good movies to be seen!

Animated Greetings
Pär Berg
festival boss