Animata News: news and updates about animation. Facts, artworks, previews or just rumors about any kind of animated production, from the “big screen” to the internet and beyond.
Lido di Venezia – The Cinit-Cineforum Italiano, in collaboration with the Italian Association of Journalists, organizes a vocational training course at the 72th Venice Film Festival. The course will take place on September 12, the last day of the Festival, at the Sala consigliare della Municipalità del Lido Pellestrina, via Sandro Gallo 32/a, from 9am to 1pm.
The course is especially dedicated to journalists who write about cinema and new media; it will focus on animation, new visual technologies and the web. The two invited speakers, Marco Bellano and Massimo Nardin, will provide a general summary of the most recent researches about the nature of animation, the technology and the future of cinema. More precisely, Prof. Bellano (adjunct professor of History of Animation at the University of Padova) will focus on the visual language and the definition of animation; he will as well introduce the website “Animata – Research and Information Network on Animation”. Prof. Nardin, who graduated in photography at the IED (European Design Institute) and is teacher of Theories and Technique of the Audiovisual Language, Screenwriting and Digital Set Construction at the LUMSA University, Rome, will discuss digital images, computer graphics in live films and the state of the art in this field.
Special guest of the course will be the artist and digital animator Nicola Pecora, author of the “Saurini” RAI TV series; he will show the audience how to construct a digital set.
“The collaboration with the journalists” – said Massimo Caminiti, president of the Cinit – “is essential to the main goal of our association: to help the audience achieve a better handle on the signs and meaning inherent to any kind of information, in order to avoid prejudices or manipulations. We commit to propose soon new vocational courses about cinema, visual communication and their meaning”.
Marco Vanelli, vice-president of the Cinit and editor in chief of the cinema journal “Cabiria – Studi di cinema”, will make the closing remarks to the course.
The journalists will receive course credits, assumed that they correctly register their participation in the course through the S.I.Ge.F. website.
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN FOR WORKSHOPS AND MASTER CLASSES
WORLD PREMIERE TALK ON DISNEY’S Big Hero 6
TURIN, ITALY – Attendees at Italy’s largest computer graphics conference to be held October 14-17 in beautiful Turin, Italy, can now register online at http://viewconference.it/ for the full conference, for inspiring and creative workshops led by award-winning professionals, and for practical master classes taught by expert users.
“I know from experience that the workshops and classes will fill up fast, so people should register as early as they can,” says Dr. Maria Elena Gutierrez, conference director. “We are fortunate to welcome back, by popular demand, the incredibly creative and two-time Annie nominee, Kris Pearn, co-director of the animated feature Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. Also, the brilliant Lucia Modesto, supervising character technical director at PDI/DreamWorks for Mr. Peabody and Sherman; the amazing David Schaub, animation supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks for The Amazing Spider-Man who has received Oscar and BAFTA nominations, seven VES nominations, and a VES award; and the remarkable Brenda Bakker Harger, theater director, improviser, and professor at the entertainment technology center at Carnegie Mellon University.”
“Also this year, for the first time,” she adds, “we are welcoming Rob Coleman, animation supervisor at Animal Logic for The Lego Movie, former animation director at Industrial Light & Magic for the Star WarsEpisodes I, II, and III, two-time Oscar and BAFTA nominee, and three-time VES award nominee. And, we have instructors who will give practical workshops on products from Autodesk, Wacom, Maxon, and Pixologic. So, you can see why I suggest that people register as soon as possible.”
In addition to the workshops, Coleman, Schaub, Modesto, and Bakker Harger join other award-winning speakers throughout the week who will share information about their studios’ work on the major visual effects and animated feature films of 2014, videogames, virtual reality, and other exciting areas of computer graphics.
Keynoting the VIEW conference are award-winning director, writer, producer and actor Tom McGrath from DreamWorks Animation, artist, inventor, author, entrepreneur and Pixar-co-founder Alvy Ray Smith, and award-winning legendary animator Glen Keane.
From the world of animated films:
– Lighting supervisor and VES award winner Alessandro Jacomini from Disney Animation Studios will give a world premiere talk on Big Hero 6, which releases November 7 in the US and December 25 in Italy.
– Providing an early look at the 2016 Smurfs film are production designer Noëlle Triaureau and two-time Annie award nominee art director Marcelo Vignali from Sony Pictures Animation.
– Director and VES award nominee Patrick Osborne will speak about and present the Italian premiere of Disney Animation’s short film “Feast.”
– Co-head of story at DreamWorks Animation and two-time Annie award nominee Alessandro Carloni will present How to Train Your Dragon 2.
– Supervising production designer, Emmy award winner and two-time Annie award nominee Nelson Lowry from Laika will introduce the stop frame world of The Boxtrolls.
– Technical Supervisor, Bill Watral from Pixar will present the latest Pixar short LAVA.
– Jerome Solomon, academic dean at Cogswell College and a SIGGRAPH national committee member, will show this year’s selections of the best in computer graphics from SIGGRAPH’s Electronic Theater.
From the world of visual effects:
– Industrial Light & Magic’s Scott Farrar, who has received an Oscar, six Oscar nominations, four BAFTA nominations, four VES nominations, and two VES awards, will speak on Transformers 4, for which he was visual effects supervisor and second unit director.
– VFX supervisor Keith Miller from Weta Digital, a BAFTA nominee and three-time VES nominee, will present work from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
– VFX supervisor Kyle McCulloch, a two-time VES award nominee and VES award winner, will talk about Framestore’s work on Guardians of the Galaxy.
– Animation supervisor Tim Harrington will talk about Industrial Light & Magic’s work on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
– Visual effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier, who has three Oscar nominations, four BAFTA nominations, three BAFTA awards, and a VES nomination, and Merzin Tavaria, chief creative director at Prime Focus World, will present the visual effects in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.
In addition, speakers from the worlds of game development, virtual reality, motion capture, and medicine include: Parag Havaldar, R & D Lead at Blizzard Entertainment. David Putrino from Not Impossible Labs at Weill-Cornell Medical College. Flávio Andaló and Milton Luiz Horn Vieira from the DesignLab at UFSC. Elisa Di Lorenzo from Untold Games. Pierre-Alain Gagne from DOWiNO. Philip Stevju Løken from Placebo Effects. Kim Baumann Larsen from Digital Storytelling.
“This is such a special conference,” Gutierrez says. “People come to communicate, tocollaborate, and to learn. It is unlike any other conference I know.We are so honored that these incredible artists will join us in Turin for the conference and share their knowledge in workshops for groups of our attendees. I am thrilled with this year’s program, and I can’t wait to share it with everyone.”
VIEW Conference, October 14 – 17, 2014, Turin Italy
A presentation of the joint projects on Animation Studies of the University of Padua and the Cinit-CIneforum Italiano will be held at the Regione Veneto Space in the Hotel Excelsior.
On Friday, August the 29th, the Regione Veneto Space in the Hotel Excelsior of the Lido di Venezia will host a panel about research and teaching projects on animated films, promoted by the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Padova and by the Cinit- Cineforum Italiano, a national cultural association focusing on cinema.
In particular, the event will present the proceedings of the conference “Animation and Italy: authors, theories and state of the art”, which took place on May 29-30, 2014 and was co-organized by the DAMS degree courses (Arts, Music and Entertainment) of the University of Padua, the Department of Cultural Heritage, the Cinit and the S.A.S. – Society for Animation Studies.
The new website “Animata – Information and Research Network on Animation” will debut during the panel. It is a collection of scholarly resources (such as papers, bibliographies and announcements of events) which will be collectively managed by animation scholars, in order to guarantee reliability and quality of the contents.
Such initiatives are part of innovative research efforts that the Department of Cultural Heritage is undertaking in the field of animation; as a part of the same project, an English-laguage course of History of Animation will start in October, 2014, for the students of the Master’s Degree in Theory of Entertainment and Multimedia Production (Scienze dello Spettacolo e della Produzione Multimediale).
The project has been supported by the efforts of Giovanna Valenzano, Director of the Department of Cultural Heritage; Rosamaria Salvatore, President of the DAMS Master’s and Bachelor’s degree courses; Alberto Zotti Minici, Associate Professor of History of Cinema and Photography; Marco Bellano, Adjunct Professor of History of Animation; Massimo Caminiti, President of the Cinit; Marco Vanelli, Editor in chief of the cinema journal “Cabiria”; Paolo Kirschner, webmaster and designer of “Animata”.
Marco Vanelli, Alberto Zotti Minici, Marco Bellano and Paolo Kirschner will participate in the panel.
For the first time in Italy, the Conference in Padua offered to Italian animation scholars an opportunity to meet and share knowledge, using Italian animation as a springboard for discussion. “Cabiria” no. 177 hosts the special insert “Laboratorio: l’Italia animata. I precursori”, which publishes four conference papers focusing on the beginnings of Italian animation: “C’era una volta l’animazione italiana”, by Carlo Montanaro; “Un’italiana a Parigi: Leontina ‘Mimma’ Indelli”, by Giannalberto Bendazzi; “Burattini animati. Le avventure di Pinocchio nel cinema animato italiano”, by Anna Antonini and Chiara Tognolotti; “Sogni di bimbo a passo uno. L’animazione nel film muto italiano di propaganda bellica (1915-1917)”, by Denis Lotti. The upcoming issue no. 178 of “Cabiria” will host more conference proceedings.
The Conference “Il cinema d’animazione e l’Italia: autori, teorie e stato dell’arte” (“Animation and Italy: Authors, Theories and State of the Art”) was born from an idea by Marco Bellano, PhD. It was the first academic event on animation studies ever hosted by an Italian university. It was supported by the combined funding received from the University’s Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali (“Department of Cultural Heritage”), the S.A.S. – Society for Animation Studies and the publishing house/cultural association Cinit – Cineforum Italiano. It was hosted at the Università degli Studi di Padova in two venues: Sala Delle Edicole, Palazzo del Capitanio, and Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo, Liviano, on May 29 (9:00 am-18:30 pm) and May 30 (9:30 am – 13:30 pm), 2014. Marco Bellano and Prof. Alberto Zotti Minici, PhD, were responsible for the organization.
The Conference was subivided into seven panels. Sixteen speakers, from Italian and international universities and institutions, participated in the event; two of them (Giannalberto Bendazzi and Marco Pellitteri) spoke via videoconference. Videoconferencing was also used to connect with Gibba (Francesco Maurizio Guido), senior Italian animator, author of L’ultimo sciuscià (1947).
Thanks to the generous help of Prof. Carlo Montanaro and his personal archive, six digital copies of historically relevant animated films were screened during the conference.
Professor Raffaele Luponio and his students from the Animation Workshop at the Università di Padova provided the conference with nine original “intro animations”.
The full conference was scheduled as follows:
Thursday, May 29, 9.00 am
Sala delle Edicole, Palazzo del Capitanio
Conference opening
GIOVANNA VALENZANO, Head of Department, Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali: archeologia, storia dell’arte, del cinema e della musica, Università degli Studi di Padova
ROSAMARIA SALVATORE, President, Corso di Laurea in Discipline delle Arti, della Musica e dello Spettacolo, Università degli Studi di Padova
Introduction
CARLO ALBERTO ZOTTI MINICI, Università degli Studi di Padova
MARCO BELLANO, Università degli Studi di Padova
MASSIMO CAMINITI, Cinit
PANEL 1 – Tra omaggi e citazioni (“Between homages and references”)
Moderator: CARLO ALBERTO ZOTTI MINICI, Università degli Studi di Padova
MARCO VANELLI, Cinit, Editor in chief of the journal “Cabiria. Studi di cinema”
Fellini e l’animazione: un rapporto biunivoco (“Fellini and animation: a two-way relationship”).
MARCO BELLANO, Università degli Studi di Padova
«Oh… Musica moderna!» Hollywood, satira e “modernismo” nella musica di Giuseppe Piazzi per I fratelli Dinamite (1949). (“«Oh… Modern music!» Hollywood, satire and “modernism” in Giuseppe Piazzi’s music for I fratelli dinamite (1949)”).
Un’italiana a Parigi. Leontina “Mimma” Indelli. (“An Italian in Paris. Leontina “Mimma” Indelli”)
CARLO MONTANARO, AIRSC President (Associazione Italiana per le Ricerche di Storia del Cinema; Italian Association for Researches on the History of Cinema)
C’era una volta l’animazione italiana. (“Once upon a time, there was Italian animation”).
Le bateau ivre, painting by Mimma Indelli, 1992
SCREENINGS
La storia di Lulù (Arrigo Frusta, 1908)
Anacleto e la faina (Roberto Sgrilli, 1941)
12.30 pm
PANEL 3 – L’Italia nell’animazione internazionale: a Oriente (“Italy and international animation: going East”).
Moderator: CARLO ALBERTO ZOTTI MINICI, Università degli Studi di Padova
MARCO PELLITTERI, Kobe University, Giappone (videoconference)
Animazione giapponese in Italia: strategie di programmazione e fasi di successo. (“Japanese animation in Italy: programming strategies and periods of success”).
ROBERTA NOVIELLI, Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia
Tra sacro e profano: l’Italia nel cinema di animazione giapponese. (“Between sacred and profane: Italy in Japanese animated cinema”).
“3000 Leagues in Search of Mother” (Haha wo Tazunete Sanzen Ri, Isao Takahata, 1976)
1.30 pm
LIGHT LUNCH AT BAR LIVIANO, PIAZZA CAPITANIATO
3.00 pm
Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Liviano
PANEL 4 – Animazione in Italia, l’Italia nell’animazione (“Animation in Italy, Italy in animation”)
Moderator: MARCO BELLANO, Università degli Studi di Padova
CHIARA MAGRI, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia di Torino
Fra arte e industria. L’esperienza del corso in cinema d’animazione del Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia a Torino. (“Between art and industry. The experience of the animated cinema course at the Experimental Center for Cinematography, Turin”).
EMILIANO FASANO, ASIFA Italia
«Da un grande potere, deriva una grande popolarità». Da La gabbianella e il gatto al successo platetario delle Winx: l’animazione italiana alla conquista del pubblico. (“«With great power, comes great fame». From La gabbianella e il gatto to the worldwide success of “Winx”: Italian animation conquers the audience”).
ANNA ANTONINI, Università degli Studi di Trieste and CHIARA TOGNOLOTTI, Università degli Studi di Firenze
Burattini animati. Le avventure di Pinocchio nel cinema animato italiano (“Animated puppets. Pinocchio’s adventures in Italian animated cinema”).
Pinocchio (Enzo D’Alò, 2012)
COFFEE BREAK
5.00 pm
PANEL 5 – Gibba
Moderator: MARCO BELLANO, Università degli Studi di Padova
With the participation of GIBBA
MAURO GIORI, Università Statale di Milano
Quando l’animazione italiana tentò la via del porno. Intorno a Il nano e la strega (1975) di Gibba e Libratti. (“When Italian animation tried to go into porn. Concerning Il nano e la strega (1975) by Gibba and Libratti”).
CRISTINA FORMENTI, Università Statale di Milano
Dal neorealismo al documentario animato scientifico: le animazioni “realiste” di Gibba (“From neorealism to scientific animated documentaries: Gibba’s “realistic” animations”).
L’ultimo sciuscià, drawing by Gibba, 1946
SCREENINGS
L’ultimo sciuscià (Gibba, 1947)
Nel paese dei ranocchi (Antonio Rubino, 1942)
8.00 pm
DINNER AT L’ISOLA DI CAPRERA RESTAURANT, VIA MARSILIO DA PADOVA N. 15
Friday, May 30, 9.30 am
Sala delle Edicole, Palazzo del Capitanio
PANEL 6 – Fonti artistiche per l’animazione italiana (“Artistic sources for Italian animation”).
Moderator: ROSAMARIA SALVATORE, Università degli Studi di Padova
PRISCILLA MANCINI, Università Statale di Milano
La Corrente neopittorica nel cinema d’animazione italiano. (“The neopictorial current in Italian animated cinema”).
LUCA RAFFAELLI, journalist and animation specialist
I sentieri nascosti di Bruno Bozzetto: tra Konrad Lorenz, Disney, il Canada e la Scuola di Zagabria. (“Bruno Bozzetto’s hidden paths: between Konrad Lorenz, Disney, Canada and Zagreb’s School”).
The neopictorial current: La Piccola Russia (Gianluigi Toccafondo, 2004)
COFFEE BREAK
11.00 am
PANEL 7 – Prospettive storiografiche 2: le due Guerre e la propaganda (“Historiographical perspectives 2: the two Wars and propaganda”)
Moderator: ROSAMARIA SALVATORE, Università degli Studi di Padova
DENIS LOTTI, Università degli Studi di Padova
“Sogni di bimbo” a passo uno. L’animazione nel film muto italiano di propaganda bellica (1915-1917). (“Stop-motion “dreams of a child”. Animation in Italian silent propaganda films (1915-1917)”).
RAFFAELLA SCRIMITORE, Università Statale di Milano
Luigi Liberio Pensuti, film d’animazione oltre la propaganda. (“Luigi Liberio Pensuti, animated films beyond propaganda”).
Poster of Il sogno del bimbo d’Italia (Riccardo Cassano, 1915)
SCREENINGS
Lulù (Segundo De Chomón, 1908)
La piccola fiammiferaia (Romano Scarpa, 1953)
ROUND TABLE
La ricerca per il cinema d’animazione. Collaborazioni, scambi, progetti. (Academic research for animated cinema. Collaborations, exchanges, projects).
Moderator: MARCO BELLANO, Università degli Studi di Padova
Conference closing
1:30 pm LUNCH AT CAFFÈ PEDROCCHI, VIA VIII FEBBRAIO N.15
After lunch, from 3 pm to 4 pm, guests were invited to a free guided tour of the Precinema Museum – Collezione Minici Zotti.
Alberto Zotti, Marco Bellano. Photo credit: Valentina Valente
The proceedings of the conference will be published in several issues of the cinema journal Cabiria, starting from n. 177, forthcoming in September, 2014.
During the final round table discussion, Marco Bellano announced the foundation of a website hosted by the Università di Padova: “Animata – Rete di divulgazione e ricerca sul cinema d’animazione” (“Animata – Information and research network on animated cinema”). It will be collectively managed by Italian animation scholars and it will store resources such as articles, call for papers and bibliographies. Its main purpose will be to invite Italian scholars to join forces, become more active and ease the circulation of knowledge. The website will open in late 2014; its project includes also an English language version. The conference speakers responded with enthusiasm to this proposal and expressed hope that the conference could become an annual meeting.
