Future Film Festival 2009 - Among robots, 3D Day and homages to Iwerks and Nakagawa
Posted on 22/11/2008 in Comunicati Stampa
The next and eleventh Future Film Festival edition will take place, as usual, in Bologna, Italy, from January 27th to February 1st 2009. Since 1999 the Italian event dedicated to animation and special effects has spread in Italy the knowledge of very important international artists, today well known by the audience too, such as Hayao Miyazaki, Osamu Tezuka, Satoshi Kon, Bill Plympton, Tsui Hark, Phil Mulloy, Paul Driessen and the new generation of English and Spanish artists or animation companies, now at the top of box office, as Pixar Animation Studios, Aardman Animations, Blue Sky, and also almost unknown cinema as the Iranian or South American.
Future Film Festival has invited in Italy the top international experts of visual effects and, in this way, it has helped the knowledge and the spread of special effects, from modelling of virtual actors to creation of 3D sets.
The FFF programme, directed by Giulietta Fara and Oscar Cosulich, will present previews, meetings, special events, workshops dedicated to the digital world and the animation.
Among a lot of dates, FFF will present the 3D Day, a whole day dedicated to the development of digital cinema and in particular to the stereoscopic 3D in Italy and in the rest of the world.
A meeting with important experiences will be followed by screening of movies, shorts and trailer preview.
There will be also a focus to real and sci-fi robots with Nexi of Mit Media Lab, a robot with human features and expressions and with Pixar Animation Studios that will present the Wall-E making of.
The Future Film Festival is supported by Comune di Bologna, Provincia di Bologna, Regione Emilia-Romagna, Emilia-Romagna Film Commission, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Main Sponsor is Lancia. Official Sponsor is Hera.
Future Film Festival will point its attention to two homages.
FUTURE FILM FESTIVAL 2009 HOMAGES
Nobuo Nakagawa, Master of Horror
Future Film Festival, after the 2006 Japanese Ghost Stories retrospective, pays a new tribute to the Japanese horror cinema and to its imaginary creatures through the movies of one of the master of macabre, Nobuo Nakagawa (1905 – 1984). Nakagawa is the inspiring director of the Japanese new wave horror, as Hideo Nakata (Ring) or Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse) and he is one of the best directors able to evoke nightmares and ghosts. The Nakagawa’s movies are not only dreadful or spectacular, they are also great melodramas full of love, death and revenge, with complex characters and full of shadings plots. Besides, Nakagawa is a refined director able to experiment with cinematographic language, particularly for the avant-garde use of editing and painting. Among the movies presented, the dreadful and visionary Ghost Story of Yotsuya (1959) and the most sensual and amazing vision of the hell ever filmed, Jigoku (1960).
Ub Iwerks: from Mickey Mouse to Hitchcock
Ub Iwerks (1901 – 1971) is one of the masters of animation and not only. He is famous above all for the Mickey Mouse character, realized with Walt Disney, but he is the creator of a lot of unforgettable characters too, as Flip the Frog, Willy Whopper and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
The homage follows all the most important stages of Iwerks’ career, from the golden age at Disney to the years of productive independence with his Iwerks Studio, to the return to Disney. The homage finds out the last stage of Iwerks’ career, in which he works as innovator of special effects for important movies as Disney’s productions The Three Caballeros, Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Forbidden Planet by Fred McLeod Wilcox and The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock.
Among his masterpieces: two slapstick cartoons with horror elements, The Skeleton Dance (1929) and Cuckoo Murder Case (1930). The first cartoon is part of the Silly Simphonies, a series of Disney’s pioneering musical animations, the second one is a rare case of comedy without happy end.
FUTURE FILM FESTIVAL 2009 MAIN DATES
Special events
One of the FFF peculiarities is the meetings with the most important production companies: in the occasion of eleventh FFF, there will be meetings with Mit Media Lab, Industrial Light + Magic, Gentle Giant Studios, Laika, Aardman, Pixar Animation Studios and others, which will be in Bologna to show premiéres, backstages and exclusive pictures from new productions.
3D Day
For the first time the Future Film Festival dedicates a whole day to the development of digital cinema and, particularly, of stereoscopic 3D in Italy and in the world. Two conference panels in which producers, distributors, storekeepers, directors will take part to understand this new technology and its use. The most important production companies think the showing with 3D glasses as a real revolution in the today cinema like the revolution that the audio brought in the end of Twenties. The reasons of using 3D glasses by the companies are different and will be analyzed in a meeting. In the afternoon there will be a series of screenings about 3D and the FFF audience will meet an important person who works in the field of this new tridimentional system of production and screening. The day is edited by Marco Spagnoli. Digima is partner of the day.
Italiani@FFF.5
In the last four years, this particular section dedicated to meetings with Italian production companies has obtained so great success that it became one of the most expected dates of the Festival, a real chance to updating the last productions.
At its eleventh edition, Future Film Festival suggests again the section to renew the comparing among Italian productions.
Regione Animata Workshop
After five years of collaboration with Emilia-Romagna Film Commission, the FFF organizes a workshop dedicated to the production companies based on Emilia-Romagna, to reason about important themes as international production and co-production, co-financing, distribution, licensing and rights. Four international speakers will be invited to update and enforce the practices in the field of animation in Emilia-Romagna. The Regione Animata is a network of companies, professionals and festivals based on Emilia-Romagna. Future Film Festival is one of the foundation member.
CONTESTS
Lancia Platinum Grand Prize
Lancia Platinum Grand Prize is a contest for animated movies and films with special effects. For the second year, a special jury will give a prize to the best feature film selected for the FFF programme. Deadline to submit the entryform: November 30th 2008. In the last edition of Future Film Festival, the winners has been two masterpieces of Japanese cinema: Byousoku 5 centimeters by Makoto Shinkai and Tekkonkinkreet by Michael Arias.
Future Film Short – Groupama Audience Prize
This section is dedicated to short films coming from all over the world and made with both traditional and digital animation techniques, or live action with special effects. Among shorts in competition, the famous Big Buck Bunny by Sacha Goedegebure, 3D short made with the open source software, Blender. During the FFF2009, there will be a workshop about Blender.
The section is realized with the collaboration of Groupama that will give the prizes. As in the last editions, the audience of the festival will vote for the best shorts and will award the winners. For the first time, there will be a special jury too, thanks to the collaboration of Province of Bologna, will award the best short in competition. Deadline to submit the entryform: November 30th 2008.
FUTURE FILM FESTIVAL 2009 SECTIONS
SeriesMania
This is the section dedicated to the most interesting news coming from the world of animated TV series. The premiére of the production will defiinetly capture all cartoons lovers. Some advance news about the selected series: PsicoVip by Bruno Bozzetto, new 3D series about the mythical Italian superhero and some of the best Japanese series as Cobra the Animation: Psychogun, Hakaba Kitaro, Mononoke, Hells Angels, Abby Careful.
Festival Showcase
Several festivals from all around the world will introduce at Future Film Festival 2009 a special showcase of their best and most successful works. Festival Showcase will bring the most interesting international news to Bologna. Here are the festival partners: the Argentinian Expotoons, the Turkish Istanbul Animation Festival, the Australian Melbourne International Animation Festival, and Asifa India, with a special programme of Indian animated shorts.
The entry forms to sumbit the works and the acreditation forms are available at the site:
http://www.futurefilmfestival.org
Press Office
Studio Sottocorno – Lorena Borghi
via Plinio 33, 20129 – Milan - Italy
Tel. +39 02 20402142
Fax +39 02 2049681
studio@sottocorno.it
lorenaborghi@gmail.com
Local Press Office: Eleonora Boscolo
press@futurefilmfestival.org
www.futurefilmfestival.org
Info
Organization
Associazione Amici del Future Film Festival
Via del Pratello 21/2 - 40122 Bologna - Italy
Tel: +39 051 2960664
Fax: +39 051 6567133
ffinfo@futurefilmfestival.org
