BIG CARTOON FESTIVAL
The Fifth International Animation Festival

October, 28th – November, 7th, 2011, Moscow

The Big Cartoon Festival is one of the most prominent international animation reviews in Russia. Every year the Moscow BGF opens on the International Animation Day, the 28th of October, and all the year round it brings its programs to different Russian cities. The Big Cartoon Festival was developed from a weekly program named Cartoons on the weekend which was held on the October 2006 at Moscow Cultural centre Aktovy Zal (Assembly Hall). Nowadays the Festival has 12 cinema halls, galleries and show-rooms.

During four past years more than 1,500 films from all over the world have taken part in the Festival, in Moscow alone the Festival programs have been watched by over 70,000 people. A lot of foreign directors have visited Moscow to present their works and the animation of different countries. There is a large-scale charity program held in the framework of the Festival, lots of free shows of rare animations, and documentaries about animation, exhibitions, lectures, meetings and workshops of animation practitioners and theorists. In 2010, the new project named Cartoon Factory has been started up. It’s an educational playground, which lets children with the assistance of young filmmakers learn how to make cartoons using the variety of techniques – from drawn and plasticine to sand animation. Above all they learn how to record sound and even how to make up tales as scripts to the future films. The first experience of Factory’s realization in Moscow and Krasnoyarsk has displayed that the children and even their parents are hugely interested in it.



This year BGF plans to widen the Cartoon Factory project, e.g. to extend the ground, to enlarge the quantity of specialists involved, to make the occupations split-level. In 2010 the Factory was intended almost for children of elementary-school age who knew nothing about animation. But this year, besides that, it could become a kind of Welcome Day for senior children who think of possibility to cast their lots with animation films. Along with games and lightened workshops, we plan to organize deeper exercises that could be a tour of the profession for those teenagers who are in for their life journey.

Moreover one of the crucial Festival events will be the opening of animation expo PRO animation. The exhibition displays advances in digital technologies such as computation (graphics programs, edit ones), motion capture installations, equipment for computer graphics producing, sound-recording hardware, etc. The leading producers of the above-mentioned applications will host wide and deep presentations of their products, workshops and so on to train how to use this kind of facilities. The major animation studios and TV channels will present their new projects. There will be professional workshops, lectures of Russian and foreign directors, broad-ranging discussion in the framework of PRO animation. In particular, one of the subjects to be discussed will be the making of animation series for TV in Russia and abroad.

In addition to the traditional programs of our Festival like Premieres (Russian cartoons made during last year), Winners (foreign films which have become winners of the most prestige festivals all over the world during last year), and Children’s (several programs of Russian animation produced during last previous years, divided into sets according to the child’s age, and shown in children cinema halls in Moscow), there will be lots of interesting newcomers this year. At first one must say about a large-scale focus on the Polish animation (collaboratively with Polish Cultural Centre in Moscow) which will contain Polish animation masters’ retrospective shows, and contemporary films demonstration, and some dashing student works, and children’s programs, and Polish experts’ lectures, and a workshop of Polish animation legend Piotr Dumala. The Polish professionals will also take part in workshops of our expo Pro animation, in particular, there will be filmmakers who’ve made an Oscar winner film Peter and the Wolf teaching puppet animation.

There are several foreign outstanding full-length films in our program this year, the films that have already won prizes at recent worldwide festivals. Among the Special programs we’ll show two sets dedicated to Daniil Kharms and also two sets of the best computer animation. This year we introduce In Memoriam program devoted to animation directors who have left us recently. Besides that we prepare an exhibition of Alexey Shelmanov’s works who has past away a while ago.

Contact:

Russia, Moscow, 105082
Perevedenovsky lane, 18, office 45
tel: + 7 499 2650744
multfest@gmail.com

Program directors of the Festival:

Dina Goder
Maria Tereshchenko