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Animation fest to hit the streets next month

A scene from Meteor by Taiwanese director Huang Shih-ming. PHOTO: COURTESY OF TIAF

On Wednesday, the launch of the Taiwan International Animation Festival was officially announced. The event, the first festival to focus solely on animated film, will run between April 4 to April 10 in Kaohsiung and from April 11 to April 18 in Taipei. The festival will finish up with two days, April 23 and April 24, in Hsinchu.

The festival comes at a time when animation is receiving greater attention from the government than ever before, and Wang Tung (王童) of Hung Kuang Animation, Taiwan's largest animation firm, will be on hand to give the festival his support.

The festival, the creation of which is largely due to the efforts of Chen Yi-ching (陳怡菁), a young director who has worked extensively in film festival event organization, is supported by the National Film Achieve. "I've decided to take on the festival to give it longevity," said Li Tien-yang, director of the film archive. "For so many festivals, the organizer changes from year to year, and many resources are lost. When the Animation Film Festival was proposed, we decided to jump in so that we could build up our resources in relation to animated film."

This year the festival is purely an exhibition event, but Li said there is hope to make it a competition starting next year.

According to Li Chien-li (李建立), chief of the film section of the Government Information Office, the body responsible for most aspects of cinema in Taiwan, pointed out that Taiwan is already strong in the technical side of animation film making, and with some government film industry grants being specially earmarked for animation, he said that Taiwan has great potential.

Wang of Hung Kung, Taiwan's largest animated film company, said that while Taiwan has made considerable progress in the area of conventional film, homegrown animation has seen little progress. But with a large pool of talent -- Taiwan does large quantities of OEM work for major US studios such as Disney -- he believes that animation here also has a strong future.

The festival brings together many highly regarded works from around the world and showcases the incredible power of animation as an artistic medium. Step aside Pocahontas -- these are cartoons that take the medium as something more than a means of entertaining children.
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