‘Loving Vincent’ takes top honors as best animated feature, as festival bestows 35 awards.
The Palm Springs International Animation Festival (PSIAF) announced the winners of its inaugural awards. The festival, which ran Nov. 9-11 included more than 250 short and six feature-length animated films from over 103 countries, along with panel discussions, seminars and educational programming.
The festival opened with a screening of Loving Vincent, a unique animated film comprised of more than 65,000 hand-painted frames done in Vincent Van Gogh’s unique oil-painting style. The film, from Breakthru Films, won best animated feature and was accompanied by a special demonstration from artists Charlene Mosley and Tiffanie Mang showing how to paint in Van Gogh's style.
Other feature presentations included Bilal: A New Breed of Hero, the first fully Middle Eastern-funded and produced CG-animated film inspired by the story of Bilal Ibn Rabah and Tehran Taboo, a rotoscope-animated feature directed by Iranian-born Ali Soozandeh that explores inhibited existence in Iran through the eyes of four young people, interweaving the sex lives of a prostitute, a male musician and two young women in Tehran.
The first annual PSIAF also featured a robust program of animated short films, exploring a range of methods including hand-drawn 2D animation, watercolor animation, paper cut-outs, hand-painted animation and stop-motion animation, along with other 2D and 3D techniques.
The winners of the first annual PSIAF are:
Best Animated Feature
Loving Vincent
Best Hand Drawn Animated Short
The Potato Eaters
Director: Martin Kukal
Best Watercolor Animated Short
Strange Case
Director: Zbigniew Czapla
Best Paper Animated Short
Tis
Director: Chloë Lesueur
Best Classic and Traditional Animated Short
New York City Sketchbook
Director: William Hartland
Best Hand Painted Animated Short
Yellow Rose
Director: Xin Li
Best Amazing Stop-Motion Animated Short
Tokri
Director: Suresh Eriyat
Best LGBT Animated Short
Fishy
Director: Joe Sulsenti
Best 3D Dark Comedy Animated Short
Afterwork
Director: Andres Aguilar
Best Abstract Animated Short
Virtual Actors in Chinese Opera
Director: Tobias Gremmler
Best Sand & Salt Animated Short
Angels of the Seashore
Director: Kseniya Slmonova
Best Powerful Dark & Mysterious 3D Animated Short
Citipati
Director: Andreas Feix
Best Global Issues & Socially Relevant Animated Short
The Neverending Wall
Director: Silvia Carpizo
Best 3D Sci-Fi Fantasy Animated Short
Agent Aiden: The Planet of the Slaves
Director: Martin Lambert and Laurent Beghin
Best VFX and Rotoscoped Animated Short
Mosquito: The Bite of Passage
Director: Brian Vincent Rhodes
Best 3D Drama Animated Short
Weeds
Director: Kevin Hudson
Best Music Video Animated Short
Escape
Director: Brandon Oldenburg
Best Academy of Dream Awards Animated Short
Hide & Shriek
Director: Dani Bowman
Best 3D Fantasy Animated Short
Awaken
Director: Emerson Eagp
Best 2D Childrens Animated Short
New Toy
Director: Rogerio Boechat
Best 2D Action Adventure Animated Short
Salesman Pete
Director: Marc Bouyer
Best Fun Stop-Motion Animated Short
No-No Wants to Try a Sport
Director: Auvray Mathieu
Best 3D Drama Adventure Animated Short
Geno
Director: Dato Kiknavelidze
Best 2D Drama Animated Short
New Ariadne’s Thread
Director: Claude Luyet
Best Winter Holiday Animated Short
The Christmas Star
Director: Kok Sen Lai
Best Experimental Animated Short
Bi-Polaroid
Director: John Morena
Best 2D Odd and Twisted Animated Short
Dinner for Few
Director: Nassos Vakalis
Best 3D Heartwarming Animated Short
Adija
Director: Apollonia Thomaier
Best 3D Comedy Animated Short
Voyagers
Director: Gauthier Ammeux, Valentine Baillon, Benjamin Chaumeny
Best TV Series Animated Short
Paper Girls
Director: Tone Thyne
Best 3D Romantic Comedy Animated Short
Tanguito Argentino
Director: Joaquin Braga
Best Cool Stop-Motion Animated Short
Ethnophoobia
Director: Joan Zhonga
Best 3D Dark Animated Short
Legacy
Director: Guilhem Carayre
Source: Palm Springs International Animation Festival
