OIAF Selects 17 from NFB

By Staff

(August 20, 2014 – Ottawa, Ontario) Organizers and programmers for this year`s Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), the largest event of its kind in North America, have selected 17 films from the NFB. The selection contains two World Premieres. The festival will also present special screenings of two films created to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary film innovator Norman McLaren, founder of the NFB’s Oscar-winning Animation Studio: Donald McWilliams’ 27-minute documentary Norman McLaren: Animated Musician, as well as Flocons, an independently produced short by Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre, creator of the Jutra Award-winning McLaren’s Negatives.

Premiering in the Official Competition – Animated Feature section is the animation-documentary hybrid Seth’s Dominion, which is Luc Chamberland’s film about the life of acclaimed Ontario-born cartoonist Seth. Also making its world premiere is Monsieur Pug, a new short by Academy Award nominee Janet Perlman (The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin), screening in the Canadian Showcase.

Soif by Michèle Cournoyer is in Official Competition in the Experimental/Abstract Animation category, while the NFB has three titles in Official Competition in the Narrative Short Animation slot: Me and My Moulton by Torill Kove, whose film The Danish Poet won an Academy Award in 2006, along with Rainy Days by Vladimir Leschiov and Pilots on the Way Home by Olga and Priit Pärn.

In addition to Perlman’s Monsieur Pug, which runs 10 minutes, three one-minute NFB shorts will be featured in the out-of-competition Canadian Showcase: Dominic Etienne Simard’s Éloïse’s Fir Tree, as well as two shorts from the NFB’s Hothouse program for emerging animators, Su-An Ng’s Itch and Brendan Matkin’s Observer.

Six more NFB animated shorts have been selected for special screening programs: Patrick Doyon’s Sunday, Dominic Etienne Simard’s Paula (10 minutes), Claire Blanchet’s The End of Pinky (8 minutes) and Philip Eddolls’ Git Gob (1 minute) will be featured as part of “Hot Freaks: The New Generation of Canadian Animation,” while Koji Yamamura’s 13 minute film, Muybridge’s Strings will be shown in the “Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey: Time and Animation” program, with Brandon Blommaert’s Batmilk (1 minute) screening in a program entitled “New Ghosts in the Ol’ Haunt: Regrets, Residues and Crossing Over.”

The NFB will also be offering iPad animation workshops for children using its acclaimed McLaren’s Workshop and NFB StopMo Studio apps, at the National Arts Centre, as part of Animation Celebration.

The Ottawa International Animation festival runs from from September 17 to 21. The festival received a total of 2033 entries from 70 different countries. Of those, 101 short films and 5 feature films were chosen for competition. In addition, 71 showcase films were chosen to represent the efforts of the Canadian, International, and Student communities. Click here for a link to OIAF and other September 2014 film festivals.