Just a little news on the next Animated Encounters festival. The festival will not be taking place this year due to the Watershed venue being refurbished with the addition of another screen. However, the festival will be back in 2005, to be more precise Thursday 21st to Sunday 24th April.
Although it is slightly disappointing not to have the event this year there are some positive aspects to this situation. The first being that it’s back to being a four day event. Last year the whole thing was squeezed into just two days. This meant that it was actually impossible to see all the films presented as screenings inevitably overlapped with each other. The second good thing is that the organizers now have an extra year to make the festival the best ever. Thirdly, I now have more time to finish the film that was nowhere near ready to be submitted to the festival if it had taken place this year.
2004 will still have a little flavour of Animated Encounters. The annual Brief Encounters festival (Animated Encounters’ big sister) will be taking place from 17th to 21st November and will host “a very special, star studded Animated Encounters launch event.” Hmm sounds interesting. Keep an eye on the Brief Encounters web site for the latest news.