Day 5 - Awards Night and Closing Ceremony

The week long event of the Animafrik 2010 came to an end on Friday, August 27 2010. This event was preceded with a 2-week workshop where 13 participants were trained on animation. They completed 8 short animated projects in a week. 

During the awards ceremony, the participants were given certificates and their works, a minute long animated movies were showed. Their works were actually great.

This year's film festival competition received works from all around the world. Categories for the competition were Best International Animated film, Best Animated Music Film, Best African Diaspora Animated Film,Best Experimental Animated film.  Ebele Okoye from Nigeria won the Best African Diaspora Animated Film and the best Experimental Animated film with "The Essence" (5:29 mins) and "Patterns" (10:09 mins) respectively.The Best International Animated Film went to El Viaje de Said from Spain with "Coke Rioboo Cortes". Francis Gelinas from Canada won the Best Animated Music Film with "The SupaFly". 

Members of the Jury were Dr Charles Dacosta of Savannah College -U.S.A, Cilia Sawadago, the head of the animation programme at Mel Hoppenheim School of cinema -Concordia University-Canada and Kwabena Aboagye, head of Photography Department at NAFTI-Ghana. 

Camille Abraham from the University of Trinidad & Tobago launched “The Animae Caribe Africa and The Anansi Mission V”.

Ananse Mission

The Ananse mission IV is a combined Global effort to connect the diaspora to Africa through the web of Ananse. This project involves the creative skills of participants in the field of music, animation, storytelling, art, scriptwriting, producing, directing, legal advice, advertising promotion etc.

The conference started with a narrative of an ananse story.The guitar was played as the story was told. It was on why ananse is always found in a web in the ceiling. In this story,Ananse made a public spectacle of lion by tricking him to ride on his back.

One of the speakers, Mirto Lacle, a linguistic specialist from Aruba spoke on “Compa Nanzi’s chronotopical voyage:from Ghana to the Caribbean’ including Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao(1952-2010)”. Compa Nanzi means Anansesem. It is how the Ananse story has travelled all around the world from Ghana. According to Mirto, research has proved that wherever enslaved people were sent to, there are people who speak a kind of language called Creole. This is the name given to language that is developed as people who speak different languages try to communicate with each other. For example, Papiamento. It is spoken on the Caribbean island of Aruba. The ananse story has also been told around these areas. It is believed that the enslaved that were brought here were from Africa.

Surinam, a country where creole languages are spoken have proverbs on ananse. Some are "When the spiders unite they can tie down the lion". "For a lot of knowledge you may have, there is a lack of knowledge"."All people will die, only ananse will live".

He said that the ananse story narrated at the beginning of the event is told in Aruba as ananse riding on the tiger. The same is told in another place as ananse riding on the horse. As ananse stories travelled, it is adapted to suit their way of life.

Videos were shown of countries where the ananse story has been adapted.

For more information on how far the ananse story has travelled, you can go to www.anansimasters.net.

Camille Abraham, the director of the Ananse Mission from Trinidad and Tobago also elaborated on the voyage of the ananse story and its significance in different cultures. The ananse mission is more than just the ananse story.

The possibilities of the ananse mission are to create research and archiving. Provide links to books, animations, arts and entertainment and development of contemporary stories.

Teaching Animation in Sub Saharan Africa

The 2^nd International Animation Africa Festival, Animafrik 2010 was at the Alliance Francaise from 23-27 August. The activities for the festival include Film screenings, conferences and an award ceremony.

The topic for the conference held on the Thursday August 26 was “Teaching animation in sub Saharan Africa”.

Camille Abraham spoke on developing teaching in digital media, multimedia and animation. Camille is the program coordinator of the Digital Media Studies in the University of Trinidad and Tobago. She enlightened us on the program structure of animation in the Caribbean.

She expressed that there is a misconception that animation is all about cartoons which is not so. There are several interdisciplinary with animations. It is applied in Bioengineering, Marine surveillance etc.

Camille spoke on the content of the animation program in the Caribbean. First of all the students must have a story to tell. Stories can be about the culture of the people. As Africans we have a lot to tell on our rich culture, history and folk tales. Secondly, the principles of animations are taught. Students are expected to take this seriously as its application is essential for successful animations. Aside these, lecturers are keeping up with technology and participating in computer graphics festivals like Siigraph. Colour theory is also taught.

In order to prepare students for the job market, during their studies, they interact with clients through presentations. They are taught to be creating works that are unique and different instead of mimicking the works of other animators. Even if they are inspired by animations from other cultures, they should still produce distinct and unique works as people are looking out for something new.

She said it hurts her to hear that Disney is adapting the “Ananse” story. Camille is part of a global effort to connect the Diaspora to Africa through the web of Anansi.

One of her students, Makesi Aquan presented his work titled “The Ninja Slippers. It is a short animated 2D film about how a boy overcomes his fears through a gift from his grandmother. Even though “Manga”, a Japanese animation inspired the movie, it was unique and Caribbean.

The other resource person,Prog Dacosta from the savannah college ,USA could not make it on time. He spoke on this topic the in an afternoon session the following day.

He said he takes a holistic approach to teaching animations. He teaches his students the history of animations. They are taught not to focus on tools of animation but to be creative. They focus on why they are creating the animation and the information or the story they want to put across. They consider their target audience and the effect they hope to achieve.

He teaches his students to think for themselves and to be creative. He explained that animation is not simply movement but movement that are reproduced. He believes most people who get into animations are simply fans. One does not have to know how to draw to be an animator. To be successful, it takes devotion and patience.

He said an animator has to be creative and encourages his students to explore. He showed us a documentary animation, which is a type of animation he is exploring.

Animafrik Film Festival-Day 4

Animated movies screened today were from all around the world. Some of these movies, which ranged from 5-10 minutes were Banana, Homo Volans, Elephant goes to kindergarten, long uncomfortable silence and Life boat. Life boat is the animated movie that won the “Best animated movie” in last year’s Animafrik film festival. He is from Croatia. In this movie, the stages of life are presented as a man in a boat marries and have a son; the boy grows up, marries and leaves the parents. The woman dies and the man is left all alone.

Animafrik Film Festival-Day 3

Screenings continued today with animations from Ghana,germany,Egypt and Nigeria.

Some of the animations are The African way,Anna Blume,The frog story, Paper mouse,Leila and kono.The animated movies ranged from 5 to 10 minutes.

Animafrik Film Festival-Day 2

Day 2 of the film festival continued with screenings of movies from the carribean. About 12 animated movies which included 2D and 3D were screened. The length of the movies ranged from 5 to 10 minutes. Some of the movies were Born to be alive,la music berce,premier voyage,migration assistee,le trop petite de prince,the challenge to death,tong etc.The language was mainly french.
Whilst some of the movies were funny,others were really silly and others did not make sense at all.For instance,"The challenge to death" was silly.It was about a guy who mashed himself in a blender. His spirit drunk his mashed body and came back to life.... ewwwww, nasty. Yeah, exactly my reaction.
One of the movies i enjoyed was "tong", a 3D movie. In this movie,a scientist called tong developed a remote that made objects dissappear. His tyrant boss who did not treat him well wanted his help to get rid of a "big stone" in space heading for earth. Tong made the stone dissapear. But guess what! he made his boss dissapear too and got all the recognition and fame. Even though it was short, it was interesting.
I also enjoyed "Born to be alive".

Animafrik Film Festival-Day 1

The International Animation Africa Film festival is an annual festival that is held in Ghana. It seeks to stand in league with other Animation festivals like Siggraph,Afrimations and the likes.This is the second time it is being held but my first. The film screening started on the Monday 23rd August and ends on the 27th August,2010 6:30 each night.
The Film screened on Monday was titled "The tree of the Spirits" animated by Cilia Sawagado, Concordia University,Canada.It took 5 years in the making of the 45 minute animated movie.
Cilia said she was inspired to make this movie when she visited a village in Burkina Faso. All the trees had been cut except for a Baobab tree. The villagers have preserved this tree because they believe it is a very special tree. The very first person who made the village a settlement had a dream while lying under the tree. In the dream, a man told him to start settlement as it will be blessed.
The animated movie features a boy and girl who fought against "evil" guys who wanted to cut down the tree with the help of the spirits.
Tools like SoftImage and Maya were used in the modelling,rendering and animating of this movie.
I really enjoyed it even though it was in French. on a one on one,One of the students, Marie-An said animation takes passion and a lot of hard work. In other to be successful,one would need to have an inner drive as animation has its own challenges.

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