Brisbane International Film Festival

The screening dates of The Cat Piano at this year's Brisbane International Film Festival have been announced.

http://www.stgeorgebiff.com.au/Festival/Films/FilmDetails.aspx?id=345

The short will screen twice before the feature The Beaches of Agnes, on the 7th and 9th of August.

L.A Shorts Screening

The Cat Piano will be screening in competition at the Academy Accredited LA Shortsfest. Here are the details of the screening:

Program #12
Saturday, July 25th, 5:30pm
Laemmle Sunset 5 Theatres
8000 Sunset Blvd.
West Hollywood

So anyone in the L.A area who wants to see the film on the big screen, get along to LA Shortsfest.

More details of the fest can be found here:

http://lashortsfest.com/content.asp?PageID=2

Scarlett Johanssen will be opening the festival which is pretty cool. I wonder if she likes cats?

Merge Magazine article

Here's an interview I did with a street culture magazine here in Adelaide called MERGE. The questions were pretty cool... which is not always the case. You often get the 'how long did it take?' 'How did you make it move?' questions by some interviewers.

http://www.mergemagazine.com.au/verge/edditewhite

A Dendy Award, Annecy meows & Upcoming screenings

While the Cat Piano team was in France for the Annecy animation festival, back on home soil The Cat Piano was awarded the winner of the Yoram Gross Award for Best Animated Short at the Sydney Film Festival's as part of the Dendy Awards.

http://www.sydneyfilmfestival.org/default.aspx



The film's producer, Jessica Brentnall was there to graciously accept the award on behalf of the film. This award is also an Academy accredited one, which means the film will now be eligible for the Oscars shortlist for best short animation which will then be cut down to the handful of nominees.



The film's screenings at Annecy went great. It was really cool to see a 35mm film copy of it up there on the big screen. It was certainly not a cheap process but worth every cent. The film was screened seven times at the festival, twice in the giant Bonlieu theatre as part of the short film competition programm. Judging from the meows and reows coming from the audience in between the following films, it felt like the film went down a treat with the audience.

We weren't lucky enough to come away with a much coveted Annecy crystal this time but we were certainly on good company. Check here for a full list of the winning films:

http://www.annecy.org/home/index.php?Page_ID=2164

My personal favourites at the festival were 'L'homme a la Gordini' (The Man in the blue Gordini) by Jean-Christophe Lie from France which was a hilarious film set in a gawdy 70's throwback world where wearing pants is a criminal offense; L'Ondee (Rains) by David Coquard Dessault from Canada which was a serious of beautiful, atmospheric snapshots of a rainy day in an urban setting and of course 'Please Say Something' by David O'Reilly and 'Western Spaghetti' by PES.

Here's a couple of snapshots from the gang at the festival. I will post more pics up soon, when the rest of the crew arrive back from France.



Artistic Director of the festival, Serge Bromberg throws us some curly questions at a Q&A as part of the short filmmaker's breakfast, the day after our screening.



Ari Gibson (Co-Director) , Jason Pamment (Art Director) enjoy a beer in the French sun.
The 'Aussies at Annecy' picnic was a great afternoon. Baguettes with vegemite, Fruchocs and Tim Tams and even a few kicks of the Australian Football.

Upcoming Festivals

Here is a list of festivals that the film will be screening in over the next couple of months. Dates and times of the film's actual screenings still to come:

Melbourne International Film Festival (Melbourne, Australia)
http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/

Brisbane International Film Festival (Brisbane, Australia)
http://www.stgeorgebiff.com.au/default.aspx

Anima Mundi Animation Festival (Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paulo, Brazil)
http://www.animamundi.com.br/

Message To Man International Film Festival (St. Petersburg, Russia)

LA Shorts Fest (Los Angeles, USA)
http://lashortsfest.com/content.asp?PageID=2

Small World International Animation Festival (Barnsley, England)
http://www.smallworldfest.co.uk/

Also, please join our fans of The Cat Piano facebook page to be kept in the loop on all related news and info!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Cat-Piano/78586590833

LE PIANO DU CHAT D'ANNECY!

The last month has been an exciting one for The Cat Piano team. After the film made its world premiere at the 2009 Adelaide Film Festival we found out we won the Audience Choice Award for Best Short Film. This was a great start to the film's festival life.

Then came the big news. The Cat Piano has been selected in Official Competition at the Annecy International Animation Festival held in the picturesque alpine village Annecy in France. No short film of ours has ever been accepted into the short film competition so we were thrilled to finally b there. Over 1800 animations were entered into the festival and only 40 short films out of that were selected in competition. A group of ten of us; Myself and co-director Ari Gibson, Animators Makoto Koji, Alex Grigg and Benjamin Drake, Art Director, Jason Pamment and editor Jeremy Hill Brooks, will be heading over to the festival in early June to see it screen in the Big Kahuna of Animation Festivals. We congratulate the other Aussies to have something in the festival including Steve Baker with 'Dog with electric collar' in the panorama section and Darcy Prendergast with 'News!' also in the panorama. The PRA have also been selected in the TV special section with 'Ghastly Gourmet - Meat, Meat, Meat' directed by James Calvert and myself (Eddie White).

Here's a short trailer of the film.

Adelaide Film Festival 2009 Premiere

We are happy to announce that The Cat Piano will premiere at the 2009 Adelaide Film Festival. Our short was lucky to be the only animation to receive funding support from the film festival's Investment Fund, following in the steps of two of our past shorts; Sweet & Sour (2007) and Fritz Gets Rich (2005).

We're really excited to get this fantastic opportunity at what is a great film festival that provides great opportunities for filmmakers in this state by funding films, not just screening them. We attended the media launch the other day at Adelaide Airport and the funded projects (features, docos and shorts) look pretty diverse and intriguing. To check out the official press release go to:

2009 Adelaide Film Festival

The full festival programme festival will announced early next year.

A Touch of Halloween

As it's Halloween today we thought we'd post a piece of animation from The Cat Piano that had that a bit of a haunting Halloween flavour. This shot (uncoloured at the moment) of three young Von-Trapp-esque singing kittens being snatched by the shadowy kidnapper via a gramophone, was animated by Makoto. It's been quite an epic shot to finish, with it's different elements and characters, even though it is a short shot. I can't wait to see what the sound and music add to it's humour.